This year, my partner and I hosted a friendsgiving for her friends, and I committed to cooking the turkey and use my mom's lovely cornbread dressing recipe.

My mother has always signle-handedly prepared a traditional little feast at our house, even when we were kids and lived in a country that has no Thanksgiving holiday. She would typically serve turkey, cornbread dressing casserole, gravy, sweet potato casserole, and some kind of vegetable.

However, I've never really been a huge turkey fan. I've had it prepared by other people as well, with a variety of cooking methods from deep frying to grilling, but have always found it a bit dry and flavorless. It's why a few years back my mom started also baking a small ham to complement Thanksgiving dinner.

But I "know" that turkey can taste good. I've heard and read as much constantly on the internet. So I decided to try my hand at it, since I had time and have the passion. My work and research led me to make the tastiest turkey I have ever had.

My idea was to use my newfound interest in smoking to cook the turkey on my little Weber kettle grill. I loosely followed the recipe of one of my favorite bbq channels 'Fork & Embers'.

The core steps were as follows:

1. Buy a "nice" frozen 15lb Turkey from Whole Foods for $2.99/lb.
   • This is because we expected ~15 guests and 1lb of frozen meat per person is typically good.
2. Let the turkey thaw in the fridge for ~7 days before the feast
3. The morning before the dinner, spatchcock the turkey and brine it for 24 hours. I very loosely followed Joe's recipe for the brine, and ended up using:
   • 2 gallons of water
   • 1 cup brown sugar
   • 1.5 cups salt
   • 1 lemon, juiced and the carcass tossed in
   • 6 garlic cloves (I love garlic)
4. On the morning of, inject the turkey with a mixture of 1:1 butter:broth, and a tablespoon of bbq seasoning. Also cover it in your favorite BBQ rub.
   • I used a homemade rub with chili powder, garlic powder, paprika, coarse black pepper and sugar. The salt from the brine should have been enough, so I didn't add any more to the surface.
5. Form a loose (and as I will discuss shortly, bad) snake of coals around the outside of the weber and light one end
6. Smoke the turkey at around 275°F for as long as it takes to reach 158°F at the breast, basting the turkey with seasoned butter (melted butter with seasoning in it) every 45-60mins.

By all math, this should have only taken ~4hours. This was the part of my process where things started to go wrong. Ideally we would have smoked it solidly the entire time at around 280°F. But the snake that I made to start did not have enough height to hold temps properly. The fire was too small and advanced too quickly down the snake. Several times we were forced to open the lid and take the bird and grate out briefly to add more coals. We were actually struggling to maintain temps above 250°F for much of the cooking time.

Towards the end of hour 3, the breast temps stalled hard at 138°F. It did not budge for around 40mins. A little frustrated and quite hungry due to the delay, we transferred it to the oven at 350°F, until the breast read 150°F, and rested it for 15mins before slicing.

Now some people reading this may raise their eyebrow at the 150°F finishing temperature. Mainly this is because health departments in North America state that poultry should reach 165°F to kill off the salmonella bacteria that could be present - a.k.a pasteruizing. However, pasteurization is a relationship between time and temperature, not just a yes/no based on temperature.

As you can see from the graph above, our accidental stall at 138°F for over 30 minutes meant we had already succeeded in pasteurizing the turkey, and did not need to hit any higher temperatures for it to be safe to eat. The reason we brought the breast to 150°F in the oven, with carry-over cooking during resting likely bumping the final internal temperature to ~155°F, was mostly to ensure the meat had good texture. At 138°F, we were worried it might be a bit chewy.

Let me tell you, the turkey turned out juicy, flavorful, smoky, and tender. The breast especially was unlike any turkey I've ever had before. It had absorbed the spices and smoke and had a really distinctive flavor, unlike the subtle herb flavor of most turkeys I've had. There was only one turkey leg left after us and our guests were done eating, and I never felt like reaching for the gravy I had made. This was with the fact that we also had BBQ ribs and TONS of sides on the table!

My core takeaway from the experience is that I will likely never let my poultry hit 165°F again, and aim for 155°F at most, at which temps the poultry will be pasteurized even if held only for one minute.

This cook hasn't made me a turkey fan by any means, though. I will still gladly eat it as deli meat and in sandwiches and when presented I will always be thankful. But it takes so much effort and time to make a turkey worth actually delighting in by itself... it will remain a once-per-year endeavour for me.

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kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com
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