If we didn’t fail this course, we didn’t do so awful well either. I give us a generous C+.

It started out fine. I had an overly-optimistic plan, as usual. Remember the Great Meat Jello-Mold fiasco of 2007? Junior, who hasn’t yet exactly learned how I am with overly-optimistic plans, thought he’d help me out with it. I’ve always wanted to learn to smoke, and rolling a turkey up into a big fat doobie just isn’t practical, so he brought over his bullet-style smoker. I picked up some mesquite charcoal and applewood chips, and had every intention of having smoked turkey for dinner.

 

Like any good rednecks living in town, we did this little piece of performance art in the driveway. The neighbors were delighted. But hey, the dogs would have knocked it over in the backyard, and where better to sit with a beer and watch grass grow all day?

Oh, and did I mention that, even though he owned the smoker, he didn’t know how to use it either? So we were both going in cold, with some instructions for a similar model that I’d swiped off the internet. We had to figure out a lot as we went. That is what I do. It’s driving by the seat of my pants, only in the kitchen. Or in this case, the front yard, because I am classy like that.

 

One of the lessons that took us all day to master was getting the temperature right. We started off with a bang, and let the coals get good and going before we put the turkey in, but then it kept wildly fluctuating. It would sit in the right zone just long enough for us to think we could go do something else. Then the damn thing would see us walk into the house and snicker, and drop the temp down into the red zone. So out we’d come again, and stoke it back up, and try again. Eventually, we figured out that if we took the lid off, which seemed counterintuitive to keeping the heat in, it would let the coals get enough air to really get going. Then we could leave it alone for about two hours at a time.

But it took us half a day to learn that, and at half an hour per pound, with a 17-pound turkey, which is what I had in the freezer leftover from a turkey shoot that Junior won, minus the times where nothing was really happening at all, it looked like we’d be eating dinner at approximately 11 AM next Tuesday. So we had hamburgers, as the natives were getting restless. So much for making other people help me eat 17 pounds of turkey.

Eventually though, the skin looked right and the juices were running somewhat clearly and we were really getting tired of this crazy-ass project, so we poked it with the meat thermometer and called it good enough. Junior stripped the meat out, and it was cooked through, and it did smell pretty awesome, but I was all full from hamburgers and pretty tired of smelling smoke by that point. Although a smoked Junior still smelled delicious.

I was disappointed in how dry it was. Most of my oven-turkeys come out nice and juicy, but not this one. I had some gravy fixins ready to go, but by then it was bedtime. Junior had a sandwich and I grazed a little, but I was in no mood to stand and stir gravy.

 

I’m going to be eating smoked turkey for the rest of my life, approximately. I have the carcass in the fridge waiting to be made into stock, and turkey meat coming out of my ears. I had a smoked turkey caesar salad for lunch yesterday. Junior took some more sandwiches to work. I’m considering making turkey Divan tomorrow night. I expect by Friday, I’ll be eating smoked turkey sprinkled over ice cream or whirled into a smoothie.

Perhaps it’s time for another overly-optimistic cooking project: Meat Canning 101? I suspect he’s learned to run away screaming though.