Recipes and Reviews

I was unable to get a pasture raised turkey for Thanksgiving, so I decided to give a kosher bird a try. In kosher processing, they don't scald the bird to pluck it, so you are likely to get more pin feathers and skin rips. They coat the bird with salt, to draw out the blood, before rinsing it off, which makes it so it is unnecessary to brine the bird. I went with a really simple wet rub, applewood smoke, and no injected spices or liquid just to see how the kosher bird would come out.

This was my first Thanksgiving with my Masterbuilt electric smoker, and I was also anxious to try out my new Turkey Cannon. The The Masterbuilt smoker is insulated and has digital temperature control, a big bonus when smoking in the cool season. The Turkey Cannon is a gadget for making "beer can chicken" with a full-sized turkey. Since the base of the cannon sits several inches outside the bird, the liquid heats up much better, infusing the cavity with steam. The claim is that it greatly speeds up cooking, in this case I can verify that the claim is true. Normally I have to smoke a 14 pound turkey for at least 6-8 hours; this 17 pound bird was done in just over 3!

The result was a very moist and flavorful bird.

I already planned on having the smoker going today to make some pulled pork, and decided to try smoking the meat for carnitas, instead of going for the more traditional lard cooked, or the more recent roasting. I'm glad that I did, because it's some of the best and easiest carnitas I've ever had. It wasn't quite as moist as the lard cooked, but the smoke added a lot more flavor.

I really doubt that I will make smoked carnitas if I'm not already planning on smoking something else, but I think that I will pick up a small roast whenever I'm planning on smoking another pork product. It might also work out with some turkey or chicken smokes, since they tend to use similar woods. I don't think It would turn out very good smoking it with beef because of the harsher smoke that comes with mesquite.

I've made variations on this recipe several times in the past, and decided that it would be a good choice to inaugurate my new smoker. On Christmas Eve, with snow all around and the temperatures hovering right at freezing, the thermostatically controlled, insulated smoker did an amazing job. This is a straight forward, simple dry rub recipe that I adapted from the Smoke & Spice cookbook for my slightly spicier tastes. When I make this recipe, I usually make half of it dry, and the other half gets a BBQ sauce mop during the last hour of cooking. Why pick wet or dry when you can have both?