SUNDAY AWESOME SUNDAY!

So I have been doing a lot of cooking on Sundays.  Football season is upon us and I always enjoy cooking some food for my friends and hanging out.  For me it is really the perfect Sunday afternoon.  Unfortunately I haven't been taking many pictures because I am lazy.  But I am bound and determined to make everyone jealous of all the awesome food I cook :-)  In weeks past we have had steak and cheese, chili cheese dogs, pot roast, just to name a few.

Well this week I smoked a turkey.   I know it is hard to see, but I stuck my hand between the skin and the meat.  Rubbed the meat with butter and a creole seasoning, and then coated the outside with oil. 

Then we take the whole thing out to the grill, and I am using my smoker.  I did not use the water pan in the smoker because I didn't really see the point.  I put an aluminum foil pan under the turkey on the grill to catch drippings for the gravy (which turned out awesome)!

 Here we have the bird, ready to go, I added a chimney full of light charcoal and a chimney of unlit charcoal and then bundled everything up.  It took about 4ish hours, this is a pretty small bird in the 11 pound range.  I think next time I am going to start it breast side down for an hour and see if that affects anything.  I gotta say this was the easiest thing I have ever smoked, just set it and forget it.  Once I got the temp adjusted of course, that took a little bit of fiddling.  I usually smoke me at about 225 degrees, but this was more in the 325 range.  But I think it was a big hit.  My girlfriend who was very suspicious about the turkey thought it was awesome.  Also you can see the pan drippings below the turkey.  They made a terrific gravy.  Also I smoked it with apple wood as opposed to hickory which I really enjoy but the apple was a nice mild flavor.  I think hickory would have been way too much.

 

This is the finished bird, the breast and dark meat both finished about the same time.  I made some gravy mashed potatoes and some frozen green beans.  It was pretty terrific.

It is hard to see but there are three slabs of turkey breast under the gravy.  I gotta say it made for a pretty awesome meal.  I was a little concerned about the gravy being too heavily seasoned because of the rub on the turkey but I think it was perfect.  Now the next question "What do I do with the smoked turkey stock I made?"