Thursday, November 26, 2009

Thanksgiving Feast

We had an epic feast at my parents house for Thanksgiving.

Things got started with an incredible cheese selection. My father has a "cheese guy" and they made up an impressive high end selection, including Roquefort, brie, an outrageous aged cheddar, an Italian and a goat cheese. Dad also had some incredible caviar, served with creme frieshe and crumbled egg.

The warm up was rounded out with Sheila's spicy artichoke dip, which was awesome as usual.

Fortunately we had the appetizers at around noon, giving us several hours to recover before the 4PM dinner.

I did a turkey honey brined and smoked. It was the first time I have honey brined a turkey before. Kept it simple, brined overnight in a cooler with water, kosher salt, and honey. Dried off, transported to Orange from Norwich, rubbed generously with butter then a dusting of salt and fresh ground pepper. A few aromatics in the cavity.

Smoked on the WSM at 325 degrees, took about 4 hours to when I pulled it off and rested for around a half hour before we ate.

The meat was very moist and flavorful. The one thing about smoked turkey is that the process really ruins the skin for me, it's just too smoky. It was popular with my brother in law Eduardo though.


Traditional sides, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, roasted sweet potatoes and fried onion green beans. Dinner rocked.

Dessert, my sister Jenny made two pies, a traditional apple pie and another that I don't remember what the second one was.

The football games were weak but the meal and family were awesome!

3 comments:

Chris said...

Great looking bird! Smoking doesn't ruin the skin for me as long as I get it crispy, but I go light on the smoke too.

WhiteTrashBBQ said...

Nice looking bird.

A quick question - why the pan? I never use a pan when I smoke a bird. Did you use the drippings for gravy and if you did, wasn't the gravy too smokey?

Ted Lorson said...

I smoke for 2 hours with no pan, then place the bird into the pan at that point. I cover loosely with foil after around 3 hours until proper temps are reached. The drippings are way too smoky for gravy for my taste.