More Practice with the Smoker

After some initial attempts last fall, Craig has become increasingly intrigued (read: obsessed) with the smoker we picked up at a New Hampshire yard sale. This year, we spotted another bargain smoker for $20 which we bought so we could have one in Boston and one in NH. Since bringing it home, we have been doing lots of experimenting: pork, multiple types of fish, chicken, and most recently, a turkey. My extended family is joining us next week for Thanksgiving so Craig decided we should smoke the bird. Hence, we needed to do a test run before the actually holiday to make sure it would work. Multiple hours were spent online reading various blogs about smoking and getting the scoop from smokers all over America about what makes a perfect bird. We ended up buying a syringe (so weird) to inject flavored oils into the bird to maintain moisture. We did not get our act together to brine the bird in advance, but the Thanksgiving turkey will be brined, botoxed and mopped in a maple syrup-butter marinade. Stay tuned ... in the meantime, here are some images from the last several practice runs.