Over this past weekend I decided I would smoke up a turkey for the family Sunday dinner. I was pretty excited about it as I had never barbecued such a large piece of meat before. Up until now the largest piece of meat I had cooked was probably an 11 lb pork shoulder. The turkey that was to be my first attempt weighed in at a modest 19 lbs, luckily enough for me the bird fit into the smoker nicely.

One thing I like about cooking a new piece of meat is searching for a good recipe. Having watched the food network religiously for the past 4 years I have seen plenty of Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday specials centered on turkeys. So I knew from the start that I would want to brine the turkey beforehand. I searched several recipes on the food network website and came across one from Alton Brown. I believe he is a trustworthy source (I have several recipes of his making), and I decided to give it a try. For those of you who are curious you can find the recipe on my page here under 'Brined Smoked Turkey'.

After putting together the brine the biggest problem I had was finding something large enough to hold everything. My original thought was to use a large plastic bag, but that just proved to cause a mess and the turkey wouldn’t stay completely submerged in the brine which is of course necessary. After looking around (and deciding not to drop $60 on a stock pot large enough to hold the bird) I found the perfect solution: a five gallon bucket. (It was new and I cleaned it well, I promise).  I lowered the turkey into the bucket and filled it with the brine solution and added water until the turkey was covered. Next step? Finding a place to put the turkey for the next 24 hours, luckily for me I have a spare fridge that I use for my barbecuing adventures. After removing the lower crisper tray the bucket seemed to fit nicely, until I tried to close the door that is. I’m sure everyone has ran into the problem I did, thinking something fits in the fridge, close the door, just to have it pop back open 2 seconds later. Well, being the crafty and ingenious guy I am I had the perfect solution: duct tape, it works every time. Nothing to do now but wait...

Sunday morning came around and I woke up bright and early, which for me on a Sunday means 9:00 AM. I pulled the turkey out of the fridge and let sit out for 30 minutes so it could come closer to room temperature while I prepped the smoker. I had the smoker all set up and ready to go, had charcoal in the starter chimney getting nice and red; it was turning out to be the perfect Sunday morning. And to my surprise the smoking went off without a hitch.  I added the charcoal to the base, filled the water pan with the aromatics, adjusted the vents till the temperature was hovering around 350, and set the turkey in the smoker. The only thing I really had to do was add a few wood chips every 30 min or so for the first two hours and the smoker did the rest of the work for me.

The result was, in my humble opinion, the best turkey I have ever had. The flavor was amazing, the smoke from the apple wood created a flavor that just cannot be duplicated any other way, and because of the brine the meat was very moist and tender. I've always been a fan of dark meat, I find white turkey meat to be dry and I have a really hard time with dry meat. However, the white meat this time was very moist, and I couldn’t help but keep going back for more. Overall I was very happy with the way things turned out on my first attempt and even more happy that it was a 19 lb bird, which means I have plenty of leftovers for smoked turkey sandwiches this coming week!

This amazing story is about a guy who started a barbecue restaurant in Ohio, starting with only $10 to buy a rack of ribs.  Check it out here. 

I really didn't have much to write about along the lines of barbecue this week so I thought I would take a quick moment and share with you one of my new favorite seasonings: Adobo.  For anyone who doesn't know about this stuff I'm telling you right now you are missing out!  I was introduced to this wonderful flavoring over the summer, and since then I have been putting it into and on top of everything!  Adobo is a Mexican seasoning full of flavor, it works great on any type of meat, chicken, beef, pork, and its wonderful on fish.  Its even great on vegetables, next time you want to slice up a tomato be sure to sprinkle a little adobo on there, trust me you wont be sorry.  If you want to start out basic just grab some chicken, squirt a little lime juice on there, sprinkle with adobo then grill it up.  Its as simple as that and the flavor is amazing with no effort at all.  With in no time you will find all sorts of recipes you can mix up by add adobo to, and I'm sure it will soon be a favorite of yours as well.

Here is what can be found inside the Penzys Adobo Seasoning:  onion, garlic, Tellecherry black pepper, Mexican oregano, cumin, and cayenne pepper.

I got the bug over the weekend to work on a project so I thought I would tackle the smoker modifications I had been thinking about.  There are several sites and postings online about smoker modifications, especially with the Brinkmann.  By far the best one that I have come across is the Brinkmann Gourmet Smoker Modifications site.  I based my changes off of there and below is a list of the things I did to 'improve' my Brinkmann Smoker.

First things first I needed a more accurate way of telling the temperature at which I was smoking, the ranges provided of warm, hot, and ideal were not really 'ideal' at all.  I picked up a spare grill thermometer from Home Depot, drilled a hole in the lid and the temperature issue is now taken care of!  Now it’s much easier to get the accurate temperature reading I was looking for.  Doesn't it look pretty sitting up there on top?

Now, the charcoal pan has no way to lift the charcoal up, it just rests at the bottom and the vents get covered with ash making the coals burn cooler as the air flow is limited.  I drilled four 1/4 inch holes about 1 inch high on opposite sides of the pan.  Then added 2 inch bolts to hold a charcoal grate which I also picked up from Home Depot (the Weber 13.5 inch grate works best).  Now the charcoal is lifted off the pan and getting the oxygen it needs.

Last problem was the ventilation issues.  The smoker originally does not have a way to control the air flow, which means no temperature adjustments. Obviously the best way to fix this is to drill a couple holes in the top and in the bottom and add some adjustable vent covers.  This proves to be easier said than done.  I think I should have paid closer attention to the materials used buy the guy I linked to above, but I'm more of a 'take a glance at the plans and just go for it' kind of guy.  For vent covers he used aluminum, and I used um... sheet metal, which proved to be a bit hard to work with. (I'm sure having proper tools might have been helpful as well.)  I did however have a good pair of tin snips, so I just rough cut the vent covers and used a grinder to get them down to the appropriate shapes.  Now, just a bit of warning to anyone wanting to copy this process... trying to drill three 1 inch holes in a round piece of metal is kind of tricky.  So you might want to drill the holes first, and then cut out the covers.  Also, make sure you have good metal drill bits, I had a cheap set that works well for wood but it is now missing 4 of the drill bits it originally came with.  The original plans were for three vents on the bottom, however I thought that was a bit of overkill so I just went with two on opposite sides of the base.  Air flow issues have now been fixed and I am able to throttle my heat up and down.

Out of the box I was able to get my Brinkmann up to 200 degrees at the highest, now I can crank this baby up to 400.  Now I know that is a little high for smoking, but I do like the ability to control my air flow and adjust the heat as needed.  Overall the smoker is running much better and more efficient than before, I cant wait to fire her up and see what kind of food she is capable of!



I’ve wanted to get into meat smoking ever since I started grilling, or when I started to learn how to grill well I should say.  So, after much research I decided to finally pick up the Brinkmann Gourmet water smoker over the weekend.  Now, I know what some of you are thinking right now, that I should have gone with the more popular Webber smoker, which in truth I most likely will in the future.  However, I figure that for the price, (I picked this thing up at Lowes for under $60 plus several discounts), that this thing wouldn’t be a bad place to start.  I do like it and it's not a bad little smoker, it went together simply enough, maybe took 20 minutes tops before I was ready to start up my charcoal, and it’s pretty straight forward to use.  Sure it doesn’t have any way to regulate air flow (as of yet anyway), but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t turn out some pretty good ribs over the weekend. 

Now first things first, this might be obvious to some and I thought that I knew what I was getting into, but using a smoker is not anything like using a grill to do meat smoking.  On my grill I will usually use indirect heat to barbecue ribs or pork shoulder; I will add wood chips in a smoker box to add that smoky flavor.  More often than not I will cook at a temperature between 300 - 350 degrees, which to me was pretty low.  With the Brinkmann I think the highest temperature I reached in the 6 hours of smoking was maybe 225, and that was with a fully loaded pan of charcoal.  Also, while smoking on my grill I would continually add chips to produce smoke through the entire process; this does not go over so well in this smoker as you will end up with meat that tastes more like smoke than meat.  This might go over well with some, but I believe that smoke is a flavor enhancer more than a flavor unto itself. 

Over all I will still need some time to play with the smoker.  I am looking forward to making my first mods this week, which would be installing some vents above and below to help control air flow, as well as adding a basket to suspend the charcoal to help increase the temperature range.  I wouldn’t mind adding a temperature gage or two, maybe one in the middle and one up top that actually gives a temperature instead of a range of 'Low, Ideal, and Hot'.  But as I said, for under $60 it’s kind of hard to beat.  I’ll keep you all posted on how the mods work and what kind of meat I’m able to produce with my new Brinkmann smoker.