Turkey

Looks good. I don't know. We do both traditional turkey and smoke a turkey breast at Thanksgiving, and folks love the smoked one, hands down. The Cookshack turns out a nice bird...skin not being a major factor on a turkey breast.

Winter being winter in Vermont, last week I smoked a turkey for a pot of Smoked Turkey Gumbo at the restaurant.

The set-up was the ususal: 48 hrs in S.M's Holiday Brine, squeezed 8 oz of compound butter (8oz butter, 1 tbsp Cajun Spice, 1 tbsp each of minced chives and frsh thyme leave)under the skin and covered with butter soaked cheesecloth.

What I did differently, after applying the compound butter, I used a set of Jicard blades to throughly penetrate the skin, about half an inch, all around the bird. The goal was to infuse the meat with the compound butter and hopefully help tenderize the skin. It worked well. The skin wasn't crisp, but almost...and very bite through.

I didn't use the skin in the gumbo, it went into a stockpot with the carcus and chciken stock. I would re-try the Jacard method the next time for a regular smoked turkey.

Nice looking turkey.

I've heard of folks using Jicard blades to help render the fat from under the skin. It will help produce bite through skin, experience has taught me there is many ways to render fat from under the skin, with smoker temp being the key to all situations.

You can always try a method a fellow I know uses with turkeys, primarily breasts. He very carefully removes the skin, starting with an X-Acto knife. He then scrapes off the fat with the back of a knife blade, and reattaches the skin using Transglutaminase (meat glue). I've never seen the end result but he says it works perfectly.

A simpler method that I've used a few times in the past with pretty good results was to hit the turkey with a blow torch just prior to going into a pre-heated smoker. Adds a little initial color and starts the fat rendering well ahead of schedule. Not perfect but whole lot better then doing nothing.

quote:

Originally posted by dls:
You can always try a method a fellow I know uses with turkeys, primarily breasts. He very carefully removes the skin, starting with an X-Acto knife. He then scrapes off the fat with the back of a knife blade, and reattaches the skin using Transglutaminase (meat glue). I've never seen the end result but he says it works perfectly.

The meat glue is a great idea. I've bitten into great looking chicken thighs when judging comps only to have the entire skin come along with the bite. Gotta chew and swallow it without choking and move on to the next sample.