Smoked Turkey Bahn Mi (Vietnamese Sandwich)


 

Chris in Louisiana

TVWBB All-Star
Bahn Mi are really popular with the food crowd these days. I love Asian flavors, and I was wanting to try my WSM on turkey for the first time, so I came up with this today.

It was killer good! My wife and I both loved it. This is one of the best sandwiches I have ever eaten. Seriously.

Note: make the slaw ahead of time, at least an hour and as much as a day or two.

Smoked Turkey Bahn Mi


Smoked Turkey Breast

I used bone-in Butterball breast, about 5.5 lbs. Rubbed with oil and seasoned with Tony Chachere’s cajun seasoning.

Turkey legs. For the heck of it, I also did three legs. They were cheap, about $3.50. Why not? Rubbed with Worchestershire sauce and some spice rub.

Lit up 1 Weber chimney-starter full of oak lump and 1 starter full of Kingsford briquets. Why? Because I wanted to try it.

Put well lit coals in WSM, and added a few hunks of mesquite and hickory wood. No H2O in pan. All vents at 100%.

Put turkey on. Closed lid. Checked in 1 hour, and put thermometer in place. It took about 2.5 hours total to get breast to around 165 to 170. Temp of meat came up slow at first, but came up pretty fast in the last 30 minutes. Legs were plenty done by then. Legs could have come off earlier, but they were still juicy even when breast was done.

WSM was close to or pegging the 350 thermometer on the 2009 lid during most of this time.

Rested turkey. Sliced. Delicious (!!) for breast and legs. Very moist, good smoke flavor, and tasty.


Daikon/Carrot Slaw Topping

Shredded carrot can be bought cheap at the store, or cut your own in matchstick size. Cut daikon in same size. I like about 2X as much daikon as carrot. Put both in a bowl and sprinkle with generous salt and sugar. Use your hands to stir the slaw for about 3 minutes, expelling water. Stop when you can bend a piece of daikon so that the ends touch but it does not break. The vegetables will have shrunk quite a bit in volume. Rinse under cold running water and drain (can use a colander, I just use fingers). Put on paper towel and press to remove extra water.

Make brine. Combine a mix of white sugar, white vinegar, and lukewarm water. Make enough to cover your slaw. Ratios are about 1 vinegar, 1 water, ½ sugar. Do to your taste. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Pour brine over the slaw to cover. Let slaw marinate at least 1 hour.


Building Sandwich

French baguette type bread; remove some bread from the center to make room for plenty of filling.

Mayo and some Sriracha sauce on the bread

Fill with cilantro, sliced cucumber, sliced jalapenos, smoked turkey, daikon/carrot slaw, drizzle more Sriracha to taste. Other options include sliced onions, green onions, soy sauce, and lime juice.
 
This sounds great.
Always interesting to see Asian flavors creeping into BBQ. BBQ seems like such an American thing, it's hard to swing it too far off that taste palette. I do a lot of southeast Asian cooking, but generally keep my barbecue separate, where I prefer to match it with southwest flavors -- Texmex, etc.
I do, however, have a Chinese tea-smoked duck recipe that I adapted to the WSM. It's killer!
Cheers,
Gary
 

 

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