First turkey on WSM.


 

Dalton Breaux

New member
I should first start off by saying that I'm a relatively new Bullet owner, but have been successfully cooking on an offset horizontal for about 15 years. I say successfully as I've cooked for wedding receptions, grand openings, ran a flea market concession, and even been paid to provide bbq for this city's No 1 car dealership on weekends. I've done two pork butts, one brisket, and two chicken quarter cooks on the WSM and realized quickly that I needed to unlearn some old habits, but unlike an old dog I'm always ready to learn a new trick.

I followed the self basting turkey instructions on this web site to the letter for a 12.5 lb bird but had two problems. First, my Maverick told me that my grill temp never got above 288 degrees and just shy of the 2 hour mark it started slowly dropping. At 2.5 hours, the grill temp was down to 235 and temp in the breast was 130. i dumped in a second chimney full of lit briquettes and the temp spiked at 320. After another hour and a half the breast read 168 and I pulled the bird off. I didn't inject or brine but wish I had. The drumsticks were extremely dry and the white meat felt dry shortly after slicing, although juice flowed from them during slicing. All that being said the meat had a wonderful taste and thanks to the WSM I achieved that with only 2 small chunks of apple wood and one of cherry. On my offset I'd use several split logs of oak to achieve the same taste. Any idea what might have gone wrong? I'm in Central Texas and ambient temperature was above 70 the entire time.

I would have attached a pic of the bird if I could figure out how.
 
I also just purchased my 18.5 WSM this year. I have cooked ribs a few times, full chicken and 2 pork shoulders.

This was my first smoked turkey. I went with lump charcoal minon method, and 1 full chimney of lit lump charcoal on top. Temp always stayed 300-325 the entire cook. Ambient temp was 50 degrees. My top vent was fully open, my DigiQ WIFI controller. I opened the side vents slightly to supplement the controller.

I went with lump charcoal over kingsford because I have had better luck getter it hotter with lump.
 
I'm using a 22.5 and have read some comments that the larger grill is harder to get to higher temps. One other factor may have been that I placed a medium sized disposable foil pan on the lower rack to catch juices. I read somewhere else on the forum that that pan along with the empty water pan may have held down the heat but that seems implausible to me. I did note that neither the foil pan or the wrapped water pan had any juice in them to speak of. FYI, I left all vents completely open for the entire cook.

For Christmas I'll use the minion method and go with lump instead of briquettes.
 
I used the normal water pan as my gravy pan. I had 3 quarts of white wine and veggies in there.

I didn't add any charcoal for the 3 hr cook. See my other thread.
 

 

Back
Top