Smoking a turkey?

[Steven Arend]

I need to know how many minutes per pound do I cook a turkey in a Charcoal smoker?

[jpollman]

Steven,

here are the directions from my Big Chief electric smoker book.

When you can, get a 10-12 pound FRESH turkey. If you use a frozen one, it must be FULLY thawed before putting it into the smoker. When smoking whole, open bird up as much as you can to allow smoke flavor to circulate freely over entire body and through cavities. Smoke with Hickory for 2 hours or until 2 panfuls are exhausted.

Remove the turkey from the smoker and cook in your favorite way. If you desire more smoke flavor, simply increase smoking time and amount of flavor fuel used. Your turkey will accept a great deal of flavor but be careful not to dry it too much.

Reduce your cooking time by 10% for each hour in the smoker. (up to 40%) Do not use more than 4 panfuls of "Chips 'n Chunks) flavor fuel.

I don't believe that you can really completely COOK the turkey in the smoker. You just use it to flavor the bird and then cook it as you normally would but as the instructions state, you reduce the cooking time a bit because the bird is already PARTIALLY cooked during the smoking process. I have done turkeys and chickens this way and they were WONDERFUL !

Good luck !

[Steven Arend]

I like to cook the turkey on the grill over charcoal (12-14lb. bird takes around 5hrs.) So lets see if I have this straight. If I smoke the bird for 2hrs. can I just remove the flavor fuel and go with just charcoal and cook for another 3hrs?

[jpollman]

Steven,

Yeah I guess that would work. I don't see why it wouldn't. If you have already cooked a bird on the grill and it worked I'm sure that just adding some "flavor fuel" to the grill for the first couple of hours should do the trick.

Enjoy !

[Keith Sage]

I have two turkeys in my smoker on a cool smoke,,it will smoke at 150 for the next 6 hours then I will kick up the heat to 200 and keep the probe ready, I need to get the birds up to 185 checking to temp on the breast evey hour. I am using brine from HIGH MOUNTAIN,, they were in it for 24 hrs. should be ready at 1:00.(its 7:00 now they have been in the smoke since 11:00)

[Keith Sage]

Its after 1:30 and the turkeys are done..awsom! you wont like it.the stuff is no good" it even has a sweet apple taste..my wife tried this bad stuff and demanded that I hide it from her.

[Keith Sage]

My buddys claimed they chowed down,pigged out and orderd 5 turkeys for me to smoke..No leftovers.