planning on smoking a turkey for Thanksgiving as sure many of us are. I'm still in the debate stage of how I'm going to do it such as the temp to cook,water pan or not, seasoning/prepping the bird etc. I'm leaning towards making a sage/butter mixture and packing it under the skin then rubbing the outside with olive oil and using some salt and heavy black pepper. I'll use some cherry wood if I can find some. I'm doing a 14 lb bird here and any advice on temps and/or water pan usage would be appreciated. It looks like outside temps will be in the mid 30's during my smoke time. I'm toying with the thought of cooking about 275* dome and thinking it should take 6-9 hrs.

You may want to brine it or inject it, but for brining you're gonna have to start pretty quick here.

All the info you're looking for re: specs is widely available on this site if you look around. Conventional wisdom says to use an empty water pan and run your weber as hot as you can get it, probably about 300 degrees...

thanks Dave, bird has been on smoker for about 2 hrs now and am using a water pan then a drip pan on bottom rack above the water pan and got it up running around 315* - prob. about 300 grate temp. My wife wanted some drippings! I loaded smoker w/ alot of lump but it stayed around 270* for awhile but then added a few handfuls of kingsford and temps picked up. Some people don't like K but I find it handy to have some around in your toobox of smoker accessories! It looks like I'm off to a good smoke- have some blue tint. I just hope rubbing sage butter and other seasoning under the skin will produce desired results! My wife looked at me like I was crazy when prepping the bird saying I watch too much food network!!!

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Originally posted by doug gillis:
Some people don't like K but I find it handy to have some around in your toobox of smoker accessories!

Kingsford is all I use in my WSM's and I couldn't be happier!

quote:

Originally posted by doug gillis:My wife looked at me like I was crazy when prepping the bird saying I watch too much food network!!!

My wife always looks at me like I'm crazy when I'm cooking but she's awful quiet STUFFING HER PIE HOLE with the finished product when it's time to eat!