I have a 20lb frozen turkey for Christmas dinner.I want to cook in WSM but afraid of cooking something that big. Do you have any suggestions?

No Sweat. I'd take her out of the freezer now and start thawing her in the fridge, Tuesday morning I'd throw her in some brine, air dry wed. night, ice the breasts while resting on the counter for 30 min., night and cook her up on X-mas. Piece of cake, did a 22 lb. same way on Thanksgiving, was killer!

Like Larry said, No problem! You will be the Turkey King of Christmas! Good luck and Merry Christmas!

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Originally posted by LarryR:
No Sweat. I'd take her out of the freezer now and start thawing her in the fridge, Tuesday morning I'd throw her in some brine, air dry wed. night, ice the breasts while resting on the counter for 30 min., night and cook her up on X-mas. Piece of cake, did a 22 lb. same way on Thanksgiving, was killer!

I have an 18 lb bird. It's enhanced, not natural. I want to ad some flavor to it. I know Chris's recipe recomends not to brine an enhanced bird. Was yours natural Larry?

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Originally posted by Steve Forwe:

quote:

Originally posted by LarryR:
No Sweat. I'd take her out of the freezer now and start thawing her in the fridge, Tuesday morning I'd throw her in some brine, air dry wed. night, ice the breasts while resting on the counter for 30 min., night and cook her up on X-mas. Piece of cake, did a 22 lb. same way on Thanksgiving, was killer!

I have an 18 lb bird. It's enhanced, not natural. I want to ad some flavor to it. I know Chris's recipe recomends not to brine an enhanced bird. Was yours natural Larry?

Steve most of the birds I've cooked lately are enhanced and I don't do a thing with them. No seasoning, no oil, just put them on the WSM as they are.

If you want to add flavor you can inject a marinade, just becareful you don't use a marinade high in salt since the birds already have a solution added to them which contains a bit of salt. You could also make a butter compound and smear that all underneath the skin along with fresh sage leaves.

Would it hurt to use the apple brine recipe and just remove the salt. The bird I have says its 6% enhanced. I went ahead and prepped the apple juice and brown sugar before I found out it was enhanced.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Forwe:
Would it hurt to use the apple brine recipe and just remove the salt. The bird I have says its 6% enhanced. I went ahead and prepped the apple juice and brown sugar before I found out it was enhanced.

Make the recipe as is. The problem with brining and enhanced bird, isn't necessarily that it will be overly salty, it is the meat can only absorb so much moisture/flavor. Since it is already pumped with additional liquid, it will absorb some but not all of the brine. In otherwords, the turkey will pick up some flavor of the brine, but not as much as it would if it were a natural unenhanced bird.

I see. I'll go ahead and brine it seeing how I already started the process. Thanks for your help Larry. Merry Christmas!!!