TurkeyFest Part 2: Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

Before we start, I suggest you read Part 1 where I explain the origins of TurkeyFest.  It's going to be a minute before I talk about food and I don't want you to get lost without the back story. 

I met Russell in college when I was a sophomore (that's him on the left and me on the right, being oddly charming in the presence of girls circa 1999).  He lived down the hall from me and we piqued each other's interest with our off-beat tastes in music (I was getting into indie rock and weird breakbeat techno, he was all about power pop and being "down with the clown.")  One night early on in our friendship, we were talking about where we grew up.  It went something like this:

Me: I moved to Toledo when I was in the 6th grade.
Russ: I grew up there.  What part?
Me: Well, I guess it wasn't really Toledo that we moved to.  It was Sylvania, really.
Russ: Yeah, uh, me too.  Where in Sylvania?
Me: Well, I guess it wasn't really Sylvania proper so much as it was Sylvania Township.
Russ: Um, whoa.  Me too.  Where did you live?
Me: Off of Whiteford Road.
Russ: No.  Fuck you.  What street?
Me: Janet Avenue.
Russ: <runs away screaming like a dude in a David Blaine special>

We lived across the street from each other.  Not at the same time, mind you, but we both played baseball with the neighborhood kids in the vacant lot next to his house, we both knew about the dirt-bike track back in the woods off State Line Road and we both knew that the guy who lived on the corner was a pederast.  After that revelation, Russell and I developed a special bond and a friendship that has endured through tragedy and triumph.

In 2005, Russell asked me if I'd come to work for his family's business, a little apparel and merchandise shop out in Versailles, Ohio where his family had moved to just before he started high school.  They were looking to expand their sales in the political market to follow up on the mild success they'd had catering to labor unions.  I was delivering for a pizza shop at the time and thought it seemed like the adult decision to make, even if I was actually taking a pay cut to do it.  A few years later, we were the primary manufacturers and fulfillment house for the Barack Obama campaign.  Things were going well, to say the least.

Russell met Elissa and got married in 2009 (that's me presiding over their ceremony, reading the script from a Blackberry).  They're perfect for each other in that they're not afraid to dream and they're not afraid to take a risk in support of those dreams so long as they have each other.  Elissa moved to Chicago last year to pursue a career in comedy: studying, writing and performing at Second City among other hilarious things.  Russell stayed in Ohio, balancing his obligations between his wife and his business by logging entirely too many miles on Interstates 70 and 65.  The business, which had been booming in 2008 was hit hard by the recession and limped along for years.  As part of a company restructuring, Russell made his exit and started packing for Chicago to be with Elissa again.

Those final developments happened just as I was making plans for this year's TurkeyFest.  I called Russ to ask him when he was leaving.  He said it would be around December 1st.  I asked if we should have TurkeyFest this year; given all of the drama this fall, I wouldn't have held it against him if he just wanted to bolt out of town as soon as he could.  "I'll stay for TurkeyFest," he said.  It seemed a fitting last hurrah for Russell in Columbus, an appropriate celebration of the changing face of OxFam, but this joyous yearly tradition was taking on a somber tone.

I knew this was going to be a pretty big event - TurkeyFest usually reels in about 20 people over the course of the day - so I talked to my buddy Ryan who owns the Tree Bar here in Columbus about renting the bar out to accommodate the larger-than-normal crowd.  I'll take this opportunity to plug the Tree Bar: one of my favorite places to drink and watch rock shows also happens to be an excellent place to throw a private party on a Sunday night.  Thanks Ryan...

ASIDE: Yeah, this happened a while ago and you may not find these descriptions of turkey preparation helpful for quite some time, but if you're looking for some interesting ways to prepare a Christmas bird, maybe these will give you some ideas.  SPOILER ALERT: all three of my turkeys turned out great, and I honestly don't know if I could pick a favorite.

I had 3 birds: a 13 pounder, a 14.5 pounder and a mammoth 19.5 pounder.  I don't usually like to cook big birds like that because they take forever and have a tendency to dry out.  More on my plan to combat that in a second.  This year's theme was "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em."  Since I had such good luck with smoke in the summer, I decided to introduce a smoke element to every bird. The 19.5 pounder would get slow cooked in the smoker, the 14.5 pounder would be soaked in a smoked beer brine and grilled, and the 13 pounder would be the old tried-and-true "spicy turkey" but with chipotle peppers instead of sport peppers.

On Friday night (two days before the party), I pulled out the big bird and made a simple brine (standard  gallon of water, 1 cup kosher salt and 1/2 cup brown sugar, plus some garlic and Worcestershire sauce for flavor).  I ended up disassembling the turkey before brining: first I detached the drum sticks and wings, then I cracked the backbone to separate the breast from the thighs.  If I had kept the bird whole, it would've taken forever to cook in the smoker.  This way, I cut the cooking time considerably and fended off any drying out by brining and making all the pieces smaller.

On Saturday morning, I spatchcocked the 14.5 pound bird, cutting out the backbone, breaking the breast plate and removing the keel bone before laying it flat.  I made a brine with two smoked beers - 2 pints of Aecht Schlenkerla Marzen (a heavily smoked lager beer from Germany) and 3 pints of Dark Horse Fore smoked stout (part of the Dark Horse brewery's winter stout series) - plus a little apple cider and vegetable stock.  That bird sat in the brine for about 24 hours.

 
I had never spatchcocked any bird before.  It seems involved, but it really does cut the cooking time down and isn't nearly as hard as it sounds.  This method would also come in really handy later on, as I was scrambling to get everything done.  More on that in a bit.

Later that morning, I made a chipotle brine for the 13 pound turkey with a whole can of chipotle peppers, cumin, oregano and paprika.  That bird also sat in the brine for about 24 hours.

Saturday night, I took out a few handfuls of oak wood chunks and put them in a pan, then emptied a bottle of Old Crow whiskey so they could soak it up.  My hope was that I would get the same effect as using oak from old bourbon barrels.  I have two old bourbon barrels in my basement, but Erin won't let me chop them up into homemade smoker chunks.

Sunday morning, I started the smoker up around 9 o'clock and put my bird pieces on over the bourbon-soaked wood chunks about an hour later.  It took me a while (and the addition of a lot more hot coals) before I finally got the smoker temperature up to where I wanted it, but the oak smoke kept hitting the meat, so I was OK with it even though I knew I was going to have a timing problem at the end of the day.

I decided to do the spicy turkey ASAP so I could clear up room in the oven for the smoker bird, if it came to that.  Here's how it works: first you season two sticks of butter with salt and cayenne pepper.  If I had been thinking clearly, I would've used the ground chipotle pepper I have in the pantry.  Hindsight 20/20 on that one, I suppose.

The butter slabs go in the freezer while the rest of the turkey is prepped.  Having them cold makes them a lot easier to work with later.  Next we whip up a stuffing mixture of onion, bell pepper, chipotle peppers, garlic, salt, cayenne pepper and white vinegar.  Gotta mince this all really fine, because you'll want it that way when you realize how you're going to cram it in the turkey.

Here comes the fun part: grab a small, sharp paring knife and start cutting slits in the breast meat from inside the cavity.  You're gonna be like, "whoa, whoa, whoa, isn't all the juice just going to run out of my turkey that way?"  No way, dude.  Remember all that butter in your freezer?  When you stuff those (and your pepper stuffing) into those slits, the butter is going to baste the meat as it melts.  Plus it doesn't hurt that you brined it, because you're really smart. (BTW, I promise the next picture is not weird porn.)

After you're done stuffing all those slits in the breast meat (and hell, why not flavor up the thighs, legs and wings too, if you're feeling so bold), throw any leftover stuffing into the cavity and truss your bird closed.  If you've never trussed a turkey, chicken or other poultry, I highly recommend it.  Not only does it cut down on cooking time since you're making a nice uniform roast out of a gangly bird, but the finished product is Norman Rockwell-quality and perfect for "oohs" and "ahhs" before carving at the table.  It's also relatively easy to do, plus you get to learn a new knot.

Season the outside of the bird with salt and cayenne pepper (again, for this variation I should've used ground chipotle pepper).  Start the bird breast side down: you want to protect the delicate breast meat from the high initial heat.  Roast it at 450 for 20 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350.  90 minutes into the process, flip the turkey over so the breast side is up.  If it looks pale, don't worry: it's got 90 minutes to brown up.  After 3 hours, the turkey should be up to a safe temperature (165 in the breast) and should look and smell amazing.  This is a show-stopping crowd pleaser, ladies and gents.

I fired up my Weber kettle grill with charcoal and had the spatchcocked bird on by 1 o'clock.  The primary advantage to spatchcocking is that it speeds up the cooking process, but I was having trouble with keeping my grill hot too.  I made a "ring of fire" around the outside of the grill to indirect cook the bird and keep the temperature uniform, but I don't think I had enough coals to start, so when I put the lid on the fire just petered out.

When the spicy bird was out (about 3 o'clock), I temp checked the smoker bird and the spatchcocked bird.  They were both around 130-140 in the breast, so despite my fire troubles, I was most of the way there.  I transferred both turkeys to the 350 degree oven (spatchcocking a bird meant it could lie flat on the bottom rack while the smoked bird stood tall on the middle rack; plenty of oven space) and let them cook in there until they got to safe temp.  The oven finish also crisped up the skin in a very nice way.

While those birds were in the oven, I set a 12 oz. package of cranberries in foil on the smoker for about an hour and a half, then attempted to make a BBQ sauce with them but I couldn't get the texture right.  I adjusted the flavor to something that was acceptable and decided not to call it BBQ sauce anymore.  I also made a vegetarian apple cider gravy: starting with a standard roux base, I added apple cider and vegetable stock at about a 5:1 ratio, plus some onion powder and ground ginger.

Everything was done by 4 o'clock except the smoked turkey thigh meat which took another 25 minutes or so.  I had to rest everything before carving, and I was pushing up against my deadline (party was starting at 5), but we got out the door by 5:10 with three turkeys in tow and ended up being only fashionably late to the party instead of tragically late.

Not to brag or anything, but all three of my turkeys were juicy and fork tender in addition to be remarkably flavorful.  I think my only stumble is that the spicy turkey wasn't bursting with that smoky chipotle flavor that I was going for; I should've used more chipotles in the stuffing and replaced the cayenne with ground chipotle pepper.  The spatchcocked bird had an almost decadent richness to it from the deep, complex maltiness of the smoked stout brine.  The smoked turkey appeared to steal the show, though.  Wood smoke is a tough element to get right: too little and it's not worth the effort, too much and it can mask the meat with undesirable bitterness.  I got just the right amount of smoke flavor in the bird and it was gobbled up (bad pun, sorry) in no time.

Actually, we had about 30 people and within an hour of opening the buffet line, all the carved white meat and most of the dark meat on all three turkeys was gone.  All that was left were legs and wings.  I was actually kind of disappointed that there were two renaissance fair-quality smoked turkey legs sitting in the buffet warmer at the end of the night.  I quickly got over that when I accepted the reality that I would get to eat those.

Surprise of the night: the cranberry sauce that I was not particularly fond of ended up being the hit of the party.  Just goes to prove that sometimes you get rewarded just for showing up.  It's a lot like friendship: even when you don't think what you're doing is earth-shattering, you never know what it's going to mean to a friend.  That's what I'm going to miss most with Russell not being in my neighborhood anymore.  Dude always showed up, I just don't know if I ever let him know how much it meant to me.

Home for the holidays

My big, Italian family isn't really that big and we're getting less and less Italian with each generation.  My grandma Rose is a first generation Italian-American - that is to say her parents took a boat ride - and one of seven siblings (or six, maybe even eight; the history gets lost in translation).  Once welcomed to the melting pot, a lot of them ended up marrying Protestants (or worse yet, Irish) but never lost the Catholic knack for pumping out babies.  In fact, my grandma's three kids made for a relatively sparse group compared to the crowded houses her sisters were in charge of.

Still Rose's kids were fruitful and multiplied - my mother's only son, despite being happily married, stubbornly refuses to grace her with a grandchild - and their kids were fruitful and multiplied (and they're not done yet).  Plus, we've picked up some new family through re-marriage, that most American of traditions.  Thanksgiving, for the family of the matriarchal Rose, has the potential to be a gathering of over 40 people.

A few years ago, I stumbled onto this Emeril Lagasse recipe for a pepper-stuffed turkey, tried it at home to tremendous results and ignited my culinary flame.  It was too late to volunteer to make turkey for my family's Thanksgiving celebration, but I was told that I could bring it for Christmas to serve alongside the ham and stuffed pork roast.  From the moment I set it out, it took 15 minutes for my family to pick the bird clean down to the carcass.  We've been serving that turkey at Thanksgiving ever since.

My mom hosts Thanksgiving now since she and my step-dad moved into a house big enough to accommodate the Italian army and feeding everyone is no small task.  It's officially a "pot luck," but Mom makes most of the basics herself: turkey (usually 2 or 3 birds), gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, scalloped corn, green bean casserole, dinner rolls and a bunch of finger foods.  I've offered to help every year and despite some prideful refusals in the early going, the "Sue & Justin Show" has become an annual tradition that I really look forward to.  We work together really well in the kitchen, if only because my bass-y voice is more formidable to hungry intruders and I have no moral qualms over threatening would-be turkey pickers with a knife.

To my surprise, Mom did most of the cooking ahead of time this year.  I was left with only a few tasks: "day-of" turkey preparation (to fill the house with that unmistakable Thanksgiving aroma), preparing my sides (maple-roasted brussels sprouts and an appetizer bratwurst dip), and warming all the previously prepared food for dinner service.  I won't bore you with tales of what an effective kitchen manager I am (résumé available by request), but I will share some pictures and quick recipes from my favorite gluttonous holiday.

This is bratwurst dip with some sliced toasted baguette.  I'd share the exact recipe with you, but I'm convinced that this will get me on the Food Network someday, so all you get is an ingredient list.  It starts with browning homemade bulk bratwurst, then adding caramelized onions, garlic, whole grain mustard to the pan with some beer.  Once that reduces, mix in cream cheese and you're all done.  You get a rich and complex dip with hints of sweetness from the onions and  bitterness from the mustard and beer to complement the savory punch of bratwurst and garlic.  Killer.  No, seriously, this might give you a heart attack.

My step-dad is a native Russian and this year he invited some of his family to break bread with ours at Thanksgiving.  In part to impress his relatives but also to share his culture with ours, he put out a small spread of delicacies and comfort foods.  On top, those are sardines on top of marble rye toast.  Those would later get a dusting of grated cheese before being warmed in the oven.  In the middle are black and red caviar spread on baguette.  The bottom is an assortment of pickled cabbage, garlic cloves, gherkins and tomatoes, all of which had been ripened to pungent perfection for months in the fridge, a testament to my mother's tolerance and patience.  (I should note, in case my step-dad reads this, that I really liked all of these dishes and that he should keep making this stuff and offering it to me whenever I visit, no matter what Mom says.)

The brussels sprout got a bad reputation for a long time (I remember them as disgusting, bitter, little cabbages when I was a kid), but have attacked the culinary world with a vengeance of late.  I gave these a coating of equal parts olive oil and maple syrup with salt, pepper and white balsamic vinegar (to taste) before I roasted them in the oven.  I was a little disappointed that I didn't get a better color out of these, but I had to hide them under the turkey in the crowded oven so they never got a chance to brown up.  Delicious nonetheless and I even had to give out the recipe to a few people who had never experienced a brussels sprout they could stomach before.

I should probably elaborate on the pepper-stuffed turkey in case you didn't click through to the recipe above.  That's not a traditional stuffing packed into the cavity: you actually cut into the meat and jam a mixture of bell peppers, hot peppers, onions and garlic into the muscle itself (along with a couple sticks of seasoned butter that bastes the meat as it cooks).  The result is a spicy, richly flavored bird that maintains moist tenderness even without being brined.  No, the real result is the mostly empty plate pictured at the bottom.

The rest of the spread was literally too big to fit in the frame without knocking out a wall behind me.  That's three turkeys, for real.  Two spicy and one traditional.  Despite all these strongly flavored dishes, there are still a few people in our family who weren't blessed with an iron-clad constitution.

My wife loves this pile of banana bread on the dessert table, but has to physically restrain herself from eating any more.  Watch out for that knife, sweetie pie.  Oh, and that pie.  Watch out for that too.

Now that my long-winded retelling of the epic tale of Thanksgiving is over, what's your favorite food from your family's holiday banquet?

Holiday negligence

Hope everybody had a happy Thanksgiving yesterday.  I didn't post anything about making turkey or T-giving sides because I didn't make any.  The wife and I went to the in-laws' Thanksgiving dinner and I haven't been in the family long enough to do anything besides plate some butternut squash soup (which I garnished with croutons and smoked paprika, as instructed).  Besides, most of my efforts were diverted toward entertaining my 3-year old nephew, who is going to grow up to be some kind of evil warlord.

Heading up to my mom's house for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner/Ohio State-Michigan gorgefest.  My family has grown quite a bit in the past few years with cousins getting married and having kids, so I've been helping Mom out since she usually ends up feeding around 30-40 people now.  I know there are going to be at least two turkeys, possibly three, and probably around 10 sides not counting what other people bring (it's a host-heavy potluck).  In addition to helping with Mom's sides, I'm making brussels sprouts roasted with maple syrup and white balsamic vinegar as well as a bratwurst & cream cheese dip.  I'll do my best to snap a couple photos and issue a full report.

Then, a week later, I'm doing my annual TurkeyFest party, basically a "friends Thanksgiving."  I usually try to do them before actual Thanksgiving (so people won't be tired of turkey by the time my party rolls around), but this year I had to set the date for the weekend after Thanksgiving.  I'm cooking three turkeys with a common smoke theme: one cooked in the smoker over bourbon-soaked oak chips, one brined in smoked stout, then spatchcocked and grilled, and one traditionally oven-roasted but infused with chipotle peppers.  That adventure will be well-documented, I assure you.