Front Sight, Press

I never have been a huge fan of turkey. I’m much more a t-bone steak kind of guy when it comes to special meals, but Thanksgiving isn’t “T-bone Steak Day” and my darling bride suggested that we smoke a turkey breast on the trusty Kingsford grill. I thought this sounded like an interesting experiment, having smoked everything else in the known universe on it, so we surfed the web for some cooking tips and got to it.

We bought a seven pound turkey breast and soaked it in a tarragon brine for several hours. We started the charcoal  fire at noon. Once the grill was heated up, we painted the turkey with cooking oil and put it in away from the fire. We put in a dish of water near the coals to make some steam and fed the fire some hickory chips. We calculated that the breast would need about seven hours, and I had to add fresh coals about every hour and a half to keep the temperature at about 280 degrees. After seven hours we used a temperature probe to determine that we had an internal temperature of 174 degrees.

At 7:30 we pulled the breast off of the grill and sliced it. I don’t mean to brag, but it made some of the best turkey I’ve ever eaten. We accessorized the turkey with Mom’s cornbread dressing, deviled eggs, green bean casserole, yams, and pumpkin pie. Quite a feast, and what they say about turkey and sleeping seems to be true. Overdosed as I was with L-tryptophan, I didn’t make it through the Colt’s game. The experts say that the turkey really doesn’t cause the drowsiness, but you could have fooled me. There was nothing left of the bird but bones.

Our Thanksgiving prayer looked something like a football huddle in the kitchen (we’d seen two games by that time). We linked arms at the shoulders and thanked God for doing a pretty doggone good job of taking care of us so far. It was a good day.