The Merry Porksters: Smoked Turkey Breast

We ended up with an extra turkey over Thanksgiving - I don't remember the exact situation, but I think we had one larger one,(15 lbs) then decided based on the number of folks that we were hosting thought it better to do 2 smaller ones - something like that - Anyway, the result being, we had a very nice 15 pound Diestel Ranch organic turkey sitting in our freezer. It was too big for just me and Doris, so we decided to do a couple of different things with it. We have smoked breasts before, but we've never done the entire process of boning and prepping them - We now had the proper opportunity. click on the images to enlarge and get a good view of whats going on.

Here she is - I think its a she anyway. We did our typical brine regiment - For a 15 pound bird, it takes about 24-30 hours to brine.

The idea was to remove the breast meat intact. To do this, first the legs and wings come off. Sometimes its easier if you remove the wishbone first, but knowing where it is and that you have to deal with it is usually enough. Above is the result - Seemed to work just fine. We prepared the wings, legs & thighs for dinner - We made broth out of the carcuss.

We skinned the breast, and then seasoned the insides with a mix of crushed brown mustard, rosemary, garlic, sage, thyme and bay leaves.

This is where it got a bit interesting. We had some netting, but the breast wad wasn't cooperating. the netting seemed too small of a diameter, as we were having trouble getting it over the breast.We tried a couple of different approaches, and then Doris came up with this handy devise. A cup with the netting stretched over it. We essentially stuck the the breast in the cup, and just fed the netting over - This worked great - I tell yea, it was looking a bit grim there for a bit.