A few weeks ago, I made a roasted tomatillo salsa (the whole salsa was roasted, not just the tomatillos). Since I had to make a trip through the produce department, I grabbed two onions and two red peppers. I put the red pepper on the grill with the rest of the veggies for the salsa, and threw the onions in a pan to caramelize them. Always good to have roasted reds and caramelized onions on hand, right?
Searching for something to do with them, my wife mentioned that she had a hankering (my words, not hers) for a turkey sandwich with smoked gouda and roasted red peppers. I'm not the kind of guy to pair good cheese, fresh ingredients and good bread with deli counter lunch meat, so I wanted to prepare my own turkey. I am also working on my smoking chops, as is everyone else these days. I have successfully smoked a couple of chicken breasts on our grill, but I wanted to step up my game. The results were...encouraging.
I read several recipes online that involved complicated brines. Unfortunately I do not have the patience or the cold space to store the turkey in a brine. Besides, I looked at the bag, and saw that it was packed in a solution of salt, sugar and water. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's a brine, right? Besides, I was more concerned with smoking it properly than I was with getting the world's best finished product. You learn to play an instrument with etudes, not with the masterworks, you know what I mean?
I want to get a smoker for our back porch eventually, but what good is a smoker if you don't really know how to use it, right? I wanted to try my hand at some smaller smoking projects before I stepped into the real world. Currently, we have your standard three-burner propane grill. But isn't a smoker just wood chips (chunks, logs) fired by some heat source to produce a flavorful smoke that permeates and flavors the meat you are smoking? As I found out, a propane grill might be the perfect smoking tool for the non-expert.
To provide the smoke, I bought a bag of chips from the supermarket (hey, non-expert here), and used a couple of disposable aluminum loaf pans to hold them, with perforated heavy duty foil as a lid. Below is an after picture, because I didn't think to take photos during. Didn't expect it to become a post, you know.
I put the turkey in a cast iron pan on one side of the grill, and I took the grate off the other side. I only lit the indirect burner and put it on low. Once I had figured out where my knob needed to be to maintain 250 degrees, I put these boxes of chips directly on the burner cover. The first two were there for about an hour before they were all burned up, and the second two covered the second hour. With the lid closed, it was almost like I had a real smoker.
The end result was a turkey that was obviously smoked, but maybe not thoroughly smoked. If I were to do something that big again, I would probably want a real smoker with a wood fire box on the side. I wouldn't want to waste the propane that a three or four hour smoking session would require (or even longer for a brisket). I know propane-powered smokers exist, but I am a purist.
The resulting sandwich was as follows:
Smoked turkey, (not smoked) gouda, spinach, roasted red peppers, caramelized onions and mayo on a whole wheat roll. No pictures - they were gobbled up much too quickly to have gotten a photo first.
As I mentioned earlier, for someone who wants to smoke meat but doesn't have the chops or the cash to invest in a true smoker, the regular old propane grill is definitely the way to go. The heat source is VERY easily controllable, which is a must when smoking. Less than 200 and you will probably have a hard time burning the wood, and above about 275 you are roasting, not smoking. Electric smokers exist, but they are uni-taskers. Wood-fired smokers usually have a place to put coals if you want to grill instead, and guess what - my propane grill is a grill if you want to grill instead, too. An electric smoker can only smoke. Only running one burner just a tick above low, my propane tank, which had been used quite a bit before yesterday, is still kicking. I dare say I have found a new hobby.
