How do you cook your Turkey?

batchaps4me said:
Another good starter is drunk(or beer can) chickens.
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As a cook showed me once, beer can chicken is actually bad for the meat. This sounds odd but hear me out.

alcohol converts to gas at a lower point than water does. In smoking you tend to use lower temps than in roasting. So what you are actually doing is infusing beer flavored dry air into your poultry. Which is no bueno.
 
Irishblooded said:
As a cook showed me once, beer can chicken is actually bad for the meat. This sounds odd but hear me out.
alcohol converts to gas at a lower point than water does. In smoking you tend to use lower temps than in roasting. So what you are actually doing is infusing beer flavored dry air into your poultry. Which is no bueno.
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I accept that you are more learned and accomplished on cooking meats and I am going to do a little research and hopefully learn something. Don't get me wrong, I am assuming you are right am and interested in why I stayed wrong for a long period of time. My belief coming into this is that you are spot on about what you say other than "dry air". My assumption being that there was enough moisture carryover from the water in the beer to keep the meat moist @ 250F. My anecdotal evidence was that my birds always came out moist but that could be as a result of marinade/injections/mopping. Thanks for the tip!
 
ALADAMYA said:
Quit trying to carve the turkey...learn how to dissect instead...


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If you spathcock it, carving is cake everything is right there in front of you. However I am fan of Alton Brown's way of carving if you leave it whole.



The one thing I would add here is that this is a very cold bird. And it is a ton easier to carve it that way. But it is no bueno for eating day.
 
if you have never brined your bird, you are missing out. y'all that said you brine it know what i am talking about. Alton Brown's brine and cooking instructions turn out a great bird.

besides the full bird, i usually honey brine and smoke 5-6 breasts. i give 4 of them as gifts.
 
@Irishblooded thanks again for the tip and you are definitely correct. A couple of things I learned are that if you are using temps of 325F, the beer will only reach 160F and over the cooking time will evaporate about 3 tablespoons of liquid. It is a great method if you like chicken medium rare. IF you cook the beer can chicken to proper temp, it will be slightly drier than without it. The other major thing I found was that the cavity membrane will not allow any sort of absorption/osmosis unless it is in direct contact with liquid. All the beer can accomplishes is to block warm air/smoke from the cavity. You can cook a great tasting and moist beer can chicken but that would be in spite of the beer can, not because of it. Thanks again!
 
I will say if you want a great tasting option. Use a white wine with chicken stock instead of beer. Trust me. 10x better than beer.
 
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