TALKING
TURKEY
We here at Insight may be many
things, but we can’t be accused of
loving to cook. As you flip through
the magazine, you’re bound to notice that we eat out a lot, and know
our way around getting fed without touching a stove.
Even though holidays are a special time of year, they’re not special
enough to get us to head into the
kitchen. That’s right: Insight is eating
out for the holidays!
We stopped over at Smoke-N-Hot
BBQ for to watch co-founder Greg
Stay do the work for us as he explained his methods for making his
holiday best.
First, he takes two boneless turkey breasts that weigh about 1012 pounds. He puts them into the
smoker still wrapped in foil.
“At 12 pounds, this would have had
to come from one huge turkey,” said
Stay. The foil actually holds three dif-
14
ferent turkey breasts together, and
as they cook, they’ll meld into one
big hunk of meat. After about two
hours on the smoker, he can pull it
off and add seasoning.
Whole turkeys go in a little differently; first the insides come out, and
then Stay applies Smoke-N-Hot’s signature meat rub to the bird. Instead
of letting the turkey wings and legs
hang loose from the bird, or tying
them down with string, Stay bends
the wings back behind the turkey to
hold them in place, and actually cuts
tiny slits in the skin at the bottom of
the bird to tuck the end of the legs
through. Stay cooks it without a tray,
thanks to the size of the smoker in
the rig,
“If you let the wings and legs hang
off, they’ll burn and get dry,” Stay
said. The full turkeys weigh about
12-14 pounds, but Stay says he prefers boneless, even if the lack of
bones makes it technically weigh
November 2013
less. There’s nothing but easy-to-eat
meat with the boneless breast.
The turkey, both whole and boneless
breast, will cook for 12-14 hours before being pulled from the smoker,
ready to serve fresh.
“We cook today for tomorrow,” said
Stay.
Then comes the ham. Stay uses a
wheat mustard mixture with a variety of seasonings, applied to the
entire outside of the ham, which
weighs about 10 pounds and will
cook for 14 hours before being ready
to serve.
Though the process takes quite a
while from start to finish, Stay is
more than happy to devote smoker
space to cooking all day long if it
means serving his products exactly
the way he wants to.
“We cook it the way we want to eat
it,” he said.
INSIGHT