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This started out when I purchased a 20 lb turkey and put it in the freezer many months ago. I finally decided it was time to do something with it as it was taking up valuable room and coming up on 10 months or so. As my wife asked, what possessed me to buy a 20 lb turkey? I couldn't resist the price, which came to all of $11.60. Not wanting to spatchcock it or roast it whole, I looked into other methods of preparation. A few videos had me convinced it wouldn't be all that difficult turning this into a boneless turkey. I've never attempted doing so before, so I might as well give it a shot. De-boning took about 30 or 40 minutes, but the carcass and leg and thigh bones were out. I took the wings off completely. All the parts went into the stockpot and turned into turkey broth which is in the freezer. One floppy turkey, having lost its fight with my butcher knife - Got out the trusty needlenose pliers and removed all those tendons - The intent is to get all the meat somewhat uniform in thickness, so a few slices here and there and it's ready for seasoning. Seasoning was S&P and Plowboys Yardbird, inside and out. What to stuff it with? A Sausage and Bread Stuffing with some Spinach. Looks tasty already - Now for the fun part. Rolling and tying this beast. Somehow I managed - The Goldens' gets the call today. I put the searing plate in and got the temps stable between 375 - 425. And on it goes - I remembered I had a bag of cranberries in the freezer. You can't have a Turkey dinner without Cranberry Sauce. Since I started making my own, I'll never go back to the canned stuff. Cranberries getting happy - The Turkey Roll looking quite good out on the Goldens' - Done and resting - A slice through the white meat center - Rather than having roasted sweet potatoes I decided to make Baked Sweet Potato Fries. For something different other than steamed or roasted Green Beans, the Green Beans were sauteed with garlic and bacon. Plated. Nothing like a Thanksgiving Dinner on St Patrick's Day - What more could you ask for? Turkey, Stuffing, Cranberry Sauce, Green Beans w/ Garlic & Bacon and Sweet Potato Fries - A slice through the dark meat section of the roll - This was quite the challenge, but well worth it. Removing the bones of a whole turkey was something I'd never done before. But the results turned out excellent and it was nice simply being able to carve the turkey like you would a roast. Thanks for checking out this post and following along with today's Sunday Dinner preparation. Regards, -lunchman

I am no carpenter so I did not want to try anything to difficult. I am wanting functionality. I still need to do the bottom shelf, hanging hooks and a grab bar. Being an electrician I will also have to add some LED lighting

I just started building my table. I have to cut my hole and came up with this to cut my hole. I used composite decking for my table top ( I got it on clearance at Home Depot for 16.00 for all of it. Total I will have just under 100.00 into the project

Did as I said. The temp crept up to 275 and 290 a few times, but I was able to get it back down. In the end, it was perfect. The fat on it was like candy. It was great. Thanks to those who offered support.

I've tried a lot of sauces over the years and prefer to make my own sauce, but when I don't feel like making sauce or spending $8 on a "good" bottle of sauce, I've settled on Sweet Baby Ray's Hickory and Brown Sugar sauce as a quick fix. Yeah they use corn syrup and it's cheap, but when I ignore all that high-horse shenanigans and go by taste, it tastes pretty darn good. Anyone have a "cheap" sauce they want to share? I love trying different sauces and I ain't done yet!

Ran the Big Joe at 175c (350f) water pan, spritzed ever 20 min (ish) after the bark had set. No wrap until the rest. Total cook time was 5 hours. I usually run at 150c but wanted to test it at 175c. Bloody beautiful!!

Welcome to the forum. Keep working on temperature control and you will get it mastered. You will also learn that 280 will not spoil anything that you are trying to cook at 250.

I stumbled on bbq al pastor pork a while back and wanted to give it a try. I bought a 5lb pork butt, sliced it into 1/4” pieces, marinated for 5 hours. Put on a vertical spit with pineapple and smoked with a few cherry chunks I had at 260 degrees for 3 and a half hours. We had a few people over and there were no leftovers so I think it was a win. This was super easy and I’ll definitely be having this more, maybe tweaking the marinade. Looking forward to warmer weather and more bbq.

Enjoying a sunny weekend with my new meater thermometer and a spatchcock chicken. First with both and it was delicious!

Threw a couple of butts on the Timbo 850 today testing out some pitboss competition blend pellets today. Trying to use up a bottle of meat church honey bacon that I had. out & about all day, nice!

Those look delicious.

yeah, its a beauty, @bosco got one

That's a really good looking meal.

Made bacon for the second time , came out great. Bought a 10lb pork belly from Costco. Three different flavors : maple , Sriracha honey , finally Bookers Bourbon and maple . They were all delicious and had very distinct profiles. Basic 7 day dry cure , 24 hour drying to form a pellicle , and hickory smoke in the Joe at 225 degrees about 2 1/2 hours until bacon hit 150 degrees. The hand slicing was a pain , I'll be looking for a slicer soon. Once you do this , it will be hard to eat store bought bacon again.

Started on it Saturday afternoon and wrapped it up Sunday afternoon measures 58x33(wider that I had planned but I like it) All Cedar and stainless hardware Ill probably pick up a 16x16 tile of some sort for the top to set the grate on overall i think it turned out pretty good. learned a few things along the way too.

Sorry Chris, didn’t see your post and the grandkids pretty well ate ‘em up. That said, the recipe made a nice tasty waffle, but it didn’t have a hint of sourdough about it. I’m going to try again later this week and see if some more time will cure the problem. Right now, I’d say it’s a bust as far as sourdough taste is concerned.

Just did two that size. I suggest salting them the day before and then smoking until the bark is set (4 hours) and then braising for 4 hours and rest for two if you want crazy fork tender for pulled beef

My go to...…………………..

Mine is Open Pit! Scott

I also like Sweet Baby Rays. I'm from western NC and normally hand chop my pork butts, then sauce it with two parts SBR and one part apple cider vinegar, one part water, plenty of sea salt, and black pepper. Our church men's group did close to the same thing for years at their annual BBQ dinner, but used Cattleman's instead of SBR. Both are good, but I prefer the SBR. Cheers

We like Pig's ### BBQ sauce at our house, not too sweet, nice pepper notes.

While not necessary for the ribs to come out just fine, I do put something with the ribs. I usually put honey and some BBQ sauce on the foil and the put the ribs meat side down on the honey/sauce. Then place the ribs meat side down on the cooker, this essentially braises the ribs in the juices that come from the ribs mixed with the honey/bbq. Some people put apple juice and other stuff in there. I've also used squeeze butter after watching competition cooks do that, but not sure how much it adds. It's fun to experiment and find out what you like the best.

Really great looking cook. I'd like to try that one day. Maybe I should start by de-boning a chicken.

Awesome post lunchman, thanks for sharing.

The sponge at 6:42 this morning: Looks like it has doubled in size overnight. I ‘m going to make the batter at 8 am, so it will have had 11 hours to work.

Yeah, there were quite a few "what have I gotten myself into?" moments as I was preparing it. Also quite a few "I gotta get me a better set of knives" thoughts. It did force me to sharpen the ones I have this morning. It turned out as well as I expected and I'll probably tackle it again. But 20 pounds, down to whatever the final yield was (I should have weighed it) is still a lot of turkey. A few weeks ago Mrs lunchman came home with two more since they were marked down. Thankfully they're only 10 pounds or so. It'll be a while before I make turkey again. Sometimes I just find I need to challenge myself, whether it be in cooking or woodworking, and this was one of those times. I'd recommend that folks give this or a boneless chicken a try. The results can be quite good. -Dom

No saw it and thought I would mention since most of us have a home depot close. And saw that was the same price on bbqguys too! Scott

Can't type, mouth watering all over the keyboard! Great job.

... or prescription meds to cure them

That's a beautiful thing!

I almost always cook St Louis style, this is how I cook them so they turn out just how I like them: clean pull off the bone with just a little chew. Akorn temp at 275 (measured at the grate) Smoke for 3 hours Wrap for 45 minutes Unwrap and back on for another 20-45 minutes Fort the last 20-45 minutes I like the temp 320+ as I like it to caramelize the ribs a bit. How long they stay after unwrapping depends on how done they are already, how much time I left before dinner, how hot the cooker is, etc.

This is beautiful bbq!

I live in Rochester NY, I use my Akorn 2-3 times per week all winter long. Place at garage door enjoy the 10 degree weather with a beer!

Added some flair!