Re: [CH] "Smoking marinade"
Michael W. Jones (marmot2@ibm.net)
Thu, 27 May 1999 22:23:36 -0400
If you have a smoker with a water basin, you can marinade it while you
smoke. Put beer, wine and/or sprigs of spices in the water. The best tasting
poultry that I have smoked wasn't exactly marinated. I glazed the skin with
hot sauces, nutmeg syrup and jelly.
I raise my own chickens, turkeys and geese. Once when I was first starting
out, I bought too many of these commercial type meat chickens. I think they
are a Cornish rock hybrid. They were the ugliest bird you ever saw. We
called them feathered lizards. They were suppose to mature in 6 to 8 weeks.
We got 50 chicks. What we didn't know is that they were engineered not to
fly or really even walk, just eat. I did not know it at the time but you
were supposed to remove the feed after 9p.m. at night to stop them from
eating too much. Well, suddenly at 8 weeks we had to kill and dress them all
to prevent them from dying of heart disease or going lame. The largest
rooster weighed 7 pounds.
Well if your never killed, plucked and dress a chicken, let me assure you it
is long hard work. It takes about 60 to 90 minutes to do each bird right.
Then you have a couple of hours of cleanup to do. After a couple of
exhausting weekends of putting up chickens, I was looking for shortcuts.
Well I tore the skin on one bird I was plucking so I decided to try skinning
it like a rabbit. It was much easier than plucking.
I now had a problem. The skin protects the meat from drying out when you
cook it. Then I hit on the Idea of making an artificial skin of hot sauces.
I first used Barbados Jack which is a thick yellow habanero sauce to coat
the bird. I put the bird on a vertical roaster and put in a Brinkman smoker.
While it was cooking I brushed more Barbados Jack on the skin. It formed a
hard shell on the bird, trapping in the juices and flavoring the meat. It
was truly delicious.
Another time I skinned a goose and coated the skin with jalapeno jelly.
Smoked it and what a great taste. It was very low in fat for a goose because
most of the fat is in the skin.
When I smoke a turkey, I leave the skin on but loosened it all the way
around with a wooden spoon. I then inserted chopped garlic, chiles and other
spices under the skin and closed the openings with skewers and twine. It was
also delicious.
Marmot
-----Original Message-----
From: David Hammond <David_Hammond@huron-city.k12.oh.us>
To: chile-heads@globalgarden.com <chile-heads@globalgarden.com>
Date: Thursday, May 20, 1999 2:47 PM
Subject: [CH] "Smoking marinade"
>Anyone have a favorite marinade recipe to use before smoking chickens or a
>turkey. (I'm ready for all the double entente jokes!). Of course a
>little heat is a prerequisite.
>Thanks in advance!
>
>David
>
>