Join Dale and Cheryl as they smoke a turkey breast!
WBCA Podcasts
Cooking In The Dark
Sit back and enjoy this best of cooking in the dark. Welcome to "Cooking in the Dark." [DING] The kitchen. I will go to the kitchen. And although some recipes I cannot breathe, still I'm sure I can't do everything I need. This show cooking in the dark, it is the key. [MUSIC PLAYING] He's a mighty, talkative Texan. You know, Cheryl should tell himself. I know Dale Campbell would like to welcome you to the show. "Cooking in the Dark" is a presentation of "Blind My Smegum All." That www.BlindMySmegumAll.com. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to "Cooking in the Dark." I'm Cheryl Cummings, and I'm going to introduce to you the man who produced us every week that you don't need sight to cook dinner tonight, Dale Campbell. [APPLAUSE] All right, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome back. Welcome back. Sorry about our little hiatus there. We were down and out. Cheryl had a little medical thing going on. I had a little medical issue going on, so we were on the medical leave. [LAUGHTER] We're all back. It's all better. We're good, we're good. Yeah, thank you for your well wishes and your cards. And I didn't get any money from anybody, but I'm still holding out. You're such an optimist. New, yes, every year, every year. You put out the request. I don't know. Nothing, nothing. That's right. My birthday's coming up, so I'm waiting. I know, I know. After hearing and using the microwave here at the studio, it's ultimate. I love it just because my microwave at home takes about twice as long. The first time we were messing with it, an egg at home on my microwave at home takes about a minute and 15 seconds to cook in the microwave, which gives me plenty of time, about a minute and a half, I guess, to toast some bread, get it buttered, put a piece of cheese on that, and then my egg comes out, slide that on top, and I've got an egg sandwich in two minutes. So what do you think? What's your first impression? I love it. It's smaller than the microwave we had, but the fundamental and the most important thing is that I can do all of the controls. Yes, I mean, it's 1.1 cubic feet back when I was in college 25 years ago. Well, who rely on let me think here? Yeah, 20, 30, maybe 35 years ago. No, 25. Yeah, 25 works. Yeah, 25 to 35. I was on the eight year plan, but the microwaves were huge. The cabinets were huge. The cook space was only 1.4 cubic feet, but the microwaves were probably twice the size, so it's not that large as far as cabinet space, so it doesn't take up a lot of cabinet space, but it is such a powerful little unit. Yeah, and I mean, as I said, it's just amazing because to be able to set the levels, do you want high, low, moderate, and to be able to actually fine tune the time, say specifically how many minutes, how many seconds I want things to cook. I mean, I was just like, definitely somebody who needed a little dopes left for taking so long. Or I, to be able to know that, okay, like when you cook rice, you know, rice you need to cook for about five and a half, six minutes on high, and then for about another 15 minutes on 50% power, defrost is 30% power, no, low is 50%. Medium is 70, and high is 100%. 100% right. So that's how it breaks down, but also has a timer on it, you know, a kitchen timer, so if you're, you know, baking something, you can set the timer on your microwave. I think it has a clock. Yes, it does have a clock, and you can go press a button and it'll tell you how much time's left, you know, which is just fabulous, but it's great. I mean, I was like, wow, I'm trying to find excuses to come to the studio to cook dinner and set a cooking dinner at home. (laughing) - Well, it has certainly taken a lot of sort of guesswork out of cooking stuff in a microwave. - Right, right, sure has, it sure has. That's a great little unit, but here it is, Thanksgiving is not very far away. So, as always on cooking in the dark, we always do some Thanksgiving shows. We're gonna be doing that because Thanksgiving's early this year, you know, it's early. It's the 22nd, 23rd or something like that. - Wow. - Let me think here, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, fifth, 22nd, it's the 22nd this year. So it's real early, but you know, it's crazy. We went to the grocery store, and I was looking for the cornbread stuffing mix so I could make my stuffing, and they didn't have it. And they were like, we'll get it in a couple more weeks for Thanksgiving. I go, well, what about people that want stuffing besides? Come on, man, backup, backup. But anyway, so I was pretty discouraged about that. That was kind of crazy. But on today's show, we're going to talk about a turkey breast, doing a turkey breast, you know? And we're gonna smoke it too. I love smoked turkey breast. So we're gonna be doing it in our smoker. So easy to use, you can even set the temperature right. You want it 225, set the temperature to 225 degrees. You know what the temperature is, you know? I mean, I've got a big old bag of pecan wood. I've got some cherry, I've got apple wood. - Nice. - They'll ask me all season, you know? So anyway, that's what it is. But November is here, and so is my birthday. Thanksgiving, then here comes the holidays. Time to put on those extra pounds. - Oh, don't even go there. - It is, man, it is. Now you were talking about getting a gym membership and getting started early, so get to it. - Yeah, that's the plan. - Thing with getting that membership is, man, it's hard to use. The gift that never gets used. - I know, I mean, you start off with the best intentions. I'm going, I'm going, and you go because you just saw the bill and you're like, I'm there, and then, you know, for us, it'll be like a few inches of snow, and you're like, I'm going home, I'm going home. - I'm not going out, and it's not stopping, not stopping. - I just walked up and down the stairs after dinner today. That's it, that's it, but anyway. All right, well, there was, there was pilot, and he landed his plane, and man, he landed hard, but boom! He was like, oh, finally, you know, got it to a stop, got it to the gate, and as part of, you know, the protocol of the airline he worked for, he had to, you know, greet the passengers, basically tell them by on their way out at the terminal. So, he's like, oh, man, you know, he didn't want to hear any crap about that hard landing because, you know, everybody makes little snide remarks as they walk by and stuff, and oh, much to his pleasure, nobody said anything. And then the little old lady was her last one off, she had her little hat on and grabbed her little bags, and she was kind of coddling down the aisle, and she got to the door and they're leaving, and she tells her, bye ma'am, you know, have a wonderful, wonderful visit if you're here, or welcome home if you're home, and she goes, oh, I'm not home, I'm just visiting, but she goes, did we land? And he's, well, yes, ma'am, we landed. Oh, I thought we got shot down. (laughing) Oh, jeez, ma'am. All right, y'all, stay where you're at, do what you gotta do, but be back, because we'll be back and we're gonna smoke a turkey. Breast, right here, cooking in the dark. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Now, more of the show with your host, Dale Campbell and Cheryl Cummings. All right, y'all, we are back. Now, a lot of times, come Thanksgiving time, if it's just one or two of you, you know, or three of you, you don't need a big old 20-pound turkey. So what are you gonna do? Try getting just a turkey breast. Now you can get 'em bone in, or you can get 'em boneless. My preference after doing both of 'em, cooking both of 'em, I prefer cooking the bone in. Because I believe the bone in allows you a little more flavor. It also helps keep the breast a little more moist. You know, white meat on poultry, it gets dried out so easily, you know, Cheryl, when you cook. I mean, if you do a boneless, skinless chicken breast in the oven, if you bake it, I mean, one thing I do, if I'm baking them, I will put a bowl of water in the oven also, to try to help keep some moisture in the meat, because boy, they can dry out in a heartbeat. Same with turkey, you know, if you've ever driven, you know, eating a turkey that maybe was overcooked, overbaked, gosh, that dry meat, it'll gag you. You'll end up, you know, it is so dry, it's like eating sand almost, it's terrible. You know, give me some gravy, give me a lot of gravy. - Get us under a lot of potatoes. - I got the gravy drunk, right, no, no, no, no, no. - I love mashed potatoes. - Give me a dark meat, yeah, golly. But there's one thing that you can, now, and when you, now, like Cheryl said one time, she bought a turkey breast, and she was, ooh, surprised by how large it was. You know, if you deal with poultry, you know, chicken breast, they're a little, they've weigh maybe six, eight ounces, you know, a big one maybe nine ounces, but you get a turkey breast, and a turkey breast is probably gonna weigh five to 10 pounds. You can find them, I mean, you can find smaller ones, but normally they're gonna be five, six, seven pounds, something like that, which is perfect. And if you wanna bake 'em, you can prepare 'em the same. You know, by baking 'em in the oven. - Yup, we did that. - You know, and what we're gonna do today is we're gonna smoke it. But while we're talking turkey real fast, let's talk about a turkey, I mean, Thanksgiving's coming, so if you're getting a whole turkey, remember it takes about a day per every three to four pounds for that bird to thaw out. So if you get a 15 pound turkey, it's gonna take about five days, at least, for the thaw out in your refrigerator. So make sure you plan ahead. You know, don't be going there on Wednesday, looking to buy a turkey to cook on Thursday. If not, you're gonna have to use that quick, awesome method, which is not recommended, but you fill your, you put your turkey in the sink and fill your sink with water. And then every 30 minutes, you change the water. - Right. - Turn the bird over and change the water. - I thought you'd have to use the really quick method, which is order it from the store. - There you go. Order it already cooked. (laughing) Call, call weados fried turkeys, man. You're good to go. - Hi, just me. - And also, too, remember that if inside the turkey cavities is the turkey neck and is giblets. - And those are in a plastic bag. - Yeah, sometimes plastic, sometimes paper, but remember that you need to pull those out before you bake your turkey. I have known people that have baked the turkey with that still inside the turkey because they didn't know it was there. Just a word to the wise. - Are they for, like, I know one of my friends in college, it was her first turkey and, you know, mom had always done it and she was so excited, she's in. - Yeah, and I didn't know she did. Well, I can't really blame her 'cause, needed did we speak up and say, "Hey, pull this." - Yeah, well, you just assume people know that. I mean, you just assume, you know, just the way it is. But just some words for the wise. The other thing, whenever I bake a turkey, I always, if I'm baking it in the oven, you know, I use the baking bags. - Oh, okay. - They're so nice. They keep the turkey so moist and juicy, you know? I make a bed in the bottom of the bag of celery and onions and then I lay the, you know, set the turkey inside. I usually stuff the turkey with some celery and onions for a little flavor. And then, you know, you close the bag up, you cut a little, cup two little holes at the top of it for it to allow it to let the, you know, to let the hot pressure out, I guess, for that matter. So it doesn't pop like a balloon in the oven and let it do its thing. But boy, I've never had a bad turkey coming out of those. Anyway, just some tips. What we're gonna be working with today is a turkey breast. Now, we've got a six pound bone-in turkey breast. And one of the things we're gonna do first is we're gonna brine it. You know, like brine, what's that? - Yeah, what is that? - We're gonna be soaking the turkey breast overnight in a saltwater solution. Now, the saltwater solution, it's made up of one gallon of water to one cup of kosher salt. So let's get started. We gotta make our brining solution first. - Oh, what did you say, one gallon of water to chew the salt? - Yeah, so, one cup. - Oh, one cup, and it's kosher salt, right? - I'm gonna fill up a pitch. Yeah, they recommend kosher salt. And that's the other thing, folks. Throw away your iodized salt. Start using kosher salt and sea salt. Okay, there we go. I've filled up a bowl. I've got my 12 cup perfect measuring cup out here. 12 cups is about three quarters of a gallon of water. So I'm gonna go ahead and put in my kosher salt. - Kosher salt, you've got kosher salt. - Kosher. Right here. And I'm gonna just start, I'm gonna add it in half cup increments. I don't know, okay? And I'm just gonna dissolve it into this water. - Okay. - Because this is three quarters of a gallon, I'm gonna add another quarter cup of salt, okay? And I'm just running my, mixing this up in the bowl here, and you can feel the salt in the bottom. But then you can also start to feel it dissolve. And when it's all dissolved, I know it's good. Now I've got my turkey breast right now in, you wanna put it in a plastic container, or a glass dish. But you wanna make it big enough that you can cover this completely. Gonna add a little more water to fill this bowl up all the way. Now that we've got our salt in it and dissolved, okay? Make sure it's all dissolved. Okay, now I'm just gonna pour this over the top of our turkey breast. Okay, very good. Now we wanna make sure that we cover the turkey breast entirely. - Oh, okay. So I'm gonna make that another bowl. - So I'm gonna make that another bowl. - You really need a substantial size. - And you could take about two gallons of water. Yeah, you gotta have a pretty good, now if you've got a smaller turkey breast, if you have, they make like two gallon Ziploc bags. You can put it in that. Let me add some more salt here. Okay, there's a half cup. Stir that up a little bit here. You can put it in a Ziploc, and then put that in like a stock pot and put it in your refrigerator. 'Cause you wanna make sure that you keep these cool. Now what I've used is I've got an old styrofoam cooler. - Okay. - So I put it in the styrofoam cooler. If I'm doing a couple, you know, some of the bigger breasts, this is a smaller breast, so we're just gonna do it in this plastic container here. Okay, that's dissolved, pour that over. Now I'm also adding about a cup and a half of sugar. - Okay, does it matter brown or white? - Okay. - And you can pretty much add any seasonings you want, because the seasonings you add will get sucked, will go into the brining solution. Put my sugar in here, do the same thing, dissolve it. Now I've added some Cajun butter marinade. - Ooh, that sounds nice. - Soap in here. - If you wanna add some any other seasonings or spices, you can do that. I've heard of people adding some Cajun shrimp. - Hot sauce, hot sauce. - Hot sauce, any of that. - Washer-shire, or even most, washer-shire, washer-shire, or whatever. - Salt, pepper, any of that. Add it to it, and what it will do is soak, you know, soak into your breast. So we've got our breast here. We've got it, basically it's, let's see. Yeah, it's covered. So I'm gonna set that in the refrigerator. And that's it. Now if you don't have room in your fridge, and you know, like you can put it in a cooler, like I was talking about before, you know, inside the Ziploc bag, and then just ice it down, 'cause you wanna make sure you keep your breast between 36 and 40 degrees, so it doesn't get bad. (laughs) - Ooh, that wouldn't be nice. - All right, but now, here's the other side. We've gotta let this brine for about eight to 12 hours. So everybody, thanks for coming out. We'll see you next week on Cooking in the Dark. (laughs) Just joking, just joking. We've got the time machine, we've got the time machine, but so we're gonna hit the time machine, we're gonna take a little break, and we're gonna come back on the other side, and it'll actually be tomorrow morning, or tomorrow. For us, it'll be just right after the break for you, right here on Cooking in the Dark. (whooshing) (upbeat music) - Now here's more of the show, with Dale Campbell and Cheryl Cummings. - All right, y'all, we're back. It's a day later, and our turkey breast has been sitting in its brine solution for just about 12 hours. Well, what do you know? The timer just went off to say, "Hey." (laughs) - Come and get me, come and get me. - Come and get me out. Now, man, I like it when a plan comes together like that. - Sure. - Time Bob, I'll be right back. I'm gonna go to Vegas and make a bet. (laughs) That's pretty crazy. Stuff like that just never seems to happen. Ride on, ride out. (laughs) - Well, of course it's gonna happen. It's our show. - That's right. - You betcha, man, you betcha, man. - Yeah. - The basic brine is about one cup of kosher salt to about one gallon of water. There's a great newsletter site that comes up. What was that guy's name, Cheryl? Did Jeff something? - Well, I didn't see the last name, but the first name is Jeff. And he's got this great newsletter from October 2010 that takes you through the whole brining smoking process. - And he's even got a recipe up for what he puts in his brining solution. - Yeah, can I share that with our folks? 'Cause I thought it was pretty simple and quite straightforward. - Yes. - So he's got about two gallons of water, two cups of kosher salt, three cups of sugar, and here's where he adds something optional. He adds in half a cup of crab oil. He says that's optional. Four tablespoons of black pepper, one tablespoon of dried rosemary, one teaspoon of thyme, and a quarter cup of molasses, a quarter cup of white wine, and he says in parentheses, not cooking wine, and a quarter cup of Worcestershire sauce. So that's his brine. - That's his brine recipe. I mean, you can even do just a straight brine. - Right. - Just salt water. - Right. - Or add the sugar, add the other stuff, and kind of do it to yours. I don't like a little bit of sugar, not a whole lot, but do it however. And what I've really gotten into is adding those, it's the marinade or the injectable marinades that you can get for poultry. And I just pour the bottle into the brine, and it sucks brining it. It sucks right into the meat. So let's go get our smoker ready. - Okay. - And then we'll come back and we'll get our turkey breast ready. - All right. - And then, the good part, we put it in the smoke-- - Put it all together. - Sorry. - And let it smoke for four hours. And while that's happening, Cheryl will be pouring us a glass of wine. Or two, or three. - I have a purpose, I have a purpose. (laughing) - That's right, that's right. Don't let her tell you any different. - I know, I'm hanging on to that. - Okay, let me describe this smoker to you. It's about three feet tall. It resembles a compact refrigerator. It's about 18 inches wide, about 15 to 16 inches deep. Yeah, maybe about 18, it's about square, I guess, 18 by 18 or so. On the top of it, it has its control panel. There's five buttons that control it. The very far button to the left is the on/off button. Next to that is the temperature set button. Next to that's the time set. And the next to that is a plus and a minus. Two buttons that are plus and minus. So you turn it on, what's cool is it beeps. Every time you press a button, so we'll turn it on. And then we'll set the temp button, set temp. Now it doesn't talk, but set temp, if I hit the negative button, it'll take the temperature to 275. And then from there, I just keep pressing the minus button, 50 times, oh my goodness. So I do it in increments of 10. But I do it until we get down to 225. One more set of 10, one, two, three, four, five, six. 10, okay. Now the time button, set time. And again, minus, we'll take us to the maximum, which is 24 hours. I don't need 24 hours. I'm just gonna push it down a couple times. Just, it doesn't matter about the time. I want it to keep going beyond the five hours. You know, the four or five hours that we might be smoking this thing, just to make sure. Okay, and that's it. Now we wanna let it preheat. Now, I've already added the water to the water pan. The drip pan's in place. Let me add the wood. So with the wood, we just pull on, it has a drawer on the side. I think you slide out. It's a cylindrical drawer. - I like this idea 'cause you're not sticking your hand into something that could be hot with elements all over it. - Very hot. - Yeah. - Okay, put the wood chips in, give it a twist, and the wood chips fall right into the heating pan, right into the wood burning pan. The other great thing with that is, after you're done and you cool it off, you pull the wood tray out and it's ashes. - Phew. - The trash. - Right. - You know, now the water pan and the grease pan that are in here, the grease pan covers the whole bottom. You know, the whole-- - Oh, that's nice, right. - But I do, as I cover that with foil. So then, for cleanup, when you're done, you know, once it cools off, the grease coagulates. So you just wrap the foil up into a ball and throw it. - Right, right. - Same with the water pan. I put, I line the water pan with foil also. - And so, do you talk about wood chips or any particular flavor or type of wood chips that you're using? - I like using apple and cherry and pecan. Those are my three favorites to use. And it just kind of depends on what flavor you're trying to go with. Now, with poultry and stuff, man, apple wood is really good, so is pecan. I think personally, myself, pecan, I like pecan the best. Now, there are some people that will smoke with pecan for a while. - Mm-hmm. - It's free and then they'll change it like cherry wood or apple wood. - Okay. - So they'll do both, or some will do a combination. They'll put pecan and apple chips in there. You know, you can also put an onion, and I've heard of people putting like apple rinds. - Mm-hmm. - You know, in, and using those as well to create smoke. So you get that apple flavor. So there's all types of ways you can use of these smokers. It's got the ability to have up to four racks in it that have about probably five inches of space between each shelf, you know, each grilling rack. - Yeah. - It's so simple. In the past, I'd used a bullet style. So it's kind of round and cylindrical, you know? - Mm-hmm. - But the problem is that whenever you needed to add wood, it had three sections. It had the heating element in the bottom 'cause it's electric and this one's electric. Which for us blind folks makes it really easy and nice to use because with a wood smoker where you're putting wood in it, a fire one, you've got to constantly monitor the temperature inside the area, you know, inside your cook area to keep it regulated. When it starts to get a little bit cooler, you add a little more wood. Or then you can open vents or close vents to let more or less of the heat out and the smoke out. This one has its own little vent up here on the top and it's just a little slides opening. Kind of works like a chimney. You know, one way it's open, the other way it's closed or you can go anywhere in between. And it just, it's just a little vent that regulates how much smoke escapes. I have it closed 'cause I want as much smoke to stay in here as possible. I mean the smoke's gonna filter out anyway. - Right. - You know, that's just the nature of the beast. But, mercy, mercy, not much to it. So we've got it set for 225. Now with eyeballs, if you have somebody with eyeballs with you, it'll tell you what the temperature is. Inside, you know, the inside thermostat temperature. And it stays within plus or minus 10 degrees of what you set it at. But you don't have to add wood to it to regulate it. It regulates itself to keep that temperature right about 225 degrees. I mean, I like smoking low and slow. Some people smoke about 250, some a little bit higher. But just like cooking, you know, how many times we said that if you cook it slow and low, it comes out a lot more tender. It comes out better. And we've got time. I mean, we've got, what, seven, eight bottles of wine there. So we're good. The band's gonna appear. They're gonna play a little show for us. So we're okay to go. So while our smoker's heating up, let's go back into the kitchen and we will get our breast prepared. Okay, so I've got some olive oil here and I've got it in a little bowl. And I'm taking a, I'm just gonna kind of drizzle it over the top of the turkey breast. Now I'm just kind of rubbing it over the, I mean, we don't want a whole lot. I mean, there's, when I say a little bit, I mean a little bit, maybe less than a tablespoon. We just wanna put a nice little coating on. - Before you do that, can I ask you a question? 'Cause the turkey's breast has been sitting in salt, water and stuff. - Right, right. - So do I just take it right out and start seasoning it or what do I do? - Yeah, I took it out before we went outside. - Right. - And I just had it sitting on this pan. - Okay. - So as it's sitting here, some of the water is drained out of it, you know, as ripped off of it. But the outside, I mean, if you wanna pat it down dry with a paper towel, you can do that. The main thing for the, the main thing for the, that we're putting the olive oil on for or vegetable oil or whatever, is that when we put it in our bag with our, our rub, our seasoning. 'Cause I'm gonna put it in a big Ziploc bag with some seasoning rub in it. And what I've got is some poultry seasoning, which I prefer to use. But if you wanna use a brisket rub, a barbecue, you know, if you have something like that, you wanna use, put about a quarter cup of that into a Ziploc bag, a large Ziploc bag and then drop your turkey breast in there. - Mm-hmm. - And you just kinda shake it and roll it all around. And what that does by, it not only coats the turkey breast, but it also kind of works it into the skin so that when you smoke it, some of that flavor will go into the meat as well. So that when putting the olive oil or the oil on the outside, it helps that, that rub or the seasoning stick to the, the poultry. - Right. - Stick to the breast. Okay, let me get my bag of stuff here. And I've got my seasoning in it. I've added about a quarter cup. Now I'm gonna put the turkey breast in. That's, trick is to, you need, they make jumbo, they're like two gallon size, you know, bags. - Mm-hmm. - So that's in there. Okay. - Oh, is this sort of like the shake and bake thing now? - Kind of like shake and bake, yeah. - You just shake it, you rock and roll it and you want it. - Shake it, rub it and then kinda just, I'm just kinda rubbing it in on the, you know, on the skin. Kind of shaking it and turning it, just to make sure it coats all over. And then kinda, you can kinda rub it through the plastic and that helps kind of rub it into the skin a little bit. But by doing it through the plastic like that, you're not gonna get it all over your hands. Plus it's not gonna stick to your hands instead of the bird, 'cause we're smoking the bird, not you. (laughs) Okay. Now let me get my cookie sheet here. We're just gonna set it right on the sheet. Okay. All right, now let's take this out to the smoker. - All right. - Now the smoker, the door on the side, it's got a clasp that closes and pulls the door tight, shut tight. It's got a little gasket around it, so it does kinda seal like a refrigerator. Okay. Open the door up here. I'm gonna set this on the shelf on top. Set her in there. Okay. Close the door up. Latch it. And we're good to go. - That's it? - That's it. - Wow. - All right. - We're gonna let this go. Again, we wanna go, it's a six-pounder, so we wanna go about 30, 40 minutes per pound. Give or take. So that's gonna give us a smoke time of about three and a half, four hours. - Nice. - So we'll set our time. And now it's party time here at Cooking in the Dark. (laughing) Everybody has an audience here, it's gonna be a long show, but it's gonna be a good one. So I'll have a couple volunteers come on up. We got a couple snacks we might make in the meantime. - I was gonna say I've got my address right over here. - All right. I got my Vino right here. - I got my Vino. - Good to go. So we'll be back on Cooking in the Dark in just, well, it'll be a short, short for you. It'll be a little bit longer for us here. But we'll be right back. Cooking in the Dark, we're smoking a turkey breast today. (upbeat music) - Now with more of the show, here's Cheryl Cummings and Dale Campbell. We'll come back to our show all about brining of a turkey. - Brining and smoking and smoking. - And smoking. - Now's the good part. We've been smoking this thing for about three and a half hours at 225 degrees with pecan smoke. So now it's time to come and take it out. So to do that, I need to do a little prep work here real fast. I've got a baking pan out here. And what we do, what we want to do when we take our breast out, is we want to wrap it up in some heavy duty foil. What that's going to allow to do, and we want to let it set for about 45 minutes to an hour, but it's really cool what happens during that time. The juices that have kind of been cooked out to the exterior of the meat, we'll start to settle back into the turkey, into the breast, making the little moist. So let me put my mitts on here, and open up the door, and then step back to let all the heat and the smoke out. All right, close this guy back up. And let's get our talking thermometer here and see what we got going on, Cheryl. All right. We want a good internal temperature. Turn it on. You want to slide the thermometer in to where it's away from the bones, just in a deep part of the breast. Ooh, we all able to hear that? Not quite. I know it spoke, but I wasn't sure. What did it say? 60, 5.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Uh, did it say 165? 165. 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit? 65 degrees Fahrenheit. That's perfect. All right. So now I'm going to wrap it up with foil, and then we're just going to let it sit. So I've got it in the middle of the foil here. Mm-mm. Okay. We've got it wrapped up nice and tight, and we're just going to let it sit for about 45 minutes to an hour. Then we're going to slice it down the middle, slice it up and eat her down. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Smells so good out here, Cheryl. Too bad you're sitting inside there with your glass of wine. Well, somebody's got to do it. Out here on the back there. All right. Let me tote this inside. And then when you cut it open, we start slicing it down. One of the cool things that you're going to find that you'll see is that awesome smoke ring. It's a ring inside the meat that's made from the smoke, coming into the, you know, from the smoker, settling into the meat, and it's usually about a, oh, gosh, an inch or so inside the meat, but it does. It looks just like a ring, like a gray ring in the meat, but it's called the smoke ring. Mm-mm, okay. And it's a delicacy. It is so good. All right. So basically, y'all, that is it. Smoking a turkey. Now, I've done whole turkeys in there. Again, we smoked this for about, about 30 minutes a pound. It ended up smoking for about three and a half to four hours. And, gosh, you just can't, cannot beat it. They have a straight model, and they have the stainless steel model. But like we said earlier, it's shaped kind of like a compact refrigerator. Mm-hmm. So it has a door that opens on the front. It has the cook racks on top, and then you've got a, like a grease pan, a pan that catches drippings, and then below that, the water pan, and then below that, the wood tray, and the heating element. And what's so cool is on the side is a drawer that pulls out. It's a cylindrical drawer, and you can add more wood chips just by pulling that drawer out, dropping them in, pushing that drawer back in, and twisting it. And then those chips fall right into the, you know, right into the pan. Mm-hmm. So it's a great little smoker. Easy to use. Very easy to use, just like I demonstrated earlier. So we're going to take a short break. We're going to let this turkey sit here and just be wrapped up. Be wrapped up in foil, and let it kind of mellow while its juice is flow back through. But we'll re-write back on cooking in the dark. ♪♪ Now more of the show with your host, Dale Campbell and Cheryl Cummings. Hi, John. We are back. We've got our turkey breast here. We're about ready to slice it up. It's been resting now for about 45 minutes, wrapped in its foil. That's probably one of the most important parts. That's probably as important as getting the wood for your smoker. [ Laughter ] I mean, because wrapping it in foil, it allows, it allows the, again, like I was talking about, it allows the moisture that's been kind of cooking out of the meat out towards the edge of the meat by wrapping it in foil and just letting it rest, that moisture starts to settle back into the meat. Very important. Yeah. I think it must be, even though it's like super duper tempting to eat it right away. Oh, my gosh. Yes. Because it smells delicious and you just want to taste it right now. Well, it helps make the meat. You know, it keeps the meat moist. It allows that and makes it tender. Mm-hmm. I mean, like, if, when I do ribs or brisket, I will wrap the brisket or the ribs in foil after they're done smoking and put them back in the smoker for, you know, another, if I smoked them for, you know, four hours, then I'll put them back in there for about an hour, hour and a half, wrapped in foil and then pull them out and then just let them rest for about another 30, 40 minutes. And I tell y'all what, you don't even need a knife. The ribs, you can just pull the ribs off. You know, the brisket, one time I left it in there too long and the brisket was so, you could just eat it, you could cut it with a fork, you know, which is a little too tender for brisket, but it was still delicious. But wrapping it in foil and just staying away from it, stay away, Martha. (laughs) I know, like Cheryl says, man, that's all you, because, oh, it smells so good and, you know, it's going to be just delicious. And wrapping it in foil, it's not going to get cold. You know, and one thing I've done here with the ours, I wrapped it in a couple kitchen towels also. Or if you have some newspaper, you know, put it back inside that cooler, that'll work too. You know, but it just helps keep it warm as well, but we just want to let it sit. And then pretty soon we're going to cut this baby open after the band plays their song. I hear y'all sneaking up back there. (laughs) And they missed part of the lecture, but waiting. (laughs) They were not in line for the, you know, they were not in line when it came time for the patience. (laughs) Hand it out. And tell you the truth, I can't blame them. No. So to recap, we had about a five and a half, six-pound turkey breast. We brined it, which means we just soaked it in the saltwater solution. And as Cheryl read earlier, there's so many ways, so many things you can do, whatever seasonings you want to use, if you just want to use straight brining solution. And the basics to the brining solution is one cup of water to one cup of kosher salt. (indistinct) Let it dissolve. And then you want to make sure when you brine, you use a plastic or glass container and it's big enough or deep enough to allow you to completely cover your turkey breast. Now, if you're doing a turkey, I've heard of people doing a turkey too, brining a turkey overnight before they smoke it or cook it. Knock yourselves out, man. If you're frying a turkey, you probably don't need to brine it. Because frying it sears that outside skin and it keeps the moisture locked into it. But if you're smoking it, baking it, you know, you might want to brine it. But definitely if you're smoking it, definitely if you're smoking it. Because that slow cooking process will really dry it out. But in our brining solution, we used two cups of kosher salt, two gallons of water, a cup and a half of sugar. And then I used a bottle, which is a 16 ounce bottle of Cajun butter, injectable marinade. And you can buy that at the grocery store. All kinds of flavors, there's garlic and their I-I-I. There's tons of flavors. But we just let Cajun butter is my favorite. So that's what I used. Then we submersed this into, I put it in a two gallon ziplock bag. And I put that, I poured the water over the, over the bird in the container and put it in the fridge and let it sit overnight. And the next day we pulled it out, let him sit while he was sitting. Kind of draining a little bit of the water off. You can pat him down and cover him with a little vegetable oil. Add your rub, your marinade to him. If you don't want to add any of that, you don't have to. But we did it in the, the shaking bake style in a, in a two gallon ziplock bag container. Kind of the old shaking bake method. And then put it on the smoker. And again, we smoked it at 225. We used pecan wood and we let it go for just about, um, about four hours. Pulled him out, took a temperature reading 165 degrees is exactly what we needed. Wrapped him in heavy duty aluminum foil. And then again, wrap that with a couple, um, kitchen towels and just let him sit. Just let him rest. You know, 15, 20 minutes is great. 45 minutes to an hour is even better. Just allows much more flavor, much more tenderness to develop. But folks, that's all there is to it. So this Thanksgiving, if you're, you know, if you don't want a whole turkey, think about just doing a turkey breast and you don't have to smoke it. You know, get it and, and prepare it like you would a regular turkey. You'd get you, uh, some, some of those turkey bacon bags. You know, shoot it up with some marinade if you want to. If you don't want to, don't. But try that. There was also, uh, a couple of three years back, we did a, um, we did a turkey breast in a crock pot. So there's all types of ways to do turkey. I mean, and heck, it's Thanksgiving. Couple, one time my dad and his new wife came down. Back to my stepmom back after they got married. And we'd had shrimp for Thanksgiving. Doesn't have to be turkey, baby. Right. But if you want, mmm, smoked turkey breast, y'all, that's what we did today. And it's going to be delectably delicious. Wish you were here. You could have some. Hey, you all have a happy Thanksgiving. We've got, um, we've got some pumpkins coming at you next week. So you don't want to miss that. But I'm Dale Campbell. She's Cheryl Cummings. We are going to be fat and sassy after eating on this here turkey. Cooking in the dark is a presentation of blind mites mega mole. And www.blindmitesmegamole.com. Cooking in the dark was produced by THC Productions. Oh, yeah!