Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and that means millions of people across America are about to gorge themselves with turkey.
While many of those turkeys will undoubtedly be cooked in a, shall we say, bland manner, the flavor-inclined people of Louisiana need not suffer such a fate. Not when we have musicians/pitmasters like Kermit Ruffins to show us the light.
Ruffins, who leads the appropriately named BBQ Swingers, has earned equally illustrious reputations for his prowess behind the trumpet and the grill. His recipe for Barbecue Smoked Turkey appears in That Sounds Good: A Cookbook Celebrating 30 Years of WWOZ, a collection of recipes put together by the iconic New Orleans radio station.
WWOZ was kind enough to share the instructions for this particular dish online, so we’ve got them for you here:
Kermit Ruffins’ Barbecue Smoked Turkey
A couple of Louis Armstrong records
An ice chest full of beer
1 whole turkey
Olive Oil
Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning
Zatarain’s liquid crab boil
Turkey liquid injection sauce
New Orleans sausage (optional)
Onions (optional)
Garlic (optional)
1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter
Lots of hickory wood
Okay, put on one of those hot albums and let it rip. Reach into the ice chest and grab yourself an ice-cold beer. After a few swigs, wash the turkey and put it into an aluminum pot. Coat the turkey with olive oil. Coat with Tony Chachere’s seasoning heavily. Don’t worry about using too much.
Make sure you don’t let your beer sit too long. Mix half of the liquid crab boil with half of the turkey injection sauce. Well, put in a little more crab boil, what the hell. Inject the trukey legs, bosoms and wings. Don’t worry–he won’t feel a thing.
Now you can stuff the turkey with anything you want. I like to use New Orleans hot sausage. Take of the casings. Stuff that bird with sausage, onions and garlic–you know what to do.
Open up a fresh bottle of ice-cold beer. Put half a cup water and the butter in the bottom of the pan. Cover the bird with four or five sheets of aluminum foil.
After you turn the record over and listen to side B, put the bird on the grill. Make sure that grill is really hot! I hope you got extra hickory wood, because that turkey needs to cook a good 4-1/2 hours.
After drinking most of your cold beer and listening to those Armstrong records couple of times, uncover the trukey so it can soak up the smoke for another 30 minutes. This is it! It’s too easy.
–Kermit Ruffins
