Silence of the Shrooms
I'm having Larry for dinner tonight. Also invited are four of his closest friends and some oysters.
The ice storm really put a crimp in my cooking until this weekend, but now the kitchen is stirring. I just dumped celery, garlic, carrots, and an onion into the stock from the turkey bones. Aromas fill the air again.
While deboning the first turkey breast, I separated the rib sections coming out of the backbone from those coming out the breastbone. There's a natural break there, but it was a mistake. The process is much easier and you get more of the good stuff out when you remove as much of the entire skeleton as possible in one piece.
I managed to do that on the second one, and threw the mass of connected bones into the stock pot. The first guy has been simmering in there since yesterday afternoon. A few more hours oughta make a sweet and blessed stock. No herbs until the very end though, kinda like hopping beer.
The Frankenstein-stitched turkey breasts are taking smoke right now. Contrary to what I've heard, they warmed up a lot quicker without bones. They're at 154F already, after 6 hours in the smoker. Liz and I went out for hardware things for her new apartment this morning,. When we got back, the breasts were already at 132F, or about 12 degrees above the point where I'd usually start adding smoke. They're not complaining, so neither am I. We'll see how they hold together.
I didn't brine these guys, but did tuck as much of the fat and skin as possible into the upper part of the cavity while sewing it up. That should be enough to baste them from the inside as they slowly smoke cook.
Oh, in case you're measuring, Larry's cap was 3 1/4 inches in diameter at the time his timely demise occured. A couple of his also-invited friends were really collateral damage. They were clumped too closely to him, mushroom shields they were, that broke loose as I sincerely tried to execute a surgical twist on his stem.
3:18:02 PM 
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