Smoked Turkey Legs

Meat on a stick……

I love smoked turkey legs- they are cheap to buy, easy to smoke, and taste great. They are a great choice for outdoor bbq parties, as you can walk around with no plate needed.

Ingredients:

Useful Equipment:

• Brine Bucket
• Boning Knife

Directions:

1. Place Turkey legs in a brining bucket and then fill bucket with brine till legs are completely submerged. Brine in fridge for at least 6 hours, and up to over night.
2. Remove turkey legs from brine, rinse off under cold water, and pat dry with paper towels.
3. Place Turkey legs on a plate or cookie sheet and place in fridge uncovered for at least 4 hours, preferably 8+ hours. This will dry out the skin a bit and make it crispier when done smoking. (Optional)
4. Using your dry rub, sprinkle legs on all sides and allow legs to sit for at least 30 minutes for the rub to set in, before placing legs on smoker or grill.
5. Set your smoker/grill to 220-235f range adding hickory and apple wood chunks to coal bed.
6. Smoke legs for 5.6 – 6 hours

In the final hour of smoking legs, open smoker and using a sharp Boning Knife trim the bottom 2 inches of the turkey leg away. This can be done by making a single long cut around the circumference of the bone, 2 inches from the knob on the end, and then pulling it off in a ripping motion.

This does 3 things: It creates a neat and clean handle to hold while eating, its makes for a cleaner presentation, and finally- the most important, it exposes 2-3 hard tendons, that you can now rip out, making for a more pleasant eating experience later.

After trimming legs, place back in smoker/grill for the remaining hour.

When turkey legs are done, remove from smoker, and place on a cutting board or platter, loosely tented with aluminum foil to rest for at least 10 minutes, allowing the juices to settle back into the meat.

Serve as-is, or with a side of your favorite BBQ sauce.