Meat Day!

I've declared this Saturday, Dec. 16, to be a new holiday--Meat Day! Meat Day is a floating holiday; it can be held any day you feel like celebrating meat. I'll be celebrating Meat Day by firing up my new big smoker and cooking a little meat--59.5 pounds, to be exact. I need to find a couple of steaks or something to run the total to over 60 pounds, just because that's a nice round number. My fifty-nine and a half pounds consist of: a brisket; a picnic shoulder; a pork loin; and four home-grown turkeys. The turkeys are for my folks to take home after Christmas. The brisket and picnic shoulder will be served at various family functions over Christmas.

Here's a picture of the meat before I started brining and dry-rubbing yesterday:

Here's a close-up of the good stuff:


The dark stuff you see on some of the turkeys is pigment left over after pulling out the pinfeathers (feathers that weren't fully grown yet). The two on the left were bronzes--very dark birds. The second from the right was a bourbon red, and the far right was a narragansett. I prefer the reds, because they make a much cleaner bird for the table. Plus they have a good personality.

I dry-rubbed the turkeys and the brisket, and dropped the picnic shoulder into brine with molasses and salt. The dark package in the middle is a pork loin and half a cup of molasses in a ziploc bag. I bagged it before I remembered that I wanted a "before" picture.

That's it for now--all the meat is in the fridge waiting for Saturday. I'll have a Meat Day wrap-up after the weekend.