Tulsa Man Earns International Following By Smoking Meat

Thanksgiving's the one day each year when people who don't even like turkey, eat turkey.

So how are you gonna make your turkey memorable? A co-worker told me a world famous smoker of meat is a local guy.

"What can I do with this turkey to blow it out of the water, to blow people's socks off," asked Jeff Phillips.

Jeff is the founder of www.smoking-meat.com and the publisher of a weekly newsletter full of information on smoking meat.

On the web site you can find successful recipes for cranberry brined turkey, even buttermilk brined turkey.

This year had to be different. "So I came up with this bacon butter thing, and started experimenting with it," he said.

He mixes butter and bacon in a processor with some other spices. That butter bacon paste gets spread up under the turkey skin then throughout the smoking process the turkey gets basted with both bacon and butter.

Jeff was a backyard smoker like lots of us, except better. Family said start a web site, that led to a regular, now weekly, newsletter.

"How many people subscribe?" I asked him.

"I've got 230,000 from all over the world," he replied.

Says he gets emails in foreign languages he had to get translated before he can answer, and lots of questions.

"'Now I don't know what a brisket is, what would that be called here?'" was one question he answered.

One of his newsletter subscribers, a book publisher, suggested a cookbook which was published last year.

It's got everything, even smoked apple pie. There's even a German language edition. But back to turkey day.

"That's the real thing. That took 6-7 hours. That's what you can expect for a 12-pound turkey."

I'm hungry.