If you have a smoker with a water basin, you can marinade it while you smoke. Put beer, wine and/or sprigs of spices in the water. The best tasting poultry that I have smoked wasn't exactly marinated. I glazed the skin with hot sauces, nutmeg syrup and jelly. I raise my own chickens, turkeys and geese. Once when I was first starting out, I bought too many of these commercial type meat chickens. I think they are a Cornish rock hybrid. They were the ugliest bird you ever saw. We called them feathered lizards. They were suppose to mature in 6 to 8 weeks. We got 50 chicks. What we didn't know is that they were engineered not to fly or really even walk, just eat. I did not know it at the time but you were supposed to remove the feed after 9p.m. at night to stop them from eating too much. Well, suddenly at 8 weeks we had to kill and dress them all to prevent them from dying of heart disease or going lame. The largest rooster weighed 7 pounds. Well if your never killed, plucked and dress a chicken, let me assure you it is long hard work. It takes about 60 to 90 minutes to do each bird right. Then you have a couple of hours of cleanup to do. After a couple of exhausting weekends of putting up chickens, I was looking for shortcuts. Well I tore the skin on one bird I was plucking so I decided to try skinning it like a rabbit. It was much easier than plucking. I now had a problem. The skin protects the meat from drying out when you cook it. Then I hit on the Idea of making an artificial skin of hot sauces. I first used Barbados Jack which is a thick yellow habanero sauce to coat the bird. I put the bird on a vertical roaster and put in a Brinkman smoker. While it was cooking I brushed more Barbados Jack on the skin. It formed a hard shell on the bird, trapping in the juices and flavoring the meat. It was truly delicious. Another time I skinned a goose and coated the skin with jalapeno jelly. Smoked it and what a great taste. It was very low in fat for a goose because most of the fat is in the skin. When I smoke a turkey, I leave the skin on but loosened it all the way around with a wooden spoon. I then inserted chopped garlic, chiles and other spices under the skin and closed the openings with skewers and twine. It was also delicious. Marmot -----Original Message----- From: David Hammond <David_Hammond@huron-city.k12.oh.us> To: chile-heads@globalgarden.com <chile-heads@globalgarden.com> Date: Thursday, May 20, 1999 2:47 PM Subject: [CH] "Smoking marinade" >Anyone have a favorite marinade recipe to use before smoking chickens or a >turkey. (I'm ready for all the double entente jokes!). Of course a >little heat is a prerequisite. >Thanks in advance! > >David > >