My wife's favorite food to have me cook is smoked Cornish game hens. She dubbed them "those little birds good enough to roll in" years ago and it has stuck. I can easily get a dozen at a time in the smoker, so that is what I smoke at a time.
First I build a brine of 1 cup salt, 1 1/2 cups brown sugar and 1/2 cup molasses boiled in about 1 quart of water. Add a couple bay leaves, sage, thyme and basil, plus anything else you feel like and bring to a rolling boil.
Add another quart of cold water and allow to cool to room temperature. Drop the birds in the brine and work a finger up under the breast skin of each bird so some of the spices and brine get trapped under the skin. Let them soak for 2 hours, a little longer if they were nearly frozen when starting, which is generally the case for me.
Rinse quickly under cold water and place on the racks in open air. Allow them to glaze a little bit (form a pellicle as pak would call it) and them put them in the smoker with all the heat you can get in there and lots of smoke, but only for a single pan load of chips or chunks.
For extra interest, a small handful of whiskey-soaked juniper berries tossed into the smoker wood is worth the effort.
Put the birds in a big shallow roasting pan and continue cooking in the oven at about 150-200 for several hours. The skin should be slightly crispy, the meat extremely moist and lightly smokey.
I believe in choosing smoking wood very carefully. Mesquite is the best thing ever to come out of Texas, but lots of other woods will do an acceptable job. Cherry is a favorite of mine, but it is too sour if used alone, so I mix it with alder or something equally mild.
I do turkey in about the same way and it will blow any other turkey out of the water!
Enjoy!
art
Cannot believe I left the garlic, fresh pressed of course, out! Lots of garlic is a good thing!
Last edited by Sitka deer; 12/23/02.
