Meet the Jewish Turkey King of Texas
‘The beautiful burnished dark golden brown skin is the result of the lengthy smoking process,’ says Sam Greenberg, the founder’s grandson. Image by Courtesy of Greenberg’s Smoked Turkey
Around Thanksgiving, Greenberg Smoked Turkey of Tyler, Texas, ships more than 10,000 birds around the world.
So who’s this Greenberg?
According to the St. Louis Jewish Light, Samuel Greenberg was a Polish immigrant who settled in Texas more than a century ago and smoked birds using his grandmother’s recipe. The company still follows it.
After getting smeared with a proprietary rub, the turkeys enter one of 20 smokehouses, each equipped with three hickory wood fires. The birds get smoked for 16 to 18 hours.
“The beautiful burnished dark golden brown skin is the result of the lengthy smoking process,” says Sam Greenberg, the founder’s grandson, who has run the business since 1982. “Not from the addition of any artificial color.”
More Hot Dish
Michael Kaminer is a contributing editor at the Forward. Contact him at kaminer@forward.com
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
