SMOKING RECIPE CLIFF NOTES:
- Clean out turkey insides and trim fat
- Inject the turkey with a light salt brine
- Make the salt-free rub and mix with some water to make a wet rub
- Cover the turkey in melted butter
- Spread the wet rub all over the turkey
- Put the turkey on the smoker at 325F until the breast meat hits 160F (~13 min/lb)
- Pull the turkey, carve it up, and serve
Next week is Thanksgiving, and for the first time, we are hosting some family. And so that means, I am in charge of cooking the turkey. So naturally, I decided I'm going to smoke it.
Having never done this before, I decided that I better do a trial run on it. While I plan to get a natural/unfrozen 14-15lb turkey for the main event, I did my practice run with an 11lb frozen (already injected, more to follow on this) butterball.
11lb thawed butterball turkey
Because the turkey was frozen, I had to buy it a few days in advance to give it plenty of time to thaw out in the fridge. I got it three days ahead of when I planned to cook it, and it's a good thing, because when I pulled it out to get started, it was still ever so slightly still frozen. But good enough to move forward. I put it in some cold water in a bowl to do the final thawing out as I got my smoker going.
For this cook, I wanted my Weber Smokey Mountain to average around 325F. Unlike my other big meats such as brisket or pork shoulder, the higher temp helps the turkey cook faster but more importantly, helps the skin get crispier. To fire up my smoker, I went with a full chimney of lit charcoal, and once they were in the base, I added half a chimney of unlit charcoal on top of it. When the turkey goes on, I popped in a few chunks of apple wood.
Cleaned out turkey
Once the smoker was lit and the turkey was completely thawed, I started "cleaning" it. To do this, I simply removed everything from the inner cavities and saved these for the drip pan (except for the liver which I threw away). I then trimmed any excess fat around the openings. And I untied the legs to let them cook openly.
Now there's lots of talk about brining poultry, including a turkey. If mine had not been injected with a salt solution at the factory (such as when I cook it on actual Thanksgiving), I will definitely do a brine to help the meat retain moisture. But since this had already been filled, I decided that I would instead inject the turkey with a brine just before I put it on the smoker. The injection was 4 cups of water, 2tbsps salt, and 1tbsp of sugar. Then I made my rub to go all over the turkey.
Dry rub prepared to go on the turkey
As always, credit to Amazing Ribs where I always start on my smoking research for anything new. There I got the recipe for this salt-free rub that seemed like it would go very well with turkey. It had a whole list of herbs, and you can find the specific recipe here.
Once the rub was ready, I put some in a bowl and added water to it to make a wet rub. Before I started putting it all over the turkey, I melted some butter and rubbed that all over it. That may have been liquid over-kill on the outside of the bird, but I figured who doesn't like a little extra butter on pretty much anything? Plus, butter helps the skin crisp up while it's smoking.
Put the wet rub all over the turkey
Rubbed up turkey from the front
Rubbed up turkey from the back
After rubbing the butter all over the turkey, I then put the wet rub all over, on both the outside and underneath the skin where I could. The turkey skin is pretty thick so it's actually easy to force your hands underneath it to really get the rub everywhere.
Drip pan to make thin gravy
The last thing to do before putting the turkey on the smoker was the get the drip pan ready. As mentioned earlier, I had already put the insides of the turkey, as well as the turkey neck, in the pan. I then added quartered onions, celery, carrots, and some of the dry rub. And then filled it nearly to the top with water. Not only would this collect the drippings from the turkey, but the water will help add moisture to the smoker, in place of my usual water bowl.
Turkey on the smoker
And with that, the turkey was ready to go on the smoker. I put the drip pan on the lower rack, as you can see in the picture above. And then the turkey went on top with the meat thermometer plugged into the thigh, because it's the thickest/meatiest part of the bird.
And then, we wait. This was a low maintenance smoking session so there wasn't much for me to do but make sure the smoker temp stayed around 325F. My plan was to pull the turkey when it got to 160F in the breasts, as that would mean the legs/thighs are probably closer to 170F. My expectations were for an 11lb turkey to take about 2.5-3 hours to cook.
Finished product - smoked turkey!
Smoked turkey from a different angle
And one more angle - from the back
Drip pan filled with the "thin gravy"
Carved up turkey - let's eat!
Sure enough, after almost exactly 2.5 hours, the turkey was ready to be pulled. The meat thermometer was only reading 152F - short of my 160F target - but when I went and checked it with my thermopen, I saw a number of 170F+ readings. I was actually worried that I had over cooked it, but that wasn't the case.
I pulled the drip pan out and poured the contents through a strainer so just the liquid "thin gravy" would be saved. This was used as an add-on to the turkey, not as much in a traditional gravy sense, but more as an au jus to complement the meat. I think it was pretty water-y, a bit too much for my liking, but it would be very helpful if the meat is a little too dry.
I carved up the turkey right away, as there really was no reason for it to sit around. And you can see from the last picture above the final display. I carved up one each of a drumstick, leg, and thigh, and left one of each un-carved. I then carved up the breasts completely.
I think everything tasted pretty good. The moisture was excellent - the meat was very juicy - so I was happy with my limited brining decision. Plus, it wasn't too salty which was another thing I worried about with brining. The only thing I didn't love was I had too much of the rub on the breasts. It was an overpowering flavor on the part of the meat. When I do it again for Thanksgiving, I'm going to go a little lighter on how much I put on the turkey. Otherwise, everything was great.
SMOKING RECIPE CLIFF NOTES:
- Clean out turkey insides and trim fat
- Inject the turkey with a light salt brine
- Make the salt-free rub and mix with some water to make a wet rub
- Cover the turkey in melted butter
- Spread the wet rub all over the turkey
- Put the turkey on the smoker at 325F until the breast meat hits 160F (~13 min/lb)
- Pull the turkey, carve it up, and serve
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