Smoked turkey - my favorite bird

[lakemirror]

Not a lot of discussion about smoked turkey on the forum, but Mad Cow seems to have it right. Being an American I do more turkeys at Thanksgiving than at Christmas and I have smoked one every 4th Thursday in November for many years. Recently fried turkey has become popular as well but I leave that version to my brother in law. We often end up with one smoked, one fried, and one from the oven. I'll be traveling back to the states this year for Thanksgiving and have already signed up for the smokey version.

Here is my favorite brine, lifted without shame from the virtual Weber bullet web site:

2 quarts apple juice
1 pound brown sugar (light or dark)
1 cup Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt
3 quarts cold water
3 oranges, quartered
4 ounces fresh ginger, unpeeled and thinly sliced
15 whole cloves
6 bay leaves
6 large garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
Substitute 3/4 cup Morton Kosher Salt or 1/2 cup table salt for Diamond Crystal.

Combine apple juice, brown sugar, and salt in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring to dissolve. Boil for one minute, remove from heat, let mixture come to room temperature, then refrigerate to 40°F.

In a large non-reactive container, combine the apple juice mixture with the remaining ingredients. When adding the oranges, squeeze each piece to release the juice into the container, then drop in the peel.

This recipe calls for a 24 hour brine but the bird has to be kept at 40f or below during the process, which would probably use the entire stock of ice from my local Tesco. I find a shorter brine works, but not less than 12 hours. No matter, I intend to fire up the WSM this Christmas and fill the Dorset air with lovely apple smoke.

[Steve]

I always smoke a turkey at Crimbo. I'll give this brine a go this year as it sounds like a good one.

Tip for you now you're in blighty, look out for bronze turkeys, IMHO they're the best you can get in Emgland.

[All Weather Griller]

I also do the Smoke Turkey at Christmas, they are fantastic! I always avoided Turkey as I thought it was a dry and flavourless meat. However, I trailed one before new year in 2007 and have never looked back. In fact at Christmas 2008 I was up at 03:00 hours putting 2 into the WSM. 1 for me and 1 for a mates mum.

We used one of Nigella's brines at the time, but it looks likes like I'll be giving this brine a go. In fact I have just created an appointment in Outlook so I don't lose track of the details. LOL

[stickthekettleon]

Ha! Same here, I didn't feel like such a fool stood at my BBQ on christmas. I took solace in the fact that there were some other nutters I know across the UK doing the exact same thing.

[philnewts]

Hi Couple of questions as I would love to try this.

How do you get a nice crispy skin?
Would you cook this at 250 Degrees or higher?

Thanks

[stickthekettleon]

Hi Phil. I tend to cook turkey even lower. If I can get it around 200 I'm happy. I smoke for an hour-ish depending what wood I'm using, and then probably foil wrap 3 or so hours in. Really low and slow is the way to go if you dont want a dry bird, wrap in plenty of foil layers too, keep all them juices for moisture and when you finished cooking the turkey we use it to make the gravy.

Not too sure about crispy skin tho, I never bother with it, more of a breast man really.

[lakemirror]

Hi Couple of questions as I would love to try this.

How do you get a nice crispy skin?

The recipe (see the link above) calls for air-drying the turkey in the fridge for 12 hours. I think this would make MY skin crispy, too.

Would you cook this at 250 Degrees or higher?

I tend to cook turkey even lower. If I can get it around 200 I'm happy.

I cook higher, over 300. With the length of the brine on this one, dry meat has not been a problem.

[Steve]

I also cook Turkey higher, 300+ because the skin is thicker than chicken and a real pig to get crispy.

I've played around with using food-grade alcohol to help dry chicken skin, it does work and I reckon it would work on turkey skin too.

[lakemirror]

Alcohol dried out my skin, no reason to believe it wouldn't work on poultry!

[stickthekettleon]