Whole Smoked Turkey
 

As requested in the Beer Can Chicken topic, here is my recipe for a whole smoked turkey. I tried this a few years back, and I'll never have an old dried-out Thanksgiving bird again. I also INSIST on cooking the turkey if I'm going anywhere other than my home for Thanksgiving. Sorry I don't have pictures, I'll do this around Thanksgiving and either repost this with pix, or add pix to this topic.

First, determine just how much room your cooker has to work with. My Patio Classic has a very high dome lid, which will accomidate a 20+ pounder. You don't want to get some mega bird only to discover it doesn't fit on your grill.

Next, spend the extra money and geat a FRESH, all-natural, NOT self-basting turkey. Yeah, they cost more, but in the longrun, it simply makes a better bird. If you can only get a frozen one, make sure it does not have a salt solution added. This may be disguizes as being called "enhansed." If it's in there, the label legally must say so, so look all over to be sure.

The next step is a long one, brining. You'll need a 5 gallon "food-safe" bucket for this. The orange multi-purpose buckets from Home Deopt work for this, just make sure you sanitize it before use. Next you'll need to determine how much brine you need to completely submerge the bird. Depending on size 2-3 gallons is usually enough. Now it's time to prepare the brine.
This is the basic brine for each gallon needed.
1 gallon cold water
1 cup Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
From there, you can get creative. You cah chop up a few apples in the blender and add those to the brine, for a subtle sweetness. You can add anything you think would give a little flavor to the brine.
A frozen bird will need to be completely thawed prior to brining. Remove all giblits, plastic cooking guage, leg restraints or whatever else may be attached to the bird before placing into the brine. We want bird, the whole bird, and nothing but the bird in the brine.
Keep the bird brined in the refrigerator anywhere from 12 - 48 hours, depending on how much salt and sugar you want to introduce into the meat. I usually let mine go for about 28 hours. You may be asking "What's the point of buying a no salt added bird if I'm just going to brine it, thereby adding salt to the turkey?" Good question. The difference is the fact that YOU control exactly how much salt goes into the turkey, not them. The longer the brine time, the more salt goes in. Also the enhansed birds will have far more salt than what we are looking for.

When the bird is done brining, remove from brine, rinse with cold water and fire up the coals. Prepare the cooker for a higher-heat cook, indirect heat, about 300 - 350 degrees. Unlike ribs, pork shoulder or brisket, these higher temps to not adversly affect turkey meat.

Rub me up! Prepare a dry rub for the turkey, here is the mix...
2 TBSP Spice Hunter brand Cajun Creole Seasoning (or any salt-free cajun spice you can find)
2 tsp granulated garlic powder
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried oregano
4-5 bay leaves, medium size
You'll need to grind up the bay leaves as fine as you can get them. Mix all ingredients well. Apply a thin coat of olive oil to the turkey and apply the rub to all parts, as evenly as possible. Use the whole batch of rub and get a good overall coverage.

Add smoke woods of your choosing. Hickory and mesquite are the strongest, and I don't use them. I use oak, cherry, apple, citrus, maple or alder. When the cooker is in it's optimal range, start cooking. You may want to wrap the wings in foil so they don't get too crispy.

Using a digital probe thermometer, guage the doneness in the thickest part of the breast. In general, you are looking for 165 in the breast or 175 in the thigh. A brined bird will cook rather quickly, so don't be surprised if a small turkey is done in a little over 2 hours. When this has been achieved, remove from cooker, wrap well in foil, wrap in old towells, and place in an ice chest without ice. Rest turkey for at least 30 minutes. It can survive in this configuration for 4 hours or more, and still remain piping hot. When ready to eat, remove and enjoy!

Now if i only had a smoker, I hate living in a 3rd floor apartment. Have room for grills (gas and charcoal), but if i put any more cooking equipment on the balcony my wife will kill me

I smoke them all the time. I don't use the brine all the time and it makes a huge
difference. I'm kind of a spur of the moment shopper. If I see a turkey and want it today I buy it and just smoke it! I save the brinning for planned events! I wish I had access to the fruit woods. Oak and hickory that's about all I can get.

I don't smoke my bird and I have never had a dry turkey. You just have to roast it right.

Mine are always Golden Brown and juicy. I'm cooking mine up on the weekend.

Bumping it up, because it's turkey season!

I've never had a problem with a dry turkey either...but then lots of people forget about their meat thermometer :)

I'm looking forward to trying a trick I picked up from Rachael Ray's show: basting the bird with herb-infused butter. While she just cooked breasts, they came out looking deliciously golden, and I imagine the herb butter adds a great flavor to the skin (which is one of my favorite parts).

We'll see how it goes.

If you are an afficianado of skin... best way to do it (I've done this with chicken forever) is loosen the skin betweent he breast and the skin... and put some butter/garlic/shallots/lemon... whatever you want in there... makes for an equisite tasting bird. (chicken i've actually stuffed the area between the breast and the skin with a mix of spinach and feta cheese... yum yum)

Basting... use a bottle of wine for the basting.... improves the pan juices for gravy incredibly.

Stuff a bunch of lemon halves in the cavity of the bird and/or many many MANY cloves of garlic...

Just a couple of things to add....I smoke mine with Apple wood. It is the perfect wood to use for poultry. soak the chips for a few (3 or 4) hours in a CHEAP red wine (no i mean really cheap...don't spend more than 6 or 7 bucks a gallon for it). I did a wild turkey this way and it turned out amazing, so much so that I'll never cook another bird in the oven.

Brining...
 

Brining is absolutely key. Here's my favorite brine, though sadly I cannot take credit for it. It produces a turkey that is absolutely out of this world. You can use this for frying turkeys in peanut oil as well:

Fat Man's Chicken Kickin' Brine

Ingredients:
2 gallons Water
1 tbs. Fresh Ground Black Pepper
4 Bay leaves
1 tbs. Old Bay Seasoning
1 tbs. Dave's Insanity Sauce
1 ¼ c. Pickling Salt
3 tbs. Light Brown Sugar
3 tbs. Garlic Powder
1 tbs. Chili Powder
1 tbs. ground sage
2 tbs. Crushed Red Pepper
1 recipe Italian Seasoning

Combine all ingredients in a stock pot. Bring to a boil, turn heat down to a simmer. Simmer and stir frequently until all ingredients are disolved. Allow to cool to room temperature before immersing meat. Brine for 48 hours and cook however you like.



DO NOT leave out the Dave's Insanity Sauce. It adds just a perfect amount of heat. It does NOT make the turkey hot at all (even though Dave's taken straight is like liquid fire). It just adds a great little flavor to it.

Enjoy.

-D

Unfortunately, my father is allergic to sulfites. Therefore, no wine can go into any cooking I do where he will eat the food (unlike the alcohol, the sulfites don't cook out). But that's a great idea for when Dad's not eating.

Well there are sulfite free wines out there, Some of them are not bad either.

We always smoke the turkey for thanksgiving, but we've never brined it like that... Sounds good, we'll have to give it a shot.

I like the whole idea of having the turkey in a brine.
Does anybody have any ideas how to make something like this for the people like me who don't have smokers? Maybe a make-shift one, or will it taste thesame if we throw it in the oven?