| Smokegrinders Smoked Turkey |
I have no idea how many turkeys I have smoked over the years, but it has to number in the hundreds. Turkey was never considered a holiday only treat, so I never needed an occasion to get turkey fever. This past Thanksgiving I combined a few old techniques with some new ideas I’ve been reading about here and other sites. With this in mind, I think I have smoked the ultimate turkey feast. Please understand when reading my how-to’s, that a step or two may be omitted without changing the overall effect, but that would be greatly dependent on which step you choose to ignore or change.
Ingredients
- 1 fresh Turkey
- Tony Chachere’s Injectable creole style butter marinade 17oz.
- generic Molasses
- 2 cooking apples
- 1 onion
- Snider’s BBQ seasoning
- Several Maple Chunks
Instructions
- Bird needs to be thawed and injected the night before the cook.
- For the injection, mix 6oz marinade with 1 tsp Snider’s and 1 oz molasses. Molasses will be pretty think, so warm up the mixture a bit and then mix well. Let the mixture cool to room temp or below before you inject. Inject the mixture into all turkey components, including breast, legs, thighs, and wings. I inject multiple times in each area, IE breast, 7 or 8 times, legs 3 times, each in different areas. You’ll notice the marinade squirting back out to tell you when you’ve injected enough.
- The bird should have some marinade dripping from several holes, so use that to rub on the dry areas of the bird. Then sprinkle on Snider’s (or your favorite rub) and rub in. Cover and place back in the refrigerator.
- The next day, remove the turkey from the fridge. Then place the bird upside down on an ice pack to keep the breast cool. While the bird is warming up a bit, start your GD with charcoal and some of your favorite chunks, I used maple. Use the indirect setup, light it up and stabilize the temp at 225°. (this sounds like a large pain, but it’s worth it.) Return to the kitchen and cut the apple and the onion into 1/2″ chunks, mix them together in a bowl, add more molasses, and sprinkle with Snider’s, (or other) and mix it up. After you feel the exposed portion of the bird has warmed a bit, and the temp in the GD has stabilized, turn the bird upright again, and once again, add more marinade injections, then stuff the cavity with your apple/onion mix. Re-apply rub where needed.
- Here’s where the Guru or Stoker comes in handy. I bring up the temp in the GD in 25° increments every 30 minutes until I get to 300°, so it’s 30minutes @ 225, 30minutes @ 250, etc. until I reach 300-325, that is where I finish the cook. (I bring it gradually to get more smoke flavor and finish off at 300-325 to keep it moist) The last 12 pounder I did took about 3 hours total. I remove the bird when the internal breast temp is 170°, then I double wrap in foil then place in an insulated container/cooler for an additional 30 minutes minimum. The turkey actually gets better the longer you wait, but it’s way too hard to wait very long. My son-in-law, the chef, said it was the best he had ever tried.
- Nothing left to do now but carve and eat. Just make sure you sit down first.
Notes
Recipe Submitted by: Ken Brown (Smokegrinder)