Smoked Turkey Recipe | How To Smoke a Whole Turkey

Hey Malcolm Reed here and I want to talk to you about smoking a whole turkey on the grill outside and if you've never tried smoked turkey man you got to quit frying them, cook it on the oven, you'll never do it again once you give this smoked turkey a try and there's a few things you got to know before you start. A lot of times it's hard to find a fresh turkey so there's going to be a thaw period when you buy them. I mean all the supermarkets have them on sale this time of year. The ones I like to smoke are about 10 to 12 pound range. They'll feed about 10 to 12 people. That's usually a typical size and I like the smaller turkey because it cooks even. If you buy the big ones a lot of times it's hard to get the dark meat done by the time the breast gets done and you won't run into that trouble in these 10 to 12 pound birds. You want to give it time to thaw them. You can speed thaw them. I don't recommend it. It's best to go ahead and give them three days in the refrigerator and that's what I did with this turkey. I bought it froze, brought it home, put it in my refrigerator in just a shallow dish because it's going to leak some juice out and water as it's thawing but let it sit in there for two or three days and slow thaw them and never let it sit outside on the counter to thaw. You don't want to do that with poultry or any meat really. It's just not safe. That's what it comes down to. If you do get in a pinch and you have to speed one quick, the other safe way is in water. You'll want to change that water out regularly but get the turkey down and submerged in some water. That'll help thaw it out and it won't denature the muscles as bad and the meat and break it up but refrigerator is your best bet. First step that we're doing when I'm smoking a turkey is the brine. I'm going to get flavors inside this turkey and on the outside. The brine is my first phase for getting some flavor on the inside and I give it a 24-hour brine and what I do, about a gallon of water and I give it a cup and a half of good salt, kosher salt, sea salt and then I go with one cup of brown sugar, a cup of this molasses and a cup of honey and then a half a cup of my rub. Three or four bay leaves go in it and then I'll just take, you can add whatever you want, peppercorns, any kind of herbs but I like to tie up a little bit of fresh thyme, throw that in the brine and then get the bird submerged. It's easier to me if you mix it up, one gallon of water with all the ingredients, let that, put it in a big pitcher, a bowl or something, let it hang out in the refrigerator too the night before you're going to brine. Then you can add your other gallon of water because it's going to take about two gallons total to get that bird submerged. What I do is I'll just bring a cooler, get a clean cooler and then buy one of these big ziploc bags and keeping it in the cooler and keeping it in this bag keeps it all contained. Then you can keep another bag of ice down in here and you don't have to worry about temperature, it's going to keep it nice and cool. We want this turkey to stay in here for 24 hours so I'm simply just going to put my bag down in my cooler and it just helps contain the mess. You want to get the turkey over in the bag I'm going to throw my time bundle off in here. We're going to cover this dude up. Now I'm just adding more water to cover the top of the bird. You want to make sure it's all submerged, stays down in the brine. Now I can set the, get it closed up here and set the bag of ice on top of it. It'll hold him down in the brine. Now I got the bird down in the bag, just seal it up, roll it down, keep my ice on him and put him to bed. This whole process with the smoked turkey started three days ago. I bought a froze turkey, it was about 12 pounds, brought it home, got it in the refrigerator and started that thaw process. After two days in there, I went ahead and got my brine ready. So that's the night before I got it all mixed up, combined, got it in the refrigerator chilling out overnight. So now it's the third day and the turkey's ready to go. It's ready to brine and it's going to take 24 hours. So you got to plan ahead if you're doing these turkeys. There's no fast method. The cooking time is going to be pretty quick. It's only going to take about three and a half hours, but I'll show you how we're going to put some more flavor in it, get it on the cooker and what all we're going to do to get this turkey to turn out better than any turkey you've ever had. Stick around. Okay, we're back. It's been 24 hours that my turkey has set in the cooler and what I did, I took it out of the bag that I had it brining in, let it drain really well and brought it into the kitchen sink and rinsed everything off. Now what we're going to do is get ready to get it on the smoker. So the first thing I do, I just take some green apples and some red apples. I like to stuff some in the cavity. I mean, it doesn't matter how many you put in or what, but I usually go with the onion, apple, a little bit of celery and it just gives it some flavor as these fruits and the vegetables cook and it'll just, it'll add a little more mass, help it cook a little more even and add some flavor from the vegetables that you cook in there. Now we want to season the bird and what I do first is use cooking spray. This is just a canola spray. You can rub canola oil on it. You can rub it down with melted butter. I like to spray. It just seems easier to me, but this helps the seasoning stick to the outside skin of the turkey, but it also helps you get that golden color and it won't be so dark and it'll look really good, keep the skin from cracking as bad. Then we're going to come back and season it and I use kind of a two-step seasoning process on smoked turkey. The first is simply a combination of salt, granulated garlic and poultry seasoning and I just mix them even in a big shaker, one of my leftover shakers and that's the first seasoning that I put on the turkey. You want to, you just want to get it coated really well. So give it a good base layer and I'm just trying to get it all over every bit of the surface of the bird here. I'll let it get down in the cavity some. Make sure I get the legs and the thighs. Now after I get it coated good with the first seasoning, I come back and I put just a little bit of my barbecue rub just because it has some different flavors to it and it's going to give that turkey some really good color and I don't go heavy with it because we're not just really going for barbecue turkey, we're doing smoked turkey and it's not going to overpower it or anything. It's just going to make it look really good as it cooks. Now the next thing I want to do is inject. I've got my trusty injector here and what I'm using to inject it is kind of my version of a creole butter. You can buy like Tony's or any of the Cajun brand, Cajun injector brands, creole butter injections, but this really makes a good injection for turkey. What I did was I started with a stick of butter, I melted it and added just eight ounces of chicken stock, a little bit of Louisiana, I think it was a table of Louisiana hot sauce and then a teaspoon each of granulated garlic to kind of give it that garlic butter flavor and some Louisiana seasoning. So you can make that up your own, you can buy one at the store. I'll have the recipe on the newsletter there, but when I'm injecting the turkey I want to just hit about three spots in the breast and we're just trying to add some flavor and moisture inside there. You don't want to go too deep, you just want to make sure you're shooting it up. You only need probably about 12 ounces total. Don't really worry about the wings, but the breast and the thighs and the legs, I like to get some additional flavor in them. Okay, there's certain spots you know that I wanted to hit on that turkey. You'll notice I hit the breast three or four good times on each side, then I come back down the leg about two or three sticks and hit the thigh two or three times. That's your key areas in a turkey you want to inject. You can come back and shoot more up down and deep along in there, like kind of down in the wing if you have some extra, but that's the main points you want to get flavor down. Okay, now I've pretty much got the turkey ready to go on the smoker. I like to use a butcher's twine on it because if you cook a turkey and it's all spread out, your legs, your wings are all going to dry out way before these big breasts and thighs get done, so at least tie the leg. Now we're ready to go outside and get the smoker fired up and I'm going to get it on and show you how we cook it. We're going to be cooking about 275 to 300 degrees today and it's going to take about three and a half hours, so I'll show you what it's like on the grill in just a second. Okay, we're out at the grill. I've got it fired up and hit about 300 degrees. I'm cooking this one on my yoder with some pecan pellets, just like the flavor that that pecan gives, and it doesn't fancy me. I just get it on here, get it centered up, and then get the grill closed down and let it do its magic. I'm going to start it out with the breast to the front. As it cooks, I'll come out and rotate it and I'm going to keep an eye on it. I don't want the turkey to get too dark. That's one thing when you're smoking turkeys, they tend to the outside will get dark on you before it gets done. If it starts happening, you can spray it with more cooking spray or you can baste it or you can just simply lay some aluminum foil over it like a tent, and that's typically what I do because I want it to be a golden color. I don't want it to be real dark. I want the flavors to shine through and you want to eat the skin that comes off this turkey because I'm cooking it at a higher temp. The skin's going to be perfect when it gets done, so stick with me. I'll show you how I cook it. Okay, it's been about an hour and a half. Usually it takes about three and a half hours to get a 10 to 12 pound turkey done to where I want it internally. It's looking really good. It's not getting too dark yet. I think I'm still going to go ahead and kind of just give it a spin just to make sure it's cooking even. I want everything cooking right, but it looks really good. The color is nice. You can see it's got that golden color to it. That's what you want. You don't want it to get too dark. I'll start probing it here in a little while, probably another 45 minutes just to see where I'm at. I don't want to take it over, but I want it to be at least 165 in the breast area and 175 down here in the thigh, but it's looking really good. We're going to continue letting it cook. The cooker's still right between 275 and 300, so that's where you want it. That's where you want to cook a turkey. Okay, it's been another hour, so the total cook time is about two and a half hours, and I wanted to come out and kind of see how things are going and show you where I'm going to check my internal temps. I'm just going to give this turkey a turn so you can see what I'm doing here. It's looking really good. I'd like to check it in the deep part of the thigh back here. This is where I'm looking for temps, and it needs to be about 175 back here. We're about 156. It's climbing a little, but that's pretty good. Juice has still got a little color to it, so we're going to let it go. I'll probably keep an eye on it about 30 minutes, come back and check it. There we go. All right, we're back checking our internal to see where we are. First, I'm going to check in the breast here and see what it is. It stopped about 163 and a half. I'd like to see 165, so I'm going to check back here in the thigh and see where it's at. What I am going to do after I've got about 31 minutes cooking, I don't want it to get any darker than what it is, so I'm going to go ahead and add some aluminum foil. This is what I said you could do to keep it from getting too dark. Just kind of tint it over the top of the bird. You don't have to wrap it tight or anything, but that's going to keep that direct heat off of it, keep it from getting too dark. Okay, it's been about 30 more minutes, and try to go right back in the same spot here and check that breast. Look at that, 166. I know that dude's done. Juice is running clear coming out. It's time to get it off and let it rest a little bit. This is the finished product with our smoked turkey that we've done today, and total time was right about three hours, 45 minutes to get this one exactly where I wanted it. Turned out great. I did want to show you. I want to cut it so you can see just how juicy it is and what it looks like inside. Of course, I want to try some too, but look at all that juice running. You can see the marinade that we shot in it. Man, I know it's just going to be really good. Oh, it's moist as it could be. That's fine turkey. I'm telling you, if you've never done a smoked turkey, give this technique a try because everybody's going to love it. Your family's going to love it. There's not going to be anything left on Thanksgiving, but try it. It's better than cooked in the oven. It's better than deep fried. If you like what we're doing on howtobbqright.com, sign up for our newsletter. We'll keep sending out techniques on cooking delicious meat like this. Like our YouTube channel. May all the subscribers help. Send us some comments. We'll get back to you. We love the feedback. Have a happy Thanksgiving, everybody, and go smoke some turkeys.