Michael Symon's Spatchcock Smoked Turkey | Symon's Dinners Cooking Out | Food Network

Welcome to Simon's Dinners Cooking Out. We have the Thanksgiving edition going right now. It is a nice crisp fall day. I am loving life. A slight chill in the air and football on the horizon. Everything is right in my world. So we're gonna make a spatchcock turkey on the grill. Really fun way to do your Thanksgiving turkey. It's quicker and you have more oven space if you're cooking outside. We're also going to make my grandfather's almost famous corn pudding. It is a Simon staple. Liz is gonna show us how to make some delicious pecan tassies. We have some green bean salad. Family is gonna be joining me later. Life is good. First things first, we're gonna make a marinade for our spatchcock turkey. So for the marinade, I have two whole oranges. We're just gonna split those and juice them. There you go, the juices. I have about six cloves of garlic here. We're just gonna give these a little smash so they kinda release some of their oils into the marinade. Skins and everything. Some extra virgin olive oil. And some maple syrup, which is fall happiness right there. Do I have to use maple syrup? Is there something else that would work? Maple syrup, Liv. I said maple syrup. No, if you do not have maple syrup, honey would work. And you just want something a little bit sweet in here. So even if you wanted to whisk in a touch of brown sugar or something of that nature, so you have some options there. Now, what we're gonna do with the marinade is I'm gonna take half and pour it into the bowl. And this is where our turkey's gonna hang out. And I'm gonna save a little bit so I could baste the turkey as it's smoking. So I have a 10 pound turkey. So we're gonna take our turkey off and we're gonna spatchcock it. What we're looking to take out here is not the breast and the legs and the thighs, but the backbone of the turkey. When we cook it this way, it cuts the cooking time down in about half. So I'm gonna stand the turkey up, the breast side away from me, the backbone towards me. And then I'm gonna take my knife and just go straight down. All right, I'm getting in here. I'm just going between the thighs and I'm going straight down till I reach the board. And that's the first half of the backbone. And then same thing. You could do this with kitchen shears. I like doing it with a knife. I just find it that it's a little easier. You need really sharp shears to do this. I'm gonna cut this in half. Oh, sorry, Norman. Norman, it's just a little bit of turkey. And I'm gonna put the backbones in a pot. I just have celery, carrots, onions, water goes on top. And I'll set this on the grill when I have the turkey going and we're gonna have turkey stock so then we can make our gravy later. Now to finish the situation, we turn it. I spread out the legs and the thighs and I'm gonna push the breastbone down to flatten this out. There's gonna be a little, you could kind of hear it happening, don't panic. And that is a spatchcock turkey. It's gonna cook a lot quicker this way. You feeling me, Liv? I got it. I mean, I'm gonna let you do that every Thanksgiving, but I'll watch. You'll watch, okay. So I'm just gonna give my hands a quick little wash now before I season this up. So I'm not touching everything with my dirty hands. We're gonna season both sides, good amount of kosher salt. We're outdoors, so you gotta play the wind a little bit. Play the wind. Some cracked black pepper. Same thing on the other side. Kosher salt, cracked black pepper. And then we drop this into our marinade. This is gonna sit in the marinade minimally four hours up to overnight. Just give it a toss so we kind of coat it. And I have one underneath that has been marinating for four hours. I also have let this come out to room temperature. So it's been sitting at room temperature for about an hour. We have our grill set. I have the coals in the back. I have no coals in the front. So this is gonna be offset heat. And we're gonna put the turkey in there skin side up. So I can put the stock in the back here. We take our turkey out of the marinade, skin side up. And this is gonna cook very evenly for roughly 90 minutes. You're looking for 160 internal temp in the thickest part of the breast and in the thickest part of the thigh. Then you know your turkey is done. So the lid goes down. If you were doing this inside, you would set your oven to 375 to 400 degrees. Everything else would remain the same. I'm gonna take the turkey out. Please do. So we can let it rest. Oh my gosh, Liz, look at this turkey. It's gorgeous. All right, so turkey comes off. We're gonna let the turkey rest. Wow, that smells so good. It smells like Thanksgiving. Oh my gosh. I'm drooling. I mean, don't drool on the turkey, Liz. I'm so hungry.