Here's how you can serve
a delicious smoked turkey that you're proud of
this Thanksgiving and holiday season.
No one wants to eat a dried out bland turkey
on Thanksgiving day.
In this video, I answer the most common questions
I get asked about smoking a perfect turkey,
including preparation, temperatures and cook times,
cooking equipment and slicing.
No matter what cooker you have this holiday season,
follow these tips for a delicious, perfect bird.
Let's fire it up.
Number one, make sure it is completely thawed.
Most of the time you need to give that turkey
two, three, four days, depending on the size,
to thaw inside the refrigerator.
Nothing worse than a dried out bland turkey
is one that's halfway cooked,
deep down where the thighs are,
which is the last part of the turkey
that actually gets done.
Tip number two, you want to make sure you have nice,
steady and consistent temperatures
throughout the entire cooking process.
Remember, if you're looking, you're not cooking.
So don't be opening that lid every five minutes.
Tip number three, and this is very important,
do use some kind of a meat thermometer.
I like to use a Thermapen Mk4 or a lollipop, I have both.
Get something that's good and accurate.
Throw away those thermometers
that come built into the turkey.
They're notoriously inaccurate.
Tip number four, brine your turkey
for maximum moisture and flavor.
A lot of turkeys already come with a brining solution
in them and this Riverside turkey is one of them.
So make sure you read that label.
This one here says it has a 6% solution
of sodium, salt, water and a few other ingredients.
So you can still benefit by brining this one,
but make sure you use a lot less salt,
like maybe half of the normal brine process.
Tip number five, make sure you cook it
to where the thermometer reads somewhere around 155 to 165
in the deepest part of the thigh.
That is the last part of the turkey to get done.
And you definitely want it to be at least
at that temperature and also once you pull it out to rest,
it's going to go up another 10, 15 degrees,
at least, sometimes as high as 20.
Again, depending on the size of the turkey
and the ambient temperature.
Tip number six, baste it with some delicious butter.
Now you can use a compound butter.
I like to smash a couple of garlics
and baste my turkey with a little bit of garlic
and a little bit of butter
and sometimes even a little bit of onion.
And tip number seven,
make sure you rest that turkey at least 15 minutes or so
to try and let the moisture stay inside the turkey.
If you start carving, when it's super hot,
all that delicious juice,
you're going to run out onto your cutting board.
All right, so there are seven really great tips
to guide you through the entire cooking process.
So we've got our little, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter
blended with a little bit of water.
So we're going to add even more moisture
and some delicious flavor to the turkey.
On this 20 pound turkey,
it was approximately a cup and a half.
Next thing you want to do
is you want to dry this turkey up really good.
We're going to put a little bit of olive oil
to help that rub stick.
It also enhances the color.
Couple of things I'm going to recommend that you check
is the cavity.
There's nothing in here inside,
but you want to make sure you check the neck cavity as well.
Cause this is where they usually have the giblets.
Reach your fingers in there,
make sure there's nothing else in there.
Yep, it's all good now, all right.
So we have our turkey, very nice and dry.
We're going to take us a little bit of olive oil
and just kind of drizzle it all over the turkey.
Spread it out with your other hand,
make sure you get it on the wings,
right up here under the thighs,
all over that beautiful breast.
And I'm just going to use my, Wow!
This is a steak rub, so it does have a little bit of salt
and it has a couple of
really nice flavor enhancing ingredients.
I'm just going to season up this side first here, like this,
make sure you get the fat of the wing
and you can be fairly generous
because we're only going to do a one rub coat.
Okay, we're going to twist it around
and make sure we get some up under here.
Make sure you get it under the wing.
Just a smudge, get it all over that breast.
And come all the way over here.
Do this side, too, let that wing come down,
get this part of the wing too.
You can be pretty generous on a turkey
because it's a big piece of meat.
It's going to cook in this case for about four hours.
It's going to sweat during the cooking process.
So some of this rub is going to fall off.
Okay, now the next thing that I want to do
is tuck these wings under the breast just like that.
There we go.
I want to tie my drumsticks.
I don't like to tie em' super tight like that.
I like it to have a little bit of breathing room.
What I like to do is just stuff a little bit of onion,
white onion, I'ma stuff that in there.
And I went ahead and cut up three garlics
and I'm going to put a little bit of onion
and a little bit of garlic up in here too.
All right and then one final thing I like to do is,
this was one whole stick of butter.
I'm going to stick that whole stick of butter in there
and push it way back there in the back.
But those couple of ingredients in there
are going to really steam in there
and add some great flavor to the turkey.
All right, we've got our pellet grill going.
I'm going to set it for 300 degrees
and it should be done in about four hours.
We're going to go ahead and insert a meat probe.
One right down here,
part of the thigh that takes the longest to cook.
Make sure you get past the bone,
get down there a little bit deeper.
With the lowest part of the thigh.
I'm also going to insert one right here in the breast,
right along that keel bone.
And that's going to help us monitor
our internal temperatures.
All right, I'm going to start out right around 300 degrees.
I want to get a little bit of smoke, number one.
Number two, I want that heat to travel
into the turkey slow so we don't push out any moisture.
We want to try and keep as much moisture
inside the turkey as we possibly can.
It's been an hour and 25 minutes.
Have not looked at the turkey.
We're going to go ahead and take a quick look at it.
I'm going to change the rack underneath
just to make it a little bit easier to rotate it.
Let's do a little bastey-baste.
I went ahead and took out the neck
and we're just going to drizzle
a little bit of butter on here.
We don't want to put too much
because we don't want to wipe off the rub.
Just wanna baste it.
Just a little bit of butter on this side here.
All right, now here's something to look out for
when you're cooking on a pellet grill like this,
you're going to have a lot of radiant heat
coming up from the bottom.
So I'll show you guys a clip of the temperature probe
in just a minute and you can see where the thigh
is cooking a lot quicker than the breast.
It's a pretty big difference in temperature.
So I'm going to put some water in the little pan I have
underneath the turkey.
That's going to act as a buffer,
as an insulator to slow down the cooking process underneath.
All right, I also pulled out my turkey neck a while ago.
I'm going to go ahead and break that up.
Put it in this little butter pan.
I'm gonna go take that inside and use this for our gravy.
Woo. Woo. Let's go, baby.
All right, friends.
We just basted our turkey the second time.
It's been exactly two and a half hours.
You can see, I also rotated the turkey.
There's something you have to be very aware of,
where your probe is actually hitting the meat
because it might be hitting a bone.
It might be a little too low,
close to the deflector down underneath.
So, it's probably getting a false reading,
but we're going to (indistinct) find out
what the other thigh is right here.
It really is 164 degrees,
163.
Look at all that juice running out of there. Wow.
All right, let's try it down here.
Nope. See down here, that's just on the outside.
Down here
it's 132 degrees.
No where near done.
That's more in line with what the breast is at.
The breast is at 137
and right now we're sitting at 132 here.
Well, now I know where we're at
I'm not going to worry about it,
we're just gonna let it cook.
It's been going two and a half hours
and I do think we're going to need a good hour and a half
possibly two yet.
All right, turkey lovers,
I went ahead and rearranged the probe
so you can see there
that it's actually about
11 degrees off.
Probe A is in the thigh,
in the deepest part of the thigh where it's the coldest
and the breast is already at 155 degrees,
so our breasts might dry out on us just a little bit.
I think part of the situation here is that that turkey
is 20 pounds and the breast is way up high
and the heat does tend to rise.
So it's cooking the breast a little bit quicker
than the thighs, but you know how I say, make it work,
we'll get it figured out.
Let's see what it looks like when it's done.
We'll be right back.
All right, friends, you can see, I cranked it up to 425,
cause we're almost done.
And I wanted to put an extra little bit of color
on my turkey skin.
Make it look even pertier if I crank it up
for just about 10 minutes.
Now I'm going to take it all the way back down.
I just want to get a little extra smoke on there
and let that turkey finish cooking nice and slow.
All right, we'll be back in a little while.
All right, my turkey loving friends,
our breast is at 177 and our thigh at the deepest part
is 159, I'm going to go ahead and pull it
and we're going to let it rest 15, 20 minutes.
And then we're going to slice it up for you guys.
It's been four hours and 23 minutes,
including the rest.
So from when we first put our turkey into the pellet grill
and got it going.
I had it running at 300 degrees for the first hour,
maybe hour and a half.
I started at 300, after that first hour and a half,
I cranked it up to 350.
And when that turkey was,
when the breast was at about 160 degrees,
my thighs were lagging behind a little bit
about eight degrees or nine or so.
I cranked it up to 425 to get that extra little blast
of color and crispness.
Then I turned it way down to 225
once it was just about done.
And I let it sit there for another 10 minutes with smoke.
I got a lot more smoke, a last little blast of smoke,
which I really think we're going to taste into the turkey.
It turned out beautiful, it looks gorgeous.
Total cook time of about four hours almost to the dot.
And remember this was a 20 pound turkey.
Either way the Wow! did a beautiful job
with that butter baste.
Now in my baste, I had butter, garlic and onions
and a little bit of rosemary.
And so I just basted it twice,
only once at about the one hour and 20 minutes.
And then I basted it again about another hour later.
You don't want to be opening that lid
and basting it over and over and over and over.
All right, so now it's time to start carving up this turkey.
So I'm going to go ahead and remove this drumstick first.
Look at that, that looks nice. Look at that.
We even have a nice little smoke ring on there.
That is nice. Let's put this drumstick right here.
Oops a little piece fell off.
Hmm, it's good.
Oh yeah.
All right here is another drum stick right there.
I'm going to feel for that keel bone right here.
And I'm just going to follow the line.
Wow. Still steaming hot.
Okay.
I'm going to cut along the bottom here.
Try to get this whole breast removed.
Yep, there's the bone right there.
That keel bone.
This thing is steaming hot still.
Look at that, that's sure looks pretty, very, very nice.
There's one whole breast.
All right for now,
we're going to get other breast out of here.
Man it's really juicy too.
Okay, let's get this other breast off completely.
(whistles)
All right, let's get this out of the way here.
There we go.
Wow look at all the juice.
This thing is super moist and super juicy.
All right so we have the main part
that everybody likes to eat.
It's usually the drumsticks and the breast
and sometimes the wings.
So I'm just going to carve up those parts.
I'm not going to worry about the thighs right now.
I'm going to set these wings aside over on this side
and there's the tender coming off.
Look, how juicy that is.
Oh my goodness.
That's just very, very juicy.
Not dry at all, comes apart really nice and easy.
All right I'm going to carve up the breast right here
and let you guys see what it looks like.
Remember, we injected a little bit of that
I Can't Believe It's Not Butter in there.
So I'm pretty sure that helps with some of the moisture.
I'm not even sure the camera will capture that,
but you can definitely see that moisture in there.
It's really, really moist.
You squeeze it.
You can see that you can see the butter right there,
so that makes it extra moist too.
Mmm,
very good.
I took a taste of the breast.
It's perfectly cooked, it's moist, it's juicy,
it's delicious, the skin looks beautiful.
I'm going to take a piece of this drumstick here.
See how good that is.
Wow, it just fell right off.
Look at how pretty that little smoke ring is
right there also.
You know, that pellet grill does a really good job.
Mmm.
I do think it could have used a little more smoke.
Probably if I had started it a little bit slower,
like 225 for the first two hours,
I would have had a little more smoke flavor, I can taste it,
but I liked a little bit more.
It just so happened this time I sped it up,
put it up at 350, either way, I promise
you will not be disappointed with this turkey.
It just tastes amazing, it's great and it's wonderful,
but I'm just being really honest with you guys
and saying that I would probably start it
a little bit slower next time
so I can get a little extra smoke.
All right my turkey loving friends, we carved up the turkey,
we carved up the breast. I got to taste some of that.
It was really good, it was moist, juicy and delicious.
The drumstick tasted really great too.
I can taste that little hint of the hickory
and the smoke flavor.
I want to say that recteq pellet grill
did an amazing job of cooking it in exactly four hours.
This was a 20 pound turkey.
Y'all be sure to check out my Wow! seasoning,
that's what I used on the turkey.
As you can see it put a really pretty color on there,
along with that little bit of a butter baste
and check out my online barbecue classes at
pitmasterclass.us.
This turkey turned out amazing.
If you have any questions or comments,
put them in the comment below.
Make sure you hit the like button
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Keep the smoke light and make it work. Boom!