hey guys happy Thanksgiving retired at 40 here I just got done making this
beautiful bird on the traeger and if you follow these easy directions you
probably have the best bird you've ever tasted and if you don't follow the
directions you'll probably still have the best bird you've ever tasted it's a traeger
so the key to doing chicken or turkey or pork and sometimes beef on the
traeger is a good brine a good brine will hold in your juiciness keep the
meat tender and it'll really add a lot of flavor to the meat it's really
important on a turkey because the turkey is so thick that you want to keep all
that juiciness inside of the turkey so a good brine I would put a quarter of a
cup per quart of water and then you'll add two tablespoons of sugar per quart
so you're going to need a pretty big stockpot to fit this bird into so what I
like to do to get my brine to the right levels is I just kind of add a little
bit at a time so I'm going to do half a cup of salt
and then I'm going to do four tablespoons of sugar
and then I'm gonna add my water and mix it in and see where that gets us level
wise on this on the stockpot and we'll go from there so here's my two quarts of
water and I can already tell it's probably gonna be about double that for me
I'm doing about a 16 pound bird so I'm thinking there's four quarts in a
gallon about a gallon of water so for me it's gonna be about one cup of salt and
eight tablespoons of sugar okay once you got all your stuff in here give this a
good mix until all the salt and sugar dissolves and you kind of just want a
cloudy liquid in there and then we'll put our turkey in okay once you've let
the bird thaw out and give it a quick rinse with cold water in the sink and
then put them in your salty bath you want to make sure that everything is
completely submerged okay once the birds in the bath just to
cover it up it needs to be in the brine for about 24 hours you don't want to go
any longer than that or it will start to get real salty I'm gonna throw mine in
the fridge just to keep it cool, if your birds still partially
frozen and your water stays cool it's probably fine to just leave it out
otherwise if it's cool outside you know you want to keep that water cool so I'll
see you guys in about 24 hours and we will get going on the cooking while your
turkey is soaking it's a good time to make the key ingredient for the turkey
and that's what's gonna go under the skin and keep it nice and juicy and
moist so we want half a tablespoon of salt we're using sea salt you can do a
sea salt kosher salt regular old salt one tablespoon of pepper a couple
tablespoons of rosemary got a couple tablespoons of thyme six cloves of garlic
and then half a pound of butter and you can smash everything together
okay so get all your ingredients smash together and you can put this in the
fridge if you're not ready for right now we are ready for it so it is a little
easier to work with when it's soft and pliable like this pull your turkey out
of the brine and run it under some cold water and just kind of rinse everything
off set it on a pan in just so it's easier to work with and then take some
paper towels and this towel everything off because you want the skin all dry
and then you're gonna take you want the breast side up you want to separate the
skin from the meat and you're trying to make a little cavity and then we're
gonna take that butter mixture that we just made it stuff all the butter inside
of the breast and just anywhere that you can get it and that will keep all of
that nice juicy tender butter solution inside of there and cook it with that
okay so just get a big chunk of this butter mixture put it in the cavity
and so you can also cut a slit in the leg and put some down there alright so
after it's all stuffed you kind of want to make sure that everything's evenly
distributed in here and then you can either use all of this inside of here or
I like to melt mine a little bit and just kind of drizzle it over the top and
cover the rest of it with that you can also use olive oil and then after you're
done with this this would then be a good time to if you're going to do stuffing
or something in the cavity leaving your vegetables onions carrots things like
that you can also cover this with salt and pepper I like to cover mine with my
rub that I make you want to cover all the entire bird front back before I add
the rub or salt pepper or whatever you gonna do I'm gonna go put the traeger on
smoke and get it going okay once your grill has gotten to a good smoke then
you want to go to 300 degrees in the meantime I'm gonna cover mine in
seasoning we're ready to go on the grill
all right we're up to 300 we're going to put the turkey on and key to victory is that you
have something that has a probe
you're looking for a hundred and sixty degrees you're gonna go in the deepest
part of the breast thickest part of meat
all right so this is my third bird that I've done through Thanksgiving turkey
I've done traeger and believe it or not it's already up to 170 degrees so I like
to just poke it in a couple of different places make sure everything's done but
to me it looks like it's pretty darn good I might just leave it on for a
little bit longer just to make that skin little crispier but you're looking for
165 degrees all right this is looking good I'm gonna pull it off I'll meet you
guys in the kitchen all right after you get this to your crispiness and your
temperature that your say you want to just cover it with some foil let it sit
for about 10 to 15 minutes and you're ready to serve it
until next time this is
retiring at 40 remember to live life simple we'll catch you next time
I gotta get way back as a zoomed-in or something oh there we go Brian
it's a recording right now so watch what you say to your beautiful wife
Are you are you zoomed and focused ?
Are you focused?
okay I'm ready hit it I'm actually yeah grill are you ready