Simple Brined Smoked Turkey. We separate the dark and white pieces for brining and for smoking at different cooking times to ensure a perfectly moist turkey in both the breast and the legs.
Simple Brined Smoked Turkey. We separate the white & dark meat!
Originally published Spring 2011.
Some things need no over-complication.
We are huge turkey fans at our house and a roasted turkey dinner would probably be our favorite family meal. Most often, we do nothing but a straight forward roasting of the bird, then serve with gravy, veggies and English Style Roasted Potatoes.
As the weather begins to warm up around here, though, I begin to think of picnic foods to take along on any number of scenic day trips around our end of the island.
A couple of bags of ice become a necessity in the downstairs freezer to be ready at a moments notice. They are needed to pop into our insulated picnic cooler which can get filled with great green salad, pasta salad or potato salad.
We often also carry already whipped cream for our favorite picnic dessert, Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake.
Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake
Along with all those great offerings, delicious cold cuts like leftovers from our Dijon Mustard and Brown Sugar Glazed Ham or my ultimate picnic cold cut, smoked turkey, also get added.
Simple Brined Smoked Turkey, weekend perfect.
This is a terrific weekend cooking idea for a couple of reasons. First, to serve your freshly smoked turkey as dinner but to have leftovers to make delicious smoked turkey sandwiches during the week.
You can break down a whole turkey or just smoke parts like the breast, drumsticks or thighs. I like to brine the meat for 24 hours first to ensure that it says super succulent and juicy through the smoking process.
I like the brine in this recipe because it infuses hints of citrus and spice into the meat. This adds to the complexity of flavor when mixed with the smoke.
Simple Brined Smoked Turkey. We separate the white & dark meat!
Brined Smoked Turkey on a gas grill?
If you are using your gas grill to barbecue/smoke your turkey, place the meat on one side of the grill. Use the burner or burners on the opposite side so that it is not directly over heat.
Regulate the gas to keep the temperature at about 300-325 degrees for slow barbecue flavor. The same technique can also be used with a charcoal grill, just keep the charcoal on one side and the meat on the opposite side.
You can add smoke flavor by soaking hardwood chips like mesquite, apple, cherry or hickory in warm water for at least an hour. A couple of handfuls will do.
Wrap the soaked wood chips in a double layer of heavy duty aluminum foil and poke only two holes in the foil, one at either end to allow the smoke to escape.
I place the foil packets in a vegetable grill pan so that the packet is not sitting directly on the gas burner. You can add more soaked wood chip packets as they burn out. It all depends on how much smoke favor you wish to add.
Two or 3 of these packets should be enough for turkey, you don’t want it to take on too much smoke flavor and interfere with the flavor of the meat.
Need summer side dishes?
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Simple Brined Smoked Turkey. We separate the white & dark meat!
Simple Brined Smoked Turkey. We separate the dark and white pieces for brining and for smoking at different cooking times to ensure a perfectly moist turkey in both the breast and the legs.
Ingredients
- 1 large turkey 12-15 lbs.
For the Brine Mixture
- 6 quarts/litres of water (A little more if needed to cover the turkey completely)
- 1/2 cup kosher salt
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup honey (or 1/2 cup brown sugar)
- 8 whole cloves
- 1 large sliced onion
- 3 cloves garlic sliced thin
- zest and juice of two large oranges or lemons
- 3 tbsp whole black peppercorns
Instructions
- Stir the water salt, sugar and honey well to completely dissolve the sugar and salt.
- Next add the cloves, onion, garlic and peppercorns.
- Completely submerge the turkey in the bucket of brine.
- A plate with a couple of heavy cans of tomatoes or beans placed over the turkey will help keep it submerged.
- Place in the refrigerator overnight or for at least 6 - 8 hours. I remove one of the shelves in the fridge to fit my small brining bucket in.
- After 24 hours drain the brine from the turkey, rinse and pat dry with paper towels.
- There is no need for extra seasoning of the meat once it has been brined, although you can add extra ground black pepper to the skin of you like before smoking.
- Place the meat on indirect heat on the opposite side of the grill as the charcoal or gas burners.
- Maintain the heat at around 300 degrees F adding the smoke packs about once an hour.
- Cook the turkey until it reaches and internal temperature of 170 degrees F on a meat thermometer.
- Cooking times for the white meat will be shorter, so it can be taken off first and held in a very low oven. An insulated cooler with no ice is great for this if oven space is limited.
- Notes. Tips for smoking on a gas grill instead of charcoal are included in the recipe article.
Notes
Tips for smoking on a gas grill instead of charcoal are included in the recipe article.
Nutrition Information
Yield
20Serving Size
1Amount Per Serving Calories 695Total Fat 25gSaturated Fat 7gUnsaturated Fat 18gCholesterol 376mgSodium 685mgCarbohydrates 10gFiber 0gSugar 9gProtein 97g
The nutritional information provided is automatically calculated by third party software and is meant as a guideline only. Exact accuracy is not guaranteed. For recipes where all ingredients may not be used entirely, such as those with coatings on meats, or with sauces or dressings for example, calorie & nutritional values per serving will likely be somewhat lower than indicated.
Peggy G.
Monday 13th of May 2013
What a gorgeous turkey!