Smoked / Grilled Turkey
I started dinner prepping on Wednesday morning by making up the brine. Basically this is Alton Brown’s Brine with a few tweaks.
Ingredients:
1 gal. Vegetable stock.
1 cup salt
½ cup brown sugar
1 tbsp. Peppercorns
1 ½ tsp. allspice
1 ½ tsp. ginger
8 cloves
2 Bay leaves
Peel from 1 orange
Combine and then bring to a boil stirring occasionally. Here it is cooking.
Then remove and cool to room temp and then chill in fridge. After it chilled I then place a food safe 4 gal bucket into an ice chest and surround it with ice.
I put the thawed and cleaned Turkey into the food safe bucket and pour the brine over it.
Now cover completely with ice and then add just enough water to have the bird in liquid. Now place the lid on it and let it rest overnight. (I usually leave it outside as the nights are cool to cold but not freezing out in SoCal)
Thursday Morning starts out with making up some seasoned butter rub.
Ingredients: 1 ¼ sticks of butter2 tbsp. Montreal Chicken seasoning½ tsp. Sage powder½ tsp. Rosemary flakes
Also some aromatic items to place inside the bird. (Tweaked from last year)
Ingredients: 1 Apple sliced into 1/8th’s ½ sliced onion1 Cinnamon stick4 sprigs of fresh Rosemary (from my garden)6 sprigs of fresh Thyme (from my garden)3 sprigs of fresh Sage (from my garden)2 sprigs of fresh Oregano (from my garden)
Now take the turkey out of the brine and place it on a prep tray. Carefully pull the skin up and side your fingers and then you hand up under the skin to create some pockets for the seasoned butter. Take a spatula and slide some of the seasoned butter in under the skin on the breasts. Now replace the skin (you may need a few toothpicks to secure it) and slather on the rest of the rub on the outside of the bird. Now insert the aromatic items inside the bird. These will not only add some great flavor but ensure that the meat is moist. Here’s what it looks like waiting to go on the kamado.
Light up the kamado and let it heat up to 250 and then put the turkey on. (This lets the bird absorb some smoke) Here it is on the kamado.
Now ramp up the temp to 500 for 30 minutes. (To crisp up the skin) Then ramp down the temp to 325 to 350 to finish off the cook. (Mine took an additional 2 hours for the breast temp to reach 164) Here’s the results.
My wife made up the table.
Everything on the table waiting for everyone to sit down and eat.
Money Shot.
It is DELICIOUS!
Thanks for looking.