Or a kamado-type cooker? Tell me about it, please. Is cooking/smoking a turkey this way worth the trouble?
How big was the turkey, what temp did you use, how long did it take?
Did you catch the drippings to use for gravy?
As usual, I intend to brine my turkey and I’ve been thinking about cooking in my BGE, but if it’s tricky or not worth the effort, I’ll cook in the oven.
I have not used a BGE, but the only way I cook turkey is by smoking it. The results are far superior to oven-roasting or frying.
I don’t brine turkey before smoking. I baste it regularly with my seasoned olive oil mixture, which imparts flavor as well as helping retain moisture. It typically takes about 4 hours, but YMMV, depending on your smoker, the size of the bird, and other conditions, so a meat thermometer is good to have.
I don’t catch drippings. Besides being awkward to do so in a smoker, I just don’t make turkey gravy. If I want gravy, I make my usual roux-based brown gravy.
Here’s my process:
Get your smoker started, preferably with mesquite chips and chunks. You can do the other prep while it comes up to temp. Once it’s going, you can add chunks that you’ve soaked in water a bit to get a better smoke.
Prepare a small bowl of the olive oil baste, stirring garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and salt into the oil. Some of the seasoning will form a slurry in the bottom. That slurry will help hold the moisture-retaining layer on the bird.
Skin the turkey. The skin keeps the flavor out, and most people don’t eat it, so get rid of it
Put the turkey in the smoker and give it a first baste.
Roughly every half hour, turn the turkey and baste it thoroughly, making sure to get plenty of the slurry on it. You want to see it develop a reddish-brown color with a bit of a grainy seasoning crust.
When your meat thermometer shows that the turkey has reached 165F internally, take it up and cover it with foil to rest until you’re ready to carve.
I’ve a two-level bullet smoker, so catching drippings is easy. I also have a dorm fridge, so I can season my bird early and let it sit uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours. I’ll smoke at ~300°. I prefer a mixture of 50% hickory, 25% apple, and 25% cherry. I always use less smoke for poultry than I would for beef or pork. I spritz the meat about every 45 minutes with a 75% apple cider / 25% cider vinegar mixture. I start about 7 hours before carving time. If it gets done early, I hold it in an aluminum pan set atop hot, wet towels (just pour boiling water on them and let them absorb) inside a large cooler.
This is more-or-less what I’ve done in the past, though my cooking temp is closer to 275. Both times I was preparing for a long-haul smoke, but my turkeys finished within 3 or 4 hours, and they weren’t particularly small or anything, but I did spatchcock them, so that should be the difference.
To be honest, I prefer oven roasted or grilled turkey (high heat methods for both) to smoked turkey. I love most things smoked, but not turkey for some reason. We did it three years in a row and we just decided to go back to regular turkey. Then again, I’m also not a huge fan of smoked chicken.
But, yes, OP, the technique is pretty straightforward, and it’s pretty hard to fuck up. Just use a thermometer and go a little easier on the wood, but it’s otherwise fairly a no-brainer.
I find with poultry that a little smoke goes a long way. Maybe that’s your issue? Given the option, I’m almost always a fan of ‘low & slow’, and ~4 hours at 300 will get you a good skin (the apple juice helps a lot, but you already knew that). Chicken cooks too fast for that great skin when smoking, but it’s still awesome. Often I’ll just add some whiskey barrel chips to a hot grill and vertically roast my chicken in the center with charcoal on either side.
I’ve smoked a 10-12 lb turkey in a bullet-style water smoker every year this time of year for the last 8 years or so.
Brine overnight. Oil up with good olive oil, inside and out. Smoke upright on heavy-wire poultry cone stand over water/white wine/onion/bay leaf water pan at 220-250 degrees for about 6 hours (actually, until breast meat temperature is “done” – 170 Farenheit). Monitoring meat temperature and smoke chamber temperature with a Maverick dual-probe thermometer.
Fuel is a good briquette charcoal base and cherry wood chunks. (Either wet or dry, depending on current cooking temperature.)
The water pan winds up not very suitable for gravy; it’s completely filled with smoke residue. Do you like dark-grey gravy? Not very appetizing to see, even if it might taste OK; and the one time I tried to do anything with those drippings, it was just too smoky. Almost like creosote. No thanks.
When bird is cooked through, wrap in foil and then multiple layers of clean bath towels and rest in a clean dry cooler. This holds good serving temperature for literally hours.
No basting; no foiling over when “smoked enough”. This means that the skin isn’t very edible; too much bark. But that’s ok; the meat is deeply flavored, so losing the skin is a trivial loss.
I usually prepare several of these against one large (~20 pound) turkey conventionally roasted, and the smoked turkey still winds up with less leftovers. So I assume it’s not too bad.
Watch the video in cgg419’s link for how to make gravy. I’ve made gravy on the smoker that was neither dark grey nor too smoky/creosote-like. I’ve caught drippings from a prime rib that went into outstanding Yorkshire pudding. I do catch drippings in a disposable aluminum pan that is not my water pan.
250-275* degrees for 4 hours or depending on size of bird.
With a fully thawed bird (day before cooking).
I mix my seasonings together by leaving the skin in place, I place my seasonings between the meat and skin.
Everybody has different taste, all I do is the salt, pepper and garlic. The main thing regarding seasonings is to put it in between the skin and meat.
With alittle work you can reach every inch of meat just using your fingers and or with a injector. Main thing is, is to keep the skin intact to hold moisture and the seasonings in contact with the meat.
Not quite the same but I have been using a Weber kettle for many years. I use rails on the lower grill to get indirect heat - drip pan in the center (great gravy). Baste a couple of times with olive oil/pepper/garlic salt and add briquettes. About the same cooking time as an oven.
Stuff with cubes of pineapple (to serve as a side) and the meat is even more moist and tender. Juice in drippings adds a subtle difference to the gravy.
As for lump charcoal vs briquettes. You know, I used to be very particular about this and would buy the 40lb bags (or whatever size they were) at the charcoal distributor in town (that mostly served the restaurant industry, but also had retail sales. It was a little one-room affair where you’d pay and the guy would go back in the warehouse and bring the giant load of charcoal to your car.) But then, one day, I was lazy and just went down to the grocery store and picked up a load of Kingsford briquettes. And I couldn’t tell any difference in the end product. Add to that that it burned more slowly (longer burns on a load in my Weber Smokey Mountain) and more predictably, and I’ve just gone briquettes ever since.