Barbecue Smoked Turkey

hey everybody I'm chef Tom with a tbq calm and this is barbecue smoked turkey today we're gonna be preparing a whole turkey spatchcock style and this is a recipe that's great year-round but ideal for the holiday season let me give you a quick run-through of what we're gonna do we're gonna start by spatchcocking the bird that's cutting out the backbone so we can lay it flat then we're gonna throw it into a brine overnight when it comes out of the brine we're gonna prepare an herb butter solution that we're gonna inject into the meat and then we'll get it seasoned up and onto the smoker what we have here is a 10 pound young turkey this one was frozen we bought it frozen and thawed it out it was injected with a solution of about 6% I believe that said and this is pretty typical of what most people are going to buy when you go to the grocery store and buy a turkey now ideally you want that solution to be as low as possible one because you're paying for it so eight percent of what we buy is just water weight that they've added and two because we really don't want this work too much before we get a hold of it we want to be able to do to it what we want as far as brining injecting and stuff like that goes without it being affected before the process 10 pounds is definitely on the smaller side but I really like the smaller birds one because they're younger and they tend to be a little bit more tender and two because they cook faster which is really nice also we happen to be cooking this bird about a month and a half before Thanksgiving and you can't really get giant turkeys before Thanksgiving so a lot of times they stuff some extras inside the cavity here we've got the neck sometimes you'll get some other stuff in there too I'm gonna save this for some turkey stock later on and we'll do the same thing with the backbone here in just a moment so what we're looking at doing is we want to cut alongside the backbone either side here and just go ahead and remove that all right I'm gonna stop up some of these extra juices here we'll just set that on the towel so it doesn't move around on us now you're gonna want a nice sharp pair of shears these shears from Victorinox are pretty affordable they've got a great grip on them so you can cut through these backbones pretty easily and as you can see nice and sharp cuts right through the skin so we're just going to go right up that side and come right back down and we're just staying right alongside that backbone super easy and we'll snip this excess skin that's connecting stuff here and then we're gonna move to the bottom side of that breastbone right there so I'm just gonna take my shears and make a cut right in the center that's gonna help me when I break this down so you're just gonna push it flat you can see that breastbone is exposed now and then as we flip this over you can see how all the meat kind of sits on the same level now which is going to allow this to cook evenly so our dark meat gets done with our white meat I'm not really interested in doing any extra trimming here this is our presentation side this is what we want to look really pretty you could get rid of some bones on the backside if you want to I'm not gonna mess with it there is one little thing I want to do which is removed the wishbone from the top of the breast and that's because when this thing is fully finished fully cooked and you're ready to serve it it's on the table you can take your slicer and slice right down that breast without hitting the wishbone and it's easy to serve and it presents really nice now the wishbone sits right in here at the top of these breasts we're just going to remove some of this stuff that we don't need in the way anyways and you can see the wishbone comes all the way out that white bit right there that's the tip of the wishbone so we're gonna start down here at the base of it feel for that bone and just slip the knife in right behind it it's it's pretty flat and then it's really easy to just slice up just like that do the same thing on the other side and then you're just gonna work your way down to the base of it you grab a paper towel just to get a grip there we go I made that look harder than it needed to be and with that removed now you can imagine this finished bird here and we're just going to take some slices right out of there cut straight down without worrying about that bone now I'm gonna get the spatchcocked bird into our brine or bucket and if you are a fan of those bigger birds this brine or bucket is great because it will do up to a 25 pound bird but it works perfectly for the ten pounders as well let's get our brine in there we're brining with the smoked apple spice from Sweetwater spice today this is a brine concentrate so we'll get that on top of the bird first and then we're gonna add water to cover so you can go up to six times water to that one bottle and the reason I chose this brine is I think it's a really great combination of both the barbecue and holiday flavor profiles it's apple juice base so that's nice you get a little bit of sweetness and it's got the brown sugar it's got some chilies it's also got some onion and garlic and then some unexpected stuff like tamarind paste and a little bit of cinnamon really interesting flavors so we'll just kind of give this a nice mix around you'll notice that the meat is sitting meat side down with that backbone side up the spatchcock makes it really easy to get it fully submerged and then to keep it submerged and this is the beauty of the Breiner bucket you've got the locking plate push it under lock it in place it's stay in there all night so you slap a lid on there probably going to want to truck that out to the garage fridge we've got plenty of room for it to soak at least one hour per pound we're just gonna leave this overnight I went ahead and threw a bird into the brine last night so that we could continue on today we're just going to take some of that excess moisture off the surface we'll set the bird aside for now because what we're gonna do next is put together the injection so we'll kick this thing off with one cup of unsalted butter the plan here is to create a garlic herb butter that we can then inject into the bird for extra flavor and moisture so we'll add to the butter three cloves of crushed garlic here we've got I don't know about a couple sprigs of thyme there one sprig of rosemary and a few sage leaves and as this butter melts down and everything heats up we're gonna be steeping this butter in these herbs and in this garlic to really infuse their flavors so just over medium low heat you want to gently simmer away for about ten minutes or so to infuse those flavors and aromas and it's already smelling just incredible we're also going to take this opportunity to add a little seasoning with the our butts our smoking butt-kicking chicken rub so we get a little barbecue influence here with our holiday flavor profile bringing those worlds together and then after that 10 minutes or so I'm just gonna turn the heat off you can already smell gosh it smells so good we're just going to strain all of this off so we can inject the butter into the turkey and you can see it's just lightly browned kind of golden part of that's from that barbecue rub that we added let's check the flavor whoa that's nice we want to throw just a little bit more of that barbecue rub in there but once we bump up that salt and that sweet just a touch it's gonna be perfect all right this is pretty warm so we're gonna let it cool down just a little bit before we inject while we're waiting on that butter to cool down I'm gonna put together our rub that we're gonna season the bird with we're actually gonna season this bird before we inject it and I'll tell you why in just a minute we've got three ingredients for this rub and that's going to be equal parts of each so we're gonna start off here with 1/3 cup of smoked salt I'm gonna add 1/3 cup of coarse ground black pepper and finished with 1/3 cup of that same barbecue rub that we put into the injection the butt-kicking chicken all right we get it mixed up and we're gonna apply it to the bird all right we're going to start with the inside of the bird here and we're gonna season pretty generously now you notice there's still some moisture on the surface of the bird that's left over from the brine and that's what's going to act as our binder to get this rub to stick onto the bird okay so one thing we're doing a little bit differently today in the past you've seen me release the skin from the flesh and get our seasoning all the way underneath well today with this butter injection it's already got some barbecue rub in it I'm just going to keep it simple we're gonna let the skin stay right where it sits we're gonna put the seasoning on the outside so we'll inject some of that seasoning into the flesh and just worry about getting our seasoning on the outside this makes things a little bit quicker and easier alright so we've got that thing covered pretty well we're gonna tuck those wings back and from here we can transfer this to the tray that we're gonna be cooking on some kind of the same setup here we've got a sheet pan lined with foil that's going to catch all of the juices as it cooks makes the cleanup nice and easy and then I get this thing position just the way I want it and I can inject from here all right so we've got the garlic herb butter cooled down we're gonna load up the injector and we are gonna start here with the breasts we'll get that down into the center of the meat make a little pocket and look at that see a pump right up fill up with that butter injection you're always gonna lose a little bit out the top that's okay don't worry about it there's plenty still going on inside of there we're gonna start with the breasts because that's the area we want to focus on the most we'll probably get some into the thighs and legs but really the breasts are what we're looking to load up with the extra moisture so just kind of work in a grid pattern so that you know where you've been and remember with all of those herb flavors those holiday herb flavors were actually able to just inject a little bit of Thanksgiving into this barbecue turkey get just a little bit into the wings here come down into these thighs and that one cup of butter is gonna be just about perfect amount so we're just gonna touch up the rub here from the butter leakage make sure we've got good coverage no problem and now we don't have to move this bird at all it's set and ready to go on the grill we're smoking our turkey today on the Oder smokers ys6 40 pellet grill we're running a combination of cherry and pecan pellets and it's set up fully indirect we've got the grill running at 300 degrees today we're gonna slide this bird right up here onto the second shelf also I'm gonna slide an amazing tube smoker in here filled with the same pellets that we're cooking with today we're gonna fire this thing up just wait till we have a good flame going give it a minute to burn and then we'll blow it out so here's the deal with the smoke tube we want to cook this bird at about 300 degrees so we can render out the fat in the skin but what happens with pellet grills inherently is that the hotter you cook the less smoke flavor you notice on the meat so we're gonna punch up that smoke flavor by adding the smoke tube we still get the bird cooked in a timely fashion and all of that fat rendered out of the skin well here we are about an hour and 45 minutes into this cook and our internal it's climbing just about to where we want it the last 15 minutes or so I've been coming out here in basting with just a little bit of these juices and the fats that have run off the bird it gives it a really nice shine on the outside and once your bark is set you really don't have to worry about losing that seasoning so here's the thing this turkey is going to be ridiculously good just the way it is does it need a sauce it doesn't I'm gonna make one anyway though and you can do with it what you will so here's what we're gonna do we're gonna start with 1 cup of 100% cranberry juice get it into the large skillet crank it up on high and let this reduce down to 1/4 cup I'm gonna take this opportunity to once again work on this fusion that we're working with today of barbecue and Thanksgiving so we're starting off with the cranberry juice in our minds it's a very holiday oriented thing right it's very tart it's not necessarily sweet in this form we're going to reduce it down and what that's going to do is concentrate all those flavors and thicken that just a little bit it's still going to be a running juice but once we mix it with our barbecue sauce which is a very thick spicy barbecue sauce with a little bit of cinnamon in it it makes everything come together perfectly so again we're looking to reduce this down to about a quarter of a cup just like we went just a little bit past that but that's going to be ok and I'll add a quarter-cup of the house of Q sugar and spice barbecue sauce you can see how thick that barbecue sauce is and these are gonna kind of balance each other out there we have our cranberry infused spicy barbecue sauce should end up a little bit thin which is great you can almost use this like a dipping sauce I've given the turkey about 15 minutes to rest now you could go a little bit longer if you want but make sure you're covering it up with some foil so it stays warm you want to give it time for the juices to redistribute now those breasts for sure are packed full of butter which is great and they're gonna be juicy anyway but there are extremities where the juices start running to the center and you've got to give it some time to let those juices redistribute now there's a number of ways to attack this thing but I'm gonna start by getting in here right behind this wing and we can cut some slices out of this breast here so that actually presents really nice if you want to go ahead and remove your wing cut some slices out of that breast remember where we removed that wishbone that was right there so we can slice right through that and it's not hard to see just how juicy that is right there in the center look at that incredible and the legs and thighs and they pretty much just come apart on their own if you want to split this in half you're just going to come right in between the leg and the thigh down to that joint and cut right through take that breast right off the rib cage and fan that out on your platter beautiful now another thing you can do when it comes to slicing the breast is to actually take the whole breast off of the breast bone off of the rib cage off of the carcass and you're just gonna scoop down underneath there peel that right back there's your tenderloin and then you can go ahead and cut your slices right out of there as well beautiful tender juicy white meat now don't forget about that juice we talked about earlier you just want to strain that off and if you want you can let the fat separate from the liquid and then you can incorporate this back into your turkey meat and the turkey will soak those juices right back up tons of flavor in there too and then so juicy and see that skin bite right through it let's from that higher cooking temperature we rendered the fat out so it's not too chewy let's try with a dip in the sauce I love this vibrant red color on here it looks beautiful whoo it's got some zing to it get the tart up front the heat stays with you a little bit I'm not a huge fan of barbecue sauce on a savory meat like this but that's a great pairing this turkey right here is easily one of my very favorite smoked turkey recipes if you're thinking about this for Thanksgiving but you're not sure with that barbecue portion in there put it out to your mind this is a savory turkey it's got great savory flavors lots of black pepper some garlic you're not gonna think of it as a barbecue dish so much as a barbecue play on a Thanksgiving dish before we wrap this up I kind of feel like I downplayed the sauce a little bit and I want to recommend that you make probably twice or three times as much because it's cranberry barbecue sauce like people are gonna go nuts for it thank you guys so much for watching as always be sure to check out ATB BQ comm for all of the products featured in today's video and if you haven't yet head over there and sign up for our weekly emails because there's a ton of Holliday centric information coming out in the next couple of months and you don't want to miss out on that if you enjoyed the video please hit that subscribe button if you have any questions or comments so there's anything you'd like to see me cook let me know in the comment section down below and let's be good to one another for more recipes tips and techniques head over to the sauce ATB BQ comm all things BBQ where barbecue legends are made

Channel: allthingsbbq

Views: 423,714

Rating: 4.9468217 out of 5

Keywords: barbecue smoked turkey, smoked turkey, turkey recipe, thanksgiving turkey recipe, how to smoke bbq turkey, how to smoke a turkey, how to make a turkey, smoked turkey recipe, how to make, thanksgiving, bbq, barbecue, turkey barbecue, yoder smokers, grilled turkey, pellet grill, turkey, smoking, smoked, grill, all things barbecue, atbbq, barbecue turkey, bbq turkey, cooking, food, chef tom, atbbq.com, the sauce, smoker

Id: Je5cVaLGcaw

Length: 20min 26sec (1226 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 16 2018