Butter & Herb Smoked Turkey on Pellet Grill

hey welcome back to how to barbecue right i'm malcolm reed it's a good cool morning here in mississippi the sun's coming up i've got a big old turkey we're going to cook this bird weighed about 17 and a half pounds i had it in a 48-hour brine getting some flavor deep down in the meat pulled it out last night let it air dry in the fridge on a rack i'm gonna stuff it with some vegetables some fresh aromatics we're gonna melt some butter get it on the outside season it get it in the smoke on my traeger pit y'all know this is going to be a butter basting turkey that you're going to want to try for thanksgiving let's get to cooking so i've got a big bird that we're going to cook today this one weighed about 17 and a half pounds it took it about four days to thaw out in the refrigerator and then i got it in a 48-hour brine now for my brine i used my bird brine and two gallons of water we dropped the turkey down in a meat bag put it in a big brine and bucket and stuck it in the refrigerator and forgot about it it penetrates the meat and it gives it a ton of flavor and a ton of moisture now if you don't have time to brine you could inject but a big bird like this 24-48 hours is perfect to really get some flavor and some moisture inside the meat when you take it out of the brine you want to let it dry as much as possible it helps if you'll set it on a little raised rack like i have it on now and stick it in the refrigerator just let it go overnight but what we're going to do first is fill up this cavity with some aromatics and some vegetables i've got a poultry herb bundle here that i'm going to stuff in first then we've got some lemon going in grab some quartered up onion throw that in there we've got some celery now i'm going to add a whole stick of butter this is going to be a butter basted turkey i want to get some of that butter flavor on the inside of the meat too you can throw some whole cloves of garlic in there but you can put whatever you want it's going to fill up that void that space that's going to help it cook even it'll hold everything inside that we put in the cavity you want to cross the legs and tie them up just get you some butcher twine we'll just kind of cross the legs and get us some knots going it's going to hold everything in it'll keep that skin from busting there at the end too clip off your excess twine and you're good to go now we're ready to work on the skin now the first thing you'll notice is this turkey has one of these instant pop-up thermometers i don't use those i go ahead and take them out i'm going to use a thermoworks dot i know how accurate they are so they give me proper temperature you can't always trust those pop-up thermometers now we need an oil or a fat on the outside of the skin to help our seasoning stick and to help the turkey brown and that's really what we're going for is that golden brown look now instead of using an oil i melted a couple sticks of butter and i'm just going to brush it over the skin we've got butter in the cavity we got butter going on the skin and we're going to baste with some butter too so this is going to be one rich bird you just want to get it all over it's going to help that seasoning stick to the outside too now let's talk season i'm keeping it easy with this one this is a poultry recipe that i learned from mike mills from 17th street barbecue it's a classic flavor salt garlic poultry seasoning three ingredients that's all you need and it goes awesome on the skin the salt is gonna help the skin dry out a little bit it's gonna help it crust up then we're gonna have the savoriness from the garlic and the poultry seasonings we don't need a lot of excess on a bird like this we want this to be the classic thanksgiving turkey flavors we're just gonna add some smoke simple seasonings and it's gonna be delicious so i'm firing up my traeger timberline today for this cook i love cooking on a pellet grill anytime i'm doing turkey because it helps the skin get nice brown and crispy now i'm running about 300 degrees and i'm using traeger's new turkey blend pellet you could use whatever flavor pellet you want but i like that hard wood mixed with the maple and a little bit of rosemary it's going to give it some nice flavor you want to bring the grill up to 300 degrees let it stabilize out then we're going to put the turkey on start cooking so my traeger's rocking along i've got it set about 300 degrees for this cook we're ready to put this turkey on you notice i'm leaving it on the rack this is going to help me spin the turkey around as it cooks so i can make sure it's even i'm starting it out one way we'll turn it about every hour just so we can rotate it make sure it's getting even heat on all sides let's go ahead and get the lid closed so we've been rolling on the traeger with our turkey for one hour it's time to take a peek at it and check it out that's exactly what i want to see golden brown skin start to happen now we want to baste it i've got unsalted butter that i've seasoned with some rosemary some thyme and some parsley and i'm just gonna start basting it over the top not really touching the skin just adding some of this herb butter right to the top of the bird we're gonna let it run down we're gonna let it keep browning the skin getting it crispy i'm gonna get the wings i'm gonna get the legs i'm gonna get all of it we got it on this rack we can turn it right around real easy get this backside turkey sandwiches turkey pot pie drumsticks i'm just gonna get the lid closed we're gonna keep on smoking on the traeger all right we've been on a total of two hours now on our turkey and look at how that butter is making that skin turn brown getting kind of taut kind of crispy feeling it's time for another base got that butter working with the herbs in it it's making that skin look beautiful we'll give it a little spin action we're going to get the backside at this point i'm going to go ahead and get my probe thermometer in there i'm just going to stick it right in the same hole where that out was i got it set for 165. you wanted 165 in the breast 175 in the dark meat and before i close it up i'm going to wrap these wings up when they start getting a good color on them i don't want them to get too dark so i'm just going to take a little bit of full protect those wings now let's get the lid back closed we'll check it again in another hour all right it's been another hour on our turkey and check it out man we have got some beautiful brown skin now that butter has done its job our temperature's looking good we're about 155 internal still got about 10 degrees to go so this will probably be the last little butter based give it a little spin action check out that now that's turkey and since we've got it looking exactly how you want it to that brown color is right we don't want it to get any darker at this point we can go ahead and put some foil just over the top of it just to keep it from turning too brown now i'm just going to drape this foil over the top kind of tuck it around not tight just loosely tinted that's going to protect it close the lid when this buzzer goes off on the die it's going to be time to take it off the pit all right we're hitting temp we've reached that 165 threshold in our turkey it's been just a hair over four hours on this big bird we laid that foil over the top of it so we protected it we've got that beautiful golden brown color on it it's time to get it off the pit and i'll tell you what this traeger will flat cook a turkey now you need some heat resistant gloves we're going to take it over the cutting board look how good that looks right there y'all so to let the turkey rest i'm gonna get it off the rack go ahead and get it on a platter but just carefully pick it up it's still smoking hot i'm just gonna set it over here the turkey's still steaming it just come off the pit it needs to rest before we cut into it just give it 15 minutes or so to rest i mean it could even take 20 30 minutes you'd still be fine but you don't want to lose any of that juice by cutting into it right away i don't know if i can wait 15 minutes but i'm going to do my best all right y'all check it out i've let it rest as long as i could take i did go ahead and garnish just a little bit i just threw some cranberries and a few twigs of rosemary on there so if you're having this for thanksgiving or any other holiday you can easily dress up the platter just to make it look pretty as you bring it to the table now i've got to cut me some of this bird off so i'm going to take off one of the breasts right now you just kind of find the center bone and go down and then come along the wishbone and start carve it out once you get it freed up on one side you come back in on the bottom side and just take that breast off now i should just be able to easily get in here and peel it right off we've got that turkey breast off now look at that that is beautiful and my favorite part's gonna be that skin and i'm just gonna slice it into serving sized pieces you can go as thick or as thin as you want just use a sharp knife straight through the skin you don't think i'm gonna eat that skin something's wrong with you i know that's where some flavor is let's go ahead and get a piece out i can't take it i mean look how juicy that turkey is still hot still steamy beautiful piece of this herbed up skin butter crusted on top that's turkey to me oh smoke it's hot juicy moist all the way through i can taste the herbs you taste the the brine that's penetrated the meat that's fantastic turkey it's been a while since i've had some turkey you know i don't know why we just eat these things once a year it's so easy to cook man if you cook turkey year round if you know it's this good why not hmm yeah you don't even need any gravy with this turkey oh that little skin piece wanted to jump off i think i will skin has a slight crispiness to it it's not rubbery that butter helps it cook down and check it out y'all you can see just a slight smoke ring right around the edge but the meat's white it's juicy there's pack full of moisture in there that's how you cook a turkey right hope everybody out there has a happy thanksgiving if y'all like what we're doing here at how to barbecue right subscribe to the channel i know y'all can find us on facebook instagram twitter even tick tock and shel and i are going to talk about this turkey recipe all the other delicious stuff that we do for thanksgiving on our weekly podcast y'all give that a listen too we'll see y'all next time it's turkey time at my house that's what i'm talking about turkey salad turkey pot pie turkey and dressing turkey sandwiches with some blue plate that's some fine turkey only no bumpiness hounds over here do we

Channel: HowToBBQRight

Views: 665,475

Keywords: Malcom Reed, HowToBBQRight, How To BBQ Right, smoked turkey, smoked turkey recipe, how to smoke a turkey, thanksgiving turkey recipe, best smoked turkey, how to smoke a whole turkey, smoking a turkey, how to brine a turkey, turkey brine recipe, traeger, traeger pellet grill, traeger recipes, traeger turkey, traeger thanksgiving, Traeger turkey recipe, butter herb smoked turkey, herb butter, butter basted, pellet grill, bbq turkey, Butter & Herb Smoked Turkey, butter turkey

Id: sqLg6NpfLTk

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 02 2021