Grill-Smoked Turkey

For the last three years Dennis and I have had a turkey cooking and eating party in the early fall on a day that was not Thanksgiving. We're always busy on Thanksgiving with various commitments to relatives and turkey is really too tasty to just be resigned to being a holiday meal. I am not usually the one that grills the turkeys, so while I am aware of the process I am relying heavily on Dennis for the details.

The first year, soon after we purchased our new charcoal grill, (Dennis would tell you that gas grills are not really grills, but cheating) we brined and cooked a turkey for a long time at a low temperature. I don't think we intentionally cooked it at a low temperature, but we had just purchased our grill and did not quite have all of the quirks worked out. As it was cooking we added hickory chips that had been soaked in a cheap bottle of red wine to the coals. This produced a flavorful smoke. The turkey turned out moist and smoky. It had a beautiful pink smoke ring just inside the skin when we finally carved it. Dennis and I disagree if this turkey is grilled or smoked. Sometimes we compromise and call it 'groked'. Regardless of what you want to call it, grill-smoked turkey is definitely worth the trouble.

The second year we decided to branch out. We had both always wanted to deep fat fry a turkey and it happened that Dennis' uncle owned a turkey fryer or two. So we soaked a turkey in brine again, tracked down 5 gallons of peanut oil, made extra sure the turkey wasn't still frozen (apparently explosions happen if you try to fry a frozen or partially frozen turkey), and fried it. We managed to avoid any mishaps with hot oil and about an hour after dropping our turkey into the fryer we had a crisp and delicious fried turkey.

We thought about it for a while, and decided we liked grill-smoked turkey better than fried turkey. So this fall when our turkey event came around again we brined another turkey, soaked more hickory chips in cheap wine, followed some instructions indicating that our grill should be hotter and produced another delicious bird. While it was ready much more quickly when cooked at a higher temperature Dennis thinks it was better when it was cooked at a lower temperature. The longer cooking time at a lower temperature gives the turkey a smokier flavor.

The essentials: The Turkey

Any Turkey will work; do not pick one that is too large for your grill. I would suggest for grilling not to buy one of the 20 lb giant birds that are available around Thanksgiving. The turkey we cooked this last time was a heritage breed turkey that my sister had bought from a local farmer. While I love buying local the real advantage to this comes in the first step when you brine the turkey.

Most birds from industrial farms that you would pick up at the supermarket come injected with a saline solution. So, not only are you paying by the pound for salt water that is injected into the bird before you even get your hands on it, but that saline solution will work to prevent flavors from your own brine from working their way into the bird. Now, we have brined and grill-smoked both an industrial saline injected and a local heritage bird, and they were both good, but I recommend trying to find a non saline injected turkey as it will improve its ability to absorb flavor from the brine.

What's a brine?

A brine is like a marinade. It is a salt water solution infused with herbs, spices, and flavorings, in which you soak the turkey for several hours. Brines used to be much more in fashion, however, as salt has become something that many people are trying to get out for their diets most people now avoid them. However, they are the best way to ensure that a large roast (or turkey) absorbs the wanted flavors, and remains moist throughout the long cooking process. Brines will overwhelm smaller cuts of meat, but they are ideal when roasting or grill-smoking something large. Today, as most people won't soak their turkeys in a salty water solution prior to cooking the industrially farmed turkey's (and other large cuts of meat) come pre-brined and injected with saline solution. To find a turkey without saline solution look for ‘water added’ on the packaging, if water has been added then the turkey has been injected.

BRINE:

The recipe is a modification of Alton Brown’s brines for a fried turkey and a roasted turkey. The website where the original grill-smoked or grill roasted/smoked modification was posted is discontinued but we think we have captured the essentials in this entry.

When we brine we usually start the night before we are planning on cooking. The turkey needs to be thawed out at this point, so if frozen make sure you move it to the refrigerator 2 to 3 days ahead of time.

To make the brine:

1 cup Kosher Salt
1 cup light brown sugar
1 gallon vegetable stock (can use bullion or bullion paste)
1 tablespoon black peppercorns (or more!)
1 1/2 teaspoon allspice berries (or more!)
1 1/2 teaspoon candied ginger (or more!)
1+ gallon heavily iced water for topping up

Add everything except the iced water to a large pot and bring to boil. This will help to dissolve the salt and sugar and the bullion or bullion paste if used. It will also start to bring out the essential oils and flavors in the spices. Once the solution has boiled and everything is dissolved, set aside and let to cool. If you don’t have time to wait, put your pot in the kitchen sink and surround it with cold water and if desired, ice. Stir the pot until the contents cool down to room temperature.

For brining we use a medium cooler. Place the turkey in the cooler breast side down. A 14 to 15 lb turkey is a tight fit. Pour the cooled salt solution over the turkey and then add another gallon heavily iced water. The resulting brine water should be very cold, if it is not frigid then add more ice. Remember, your turkey needs to sit in this for hours, so to prevent bacterial growth it needs to be at least as cold as the fridge (38°). Once the turkey and brine are in the cooler close the cooler and let soak for at least 4 and up to 16 hours. We prefer our turkey soaked as long as possible, and we have yet to have a turkey or roast turn out too salty from brining. While the bird is soaking, make certain to turn it at least once to get full coverage with the brine. If you are worried that the brine is too warm at any point you can add more ice.

The morning you are planning on grilling, set a stick of butter out on the counter (we’ll get to the butter later). Also, start the hickory chips (or other work chips) soaking in a cheap bottle of red wine; when I know we are going to be grill-smoking I always try to pick up a bottle of $2 chuck from Trader Joe's. The wood chips are essential to a good smoky flavor, and soaking them in wine accomplishes two things. First, you never want to put dry wood chips on to the charcoal, you want smoke not fire. And second, it makes the smoke even more flavorful.

About 30 minutes to an hour before your ready to start grilling remove the turkey from the brine, pat it dry, and set on the counter. It needs to come up to room temperature before the cooking starts. Once the turkey is on the counter some steps need to be taken to prepare it for the grill. First you need aromatics, second you need butter, and third you need to make a turkey breast plate.

Aromatics are things you stuff into the turkey’s cavity that help to give it more flavor and keep it moist from the inside out during the cooking process.

For the aromatics take:

1 sliced red apple
1/2 sliced onion
1 cinnamon stick

And heat with 1 cup of water in a microwave safe dish for five minutes. When done place these (careful they are hot!) in the cavity of the turkey with:

4 sprigs of rosemary
6 leaves of sage

If you are using dried spices then add a generous quantity (a couple of tablespoons) of dried rosemary and sage to the water before you microwave the onion and apple. Remember aromatics can be anything you want, so if you would like to add an orange, two onions, and celery then feel free to experiment. The flavors they produce on the turkey are subtle and will not over power it. The above mix has worked very well for us, though I will admit my ‘sprigs of rosemary’ are usually more like branches, and my leaves of sage are usually more like sprigs. I tend to think most recipes always need a bit more flavor.

Once you have your aromatics in the turkey cavity then it is time to channel your inner Paula Deen and get all buttered up. Literally. Take a stick of soft room temperature butter and generously rub the turkey all over with it, bottom to top, underneath, around the legs and wings, even inside the cavity. This will use most of your stick of butter, and the rest will probably be stuck to your hands. Unless you are talented at starting the faucet with your teeth, it’s a good idea to have a helper so you don’t get turkey butter all over the kitchen when you try to wash up.


Next, make your turkey breast plate:

This requires a square of aluminum foil and some creativity. The result is usually a triangular wedge that covers the breast side of the turkey. Take your aluminum foil and fold and fit it to your turkey’s particular size and shape. It needs to fit well, and wedge under the legs so it doesn’t just fall off at whim. Your turkey is going to start out on the grill breast side down, and then be flipped. This contraption is to protect his sensitive side from getting too dried out during the remaining cooking process.

Cooking a turkey can be a bit of a logistics problem for a charcoal grill. The size of the bird means it has a long roasting time and for charcoal this means you are going to have to heat up more and add it during the cooking time. You will have to figure out a way to preheat and add charcoal to the grill either with the bird still on it, or by removing the bird. Be sure to figure this out before you get started so you don’t end up with a hot charcoal disaster. Luckily for us, we have a large grill where we have the real estate to move the bird to one side to refill the charcoal and we have our old grill to get the charcoal started.

Before putting the turkey on get your grill as hot as you can. You want to sear the turkey and then let the temperature reduce to around 300 for the remainder of the cooking process. Our grill has built in thermometers and we heat it up to around 500 degrees. We try to let the temperature peak before adding the turkey, as if it is still climbing the breasts of the bird can dry out quite a bit. For a turkey you’ll want to use indirect heat for grilling, so move the charcoal to the sides of the grill area so there are no coals directly underneath where you will place the bird. Once your grill temperature has peaked add a couple of pieces of drip-dried wine-soaked hickory chips and place the turkey on the grill breast side down. To drip dry the chips stack them a couple of pieces high in the wine before your ready to start grilling, and add the ones on top to the charcoal first.

Close the grill and disturb as little as possible. Let the temperature reduce to about 300 degrees. Add more charcoal as needed to maintain the grill temperature and add more hickory chips as needed to maintain the smoke. The grill should not emit smoke like a forest fire, you do not need neighbors calling the fire department, but a steady waft of smoke is ideal. If your grill is smoking too much try moving the chips to a cooler spot of coals, or allowing them to soak and drip dry for a bit longer. Both chips that are too wet and too dry will cause an undesirable amount of smoke.

After one hour of time roasting breast side down it is time to turn the turkey over. Rotate and turn the bird so that if the breast faced down and closest to the front of the grill before, it is now face up and at the back of the grill. This is the same thing as a 'flip', but trying to flip a turkey typically isn't very easy to do in one motion. After repositioning the bird, equip the turkey breastplate over the breast area to prevent it from drying out. Add some more wood chips, and charcoal if needed and maintain the temperature at around 300⁰. Cook the turkey to around 155⁰, we find our digital meat thermometer with a metal lead very useful for cooking large roasts and birds on the grill. Depending on the size of your bird and the heat of your grill the cooking process can take from 2 to 4 hours.

Take the turkey off the grill and let sit 10 to 15 minutes loosely covered with aluminum foil before carving. Grill-smoked turkey is a real hit and as you can see the bird manages to disappear in large part before a snapshot can be taken. The leftovers are great in sandwiches, salads, pot pies, etc. If you have a grill I highly recommend giving this a try. Dennis says it’s not as complicated as it sounds and is really jut brine, prep, grill, eat. But if you don't have a grill, or do not feel confident enough to give this a try let me know. Maybe you can make it to our next grill-smoked turkey event!