The Best Smoked Turkey Recipe Ever!

Thirty years ago, when a co-worker, who kept kosher, asked me what ham tasted like, I exclaimed, “Like smoked turkey!” It’s true. Done right, a smoked turkey could very easily confound anyone into thinking they’re eating ham. The thigh meat in particular takes on the reddish hue and juicy texture of ham without the sliminess that turns some people off.

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Ever since, other Jewish friends who are less observant of Jewish law have agreed. In fact, everyone agrees! My smoked turkey is an easy substitute for ham. In fact, if you serve this for any special occasion where ham would normally be on the menu, you will not be disappointed.

My parents, who were from Jamaica, hated America’s favorite holiday bird for decades until we first had smoked turkey at my godfather’s cousin’s house one Thanksgiving. Until then, they regarded it as a gamey, dry, tough and tasteless meat that Americans felt obliged to serve because of tradition, if not simply because they didn’t know what good food tasted like.

The first Thanksgiving I spent away from my parents’ home (and not in Europe), I knew I had to make a smoked turkey. Luckily I stumbled across a smoker for only $27 at Home Depot.

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For years, I followed a very cumbersome process of soaking the entire bird in an enormous pot of brine which would take up my fridge from the weekend before the holiday until the wee hours of Thanksgiving morning. Late November even in southern New Jersey often meant snow on the ground and sub zero temperatures. As such, it often took longer than the prescribed 20-30 minutes per pound due to the thin walls of my flimsy smoker. But hey, it did the job!

As you’ll see, these days, I use a lot less salt and other seasonings and have scrapped the water altogether. The results are the same. Juicy, flavorful meat even when I wreck the skin of the breast meat as happened this year. It certainly helps that I buy my meat from, Punachicks Farm, where the animals are pastured and well cared for. Going forward, I’ll use a piece of pork skin as a buffer between the bird and the grill grate. Ixnay on the oilfay. Even though I don’t usually eat the skin, I try to keep it from directly touching my food.

(By the way, Emily, if you’re reading this, I found my email and did order a 25 lb bird last year, not ‘as large as possible’. LOL. It’s all good. It just meant my guests were able to bring more home.)

Prepping the Wood Chips

If my husband or I are on our game, we’ll start smoking our wood chips the night before we want to smoke. This is crucial if you’re using larger pieces of wood. The really small chips may only take 30 minutes. I don’t think you can really oversoak chips. It is the water in the chips that will help provide the smoke when it hits the hot coals, hence smoky flavor you want in the meat.

We’ve used hickory, cherry, maple and others over the years, except mesquite. We’ve never done mesquite. They have all been fine though. We aren’t married to any particular type. It’s not as if maple wood makes the turkey taste like it’s been basted in maple syrup.

For a 25 lb. bird at about 275ºF, we might want the coals to be ready by 8 AM to eat to give us ample time to have it ready by 3 or 4 in the afternoon. That translates to about 20-30 min per pound of meat. If the temperature is too much higher, the meat will cook before it can fully absorb the smoky flavor. I have found that it is far more difficult to get an even distribution of smoky flavor when either the chips aren’t sufficiently soaked or the meat is cooked too fast.

Placing the bird breast side down seems to provide more consistent results in getting the smoke flavor into the breast meat — especially when foil is used — but also ensures that the juices from the fattier back drip into the breast meat. On this note, you can feel free to experiment with putting butter, lard, fatback or any other sources of fatty juiciness inside the cavity or even under the skin along with the herb rub.

In the early days with that super lightweight smoker, the howling winds often lowered the temperature inside the smoker so there were some years where I had to put it in the oven for good measure. The smoke was already infused into the meat, so the oven merely cooked it through to the correct internal temperature.

I have smoked turkey in an electric smoker too. It works fine, but we still like doing it over hardwood charcoal in part because we can keep it farther from the house. Although extension cords exist, so that’s always an option.

With all my musings out of the way, let’s get started.

Ingredients

• 1 22-25 lb. pastured whole turkey
• 1/4 cup sea salt
• 1 1/2 Tbsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 Tbsp organic cane sugar or honey
• 3 stalks rosemary
• 5 stalks thyme
• 3 branches sage
• Finely grated peel of three tangerines or oranges (optional)
• 10 lb. bag Hardwood charcoal such as Cowboy
• 2 lb. wood chips

How to Smoke a Turkey

The Rub

Remove woody stems from the herbs and set aside. Grind together the salt, pepper, sugar, herb leaves and optional tangerine peels until you have a reasonably uniform dry rub.

Marinade

Since I always smoke a turkey for Thanksgiving, I tend to do this after bringing it home from the farm the Saturday or Sunday before. I cannot recommend leaving it longer, nor can I promise it will take on the wonderful flavors in a much shorter brining time of say 2 days or less. At least not for a bird this size. Although it would be fine for a chicken.

Loosen the skin of the turkey away from the flesh of the bird. Distribute a bit more than half of the rub under the skin, getting all around the breast meat, between the breast and thigh, and even under the thigh toward the back. Put remaining rub evenly inside the turkey’s cavity. Any rub remaining on your hands can be wiped onto the outside of the bird although it is unlikely to make any difference to the final flavor.

Place turkey in a roasting bag and tie. Place in coldest part of the refrigerator where it will fit comfortably for the next few days until you are ready to smoke it.

How to Smoke for Optimum Flavor and Juiciness

Light your coals. While waiting for them to get to the glowing stage, wrap about half of your drained wood chips in a smoking basket. Alternately, seal them in a piece of heavy duty foil. Slash the foil in several places so the coals and water can hit the coals and release the smoky flavor.

Place a large metal bowl of water on top of the coals with enough space to place the wood chips alongside it. The bowl of water will keep the air moist so the bird does not dry out, so make sure it is easily accessible to top up with more water throughout the process.

Immediately after you place the chips on the coals, place your turkey breast side down onto the grill lined with a piece of heavy duty foil covered with parchment or on a piece of pork skin to prevent sticking. I also try to pointing the cavity just above where the wood chips are placed so the smoke will infuse directly into the cavity.

Cover your smoker and regulate the temperature to roughly 275ºF/140°C for the remainder of the cooking process. This is where significant others come in handy.

Occasionally I feel compelled to turn the bird right side up toward the last hour of cooking, but the rationale behind that varies. So you figure out what works best for your situation. Sometimes the reason is as simple as evenly browning the top.

Your turkey is done when a thermometer inserted into the thigh meat closest to the breast registers 160ºF/71ºC. Don’t go by color. The leg and thigh meat in particular will be pink like ham so you’ll never get it to go white. If you’re worried about the level of doneness, you can place it in the oven at about 325ºF/165ºC/gas mark 3 for a half hour or so. But honestly, start with good quality pastured meat and worries of things like salmonella are likely unfounded.

When the meat is done to your liking, remove it from its heat source and allow it to sit for about 10 minutes before carving into it.

Do you prepare smoked turkey for Thanksgiving? Do you have another process? Let me know in the comments!