Turkey time to smoke

The book is wrong. Go by your thermometer. My 20+ lb bird took 3 hrs in my smoker at 275*.

Definitely let your therm tell you when it's done otherwise you run the risk of drying it out.

Thanks for the quick reply. Should I pretty much ignore all of the cook times in the Cookshack book?

That's what the good folks here will tell you. The forum is rich with info on whatever you smoke. Use the info here.

Check out Smokin's 101's.

I had the same experience on Thanksgiving with my SM025...it cooked in less than half the time I had anticipated. I FTC'd and it stayed hot until it was time to carve. Very surprised at how fast it cooks things. I've started lowering temps a bit to lengthen the cooking time.

We in the forum aren't a fan of the cooktimes. When they do a new book, We'll change that.

My suggestion?

Come to us and ask for what we think and we'll help from there.

First question I would ask is how big was the breast. Breast and whole turkeys are different durations and size is a BIG factor.

Just a thought and some perspective on times once you go from the oven to the smoker. In the oven many of us are used to cooking at higher temperatures with stuffing inside the bird. When we go to the smoker with the bird, we do so without including the stuffing (For food safety reasons, stuffing not recommmended when smoking).

That makes a big difference. With stuffing we're cooking the bird from the outside in, and even with the higher temps, it takes longer to cook. Without stuffing in the lower temp environment of our smokers, we are essentially cooking the bird from the inside (cavity is now open) as well as the outside, and it cooks faster in relation to temperature..

It's a mental adjustment I had to make. I thought the lower smoker temp would extend cook time. Big difference stuffed or not stuffed. Our oven baked 21 lb turkey was cooked without stuffing for the first time this year, and my wife had to make a major adjustment on cook time since the bird cooked a lot faster. Brining also speeds up cook time.

I guess I'm suggesting, for those who haven't stopped to think about it, we should be comparing apples to apples when we first start smoking our birds. Stuffing and brining definitely affects cook times.

Somebody once said, "it's just BBQ so don't over think it"?

This might make more sense, my 020 cooks turkey slower if I have the racks on the bottom pegs instead of the top pegs. I know the temp of the smoker is the same and a feller wouldn't think 2 inches or so would make much of a difference, but it does, maybe direct heat plays a roll in smoking?

Good reason to keep quality notes on all your smokes and that dang cookbook gets all the attention once again,why,why...could be a learning experience that was ment to be learned by all, oh well.

Agree on keeping good notes. Trying to give a heads up to those without a lot of notes just yet.

As the other good cooks suggest, good notes are a must

Unless you are smoking the same things every day you’d be surprised how much detail is forgotten from the last time to the next time you smoke the same thing.

I fine the older I get the more I forget.

Or is it I know so much that my brain is full so every time I learn something new the only way to retain it is to push other information out to make room?

Yeah! Yeah! Thats it. Thats my story and I'm sticking to it.