I smoked my first whole turkey Sunday for a road test before Christmas dinner. I'm not doing my first one with twelve people showing up. Previously I've smoked several Foster Farms frozen turkey breasts and another turkey breast/bone in.
I have a SM025, used a modified Turk 101 brine for 48 hours. Two hours out before smoking. I used Splenda in the brine and don't think I'll do that again. Just sugar. I cut way down on the salt and added some Costco Smoked paprika and dried garlic. Brined in small trash bag in side plastic tub in fridge.
I asked my wife to get a 12-14 pound turkey but all she could find was an "Organic" turkey in that size. Organic meaning more expensive than any other turkey per pound.
I prepped it with half some remaining Turk 101 rub spices combined half with a commercial poultry rub. Forgot the brand. I mixed the rub in a cube of butter and put under and on the skin, inside too.
SMoked it at 300 degrees for three hours. Ambient temp was 60 degrees. After an hour I put a butter soaked cheese cloth over the top to protect the skin.
Used about one and a half of Cherry and the same of apple wood.
Turned out good. I put the smokeshack probe in the breast and ran it up to 165. Wanting to know how the dark meat was cooking, I put a separate probe down low in the leg to check the dark meat. Wen the breast was 165, the dark meat was 180-185.
Skin was dark rubbery and not crisp. My usual skin experience smoking. Meat was flavorful and good. We had dinner eating maybe 2/3 pound then I stripped the carcass so she could make turkey base and some soup.
Here is the weird thing. I weighed the meat I got from a 13 lb turkey and it came to 3.66 pounds after dinner. Add back what we ate for dinner and the turkey yielded about 4.5 pounds of meat!
I have several frozen Foster Farms turkey breasts in the freezer weighing three to four and a half pounds. They taste great and are a heck of a lot easier to cook and carve.
At the rate of meat yield Two of these Foster Farm frozen breasts would give me the same meat yield as a 20 pound turkey without all the hassle.
I'll make another bird for Christmas but this was a little odd. I was expecting at least half the weight to be meat if not more.
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