Bourbon brine smoked turkey

I think turkey is my favorite thing to smoke, I love turkey though I'm the person that never gets tired of Thanksgiving left overs. I've even been shackled as the official Thanksgiving turkey cooker since last year.

Smoking a turkey is kind of misleading because you aren't really smoking it like you do ribs or brisket. You really are roasting it at 350, the same as you would in your oven, only with smoke. Oh well call it what you will its dericious!



First step with any turkey is the brine and I wanted something different than last time. Usually I use an apple juice & vegetable broth mix for my brine. This time I involved the greatest thing Kentucky has given the world...bourbon! The brine ingredients went a little askew when I realized I didn't make enough to cover half the bird. But the basic list is as follows.

14 cups of water
4 cups of apple juice
1 cup of bourbon (I used Four Roses Single Barrel b/c I had it on hand)
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 1/4 kosher salt
4-6 bay leaves
16 whole black peppercorns
Medium sized onion, chopped
6-8 garlic cloves, chopped
Lemon peel from 1 lemon

I had to add a few cups of water, some splashes of bourbon and apple juice  to get enough brine to cover my bird so I started adding bits of everything. I didn't do the math to make it all even so I'm sure I used more bourbon than called for.

After letting it sit in the brine for 24 hours I got the Egg lit and the bird ready to cook. I covered my bird with 2 sticks of mostly melted butter with a couple of shots of bourbon mixed in. Inside the turkey cavity, I never cook stuffing in the turkey...never, I chopped up an onion, Granny Smith apple, couple more garlic cloves, some salt & pepper, and the butter\bourbon mix.

I let my turkey cook for about 2 hours, get the skin nice and crispy. Then I wrap it in foil and let it cook until done.

Turkey's are fickle creatures even when dead. I start checking the temp in my bird around 3 hours, I know the new target temp for a turkey is 165 but I like mine to cook to around 170 in the breast, still lower than the 180 originally recommended. So at 3 hours my turkey was sitting pretty around 150. So I took a shower, after my shower it was up to 170. They always jump like that one me and I always forget they do it.

All in all the turkey was great. I'm not sure how much it differed from the other brine I used but the smoke still tastes amazing. I'm thinking next time I need to inject some of the brine into the breast.