Smoked Turkey Breast

For the last day of the year in this first year (well eight months really so far) of starting these adventures in BBQ, we will be finishing the old year and ushering in the new with a Smoked Turkey Breast. Since there is only one of the household eating it, we went with a smaller turkey breast rather than trying to cook a whole bird. The smoked turkey breast will be done Central Texas-style with a simple salt and black pepper rub – the so called Dalmation rub (because its just black and white see…). Read on to see how it turned out.

• Setup: Weber Kettle with Smokenator, no internal water pan. Setup for indirect 2-zone cooking with a Weber water pan on the bottom grate (This was the plan but didn’t actually happen… ended up using 2 small pans on the grate added later, see Cooking Diary).
• Meat: Boneless turkey breast from Shalhoob Meat Company, about 4lb in weight.
• Fuel: Kingsford Blue Bag briquettes with oak and peach wood chunks.
• Prep:
  1. Removed netting from turkey breast and then removed the skin.
  2. Dry brined with a simple Dalmation rub of 1.5 tablespoons of coarse seat salt to 3 tablespoons of coarse black pepper.
  3. Washed down all surfaces and utensils in hot water and then spayed surfaces with dilute bleach solution and wiped down.

Dalmation (salt and ground black pepper) rub

Rolled-up turkey breast in its mesh net prior to trimming

Rubbed and dry-brined turkey breast waiting to go onto the BBQ

Cooking Diary

• 4:00pm: Started coals in chimney. Tried wrapping paper in a do(ugh)nut shape with coals in the middle – didn’t seem to improve the lighting at all. Think I need to try the Weber lighter cubes or a “Texas match”…
• 4:30-4:50pm: various amounts of fiddling about with Pam-sprayed paper towel and newspaper to try and get things going…
• 5:00pm: Put the turkey breast on the grate and added the chunks of red oak and peach wood (each chunk was about 3″x1.5″ in size). Inserted the Maverick’s meat thermometer into the thickest part of the turkey breast.
• 5:10pm: Grate temperature has stabilized nicely at around 300F, a little lower than the desired 325F but stable temps are better than it jumping around all over the place.
• 5:50pm: Remembered I had forgotten to add the water pan with all the hassle getting the coals going. Added 2 small loaf tins of hot water to the grate next to the turkey breast. Also stirred the coals and added about a dozen more briquettes to keep things going.
• 6:45pm: Hit our target temperature of 160F on the internal probe but probing various other places with a handheld thermometer showed it was a still a bit below this in the very center – pushed the Maverick probe a bit further in and kept cooking.
• 7:10pm: Pulled off the grill as we had hit 160F in our new more central place.

Results

Completed smoked turkey breast after coming off the barbecue and just before resting under tented foil.

This was my first time trying to smoke a turkey and I was more than a little nervous. The whole handling of raw turkey and making sure it has got cooked to the right temperature so it doesn’t give anyone a case of the upset tummys (or worse) also added to the anxiety. Considering that the turkey breast was not injected with anything and I left the water pan out for the first 50 minutes of the cook (major oops), the smoked turkey breast came out nicely moist and juicy (it could probably have also done with another 10 minutes or so resting time).

Sliced smoked turkey breast

One downside was that the ‘skin’ ended up very tough and I think this stopped a lot of the brine and rub from penetrating far enough into the meat. I had removed the main skin from the breast but there was a thin layer of almost silverskin left on which was very difficult to remove. Since I was pressed for time and it was proving difficult, I didn’t try harder to remove it and I should have.

Verdict: B-

Considering the troubles encountered getting things going and cooking half of the time without a water pan, I think it didn’t come out too badly for a first attempt. Next time (hopefully before Thanksiving 2016) I will definitely try harder to remove all the skin (or get the butcher to do it…) to avoid it going tough and chewy and give the dry rub a better chance to penetrate through into the meat.