Smoked Maple Turkey

Looking for something new to try for your next holiday feast? This smoked turkey recipe is a nice twist on the classic recipe. Brined with honey and injected with a maple syrup / butter blend, this turkey is very juicy and is amazingly flavorful.

If you have not had a chance to try smoked turkey, you need to give this recipe a try. The worst part of the prep work is just brining the turkey and even that was not too tough. Other than that step, the recipe is pretty simple to create and cooking it spatchcocked on the smoker only takes a few hours to complete. This was one of the juciest turkeys I have had and the maple butter blend gave it this subtle sweet flavor that I found to be addicting. I would highly reccomend placing a drip pan under the turkey while cooking because the gravy that I made from this was out of this world. The toughest part of this meal was actually finding a turkey I could brine. When you look in your local grocery store, most turkeys are pre-injected with bring which just let’s them charge you more for the turkey since the brine will make the turkey weigh more. The other piece that can be a little tricky is making sure the skin turns out crispy. I will go over a few of the tricks I used to help ensure the skin turned out just the way I wanted.

Cooking Basics

As discussed above, the first hurdle with this recipe is actually purchasing the correct turkey. This recipe calls for brining the turkey before smoking it. When you go to stores, pay close attention to the label on turkeys because you will find that a lot of them have actually been pre brined. There will usually be a percentage listed letting you know how much of the brine was injected into the bird. You want to select a turkey with the lowest precentage possible as this means that it can accept more of the brine. You can typically get unbrined turkeys from your local butcher but they are also a lot more expensive than what you would find a grocery store. If you want to save a little money and purchase from your local grocery store, you are likely going to have the best luck with an organic turkey. If the only turkey you can find is heavily pre-brined, or you just want to make the recipe easier, you can always skip the brining step of this recipe. You will still get a lot of the flavor into the turkey from the injection mixture.

A day or two before you want to cook you will need to brine the turkey to give it plenty of time to take in the liquid mixture. When preparing the turkey for the brine make sure to remove everything from the cavity in the turkey. I have heard of people using plenty of different things to hold the brine and the turkey. I got a food quality 5 gallon bucket from Lowes with a lid to use. When the turkey is ready, you will need to prepare the brine by heating up the ingredients mentioned in the recipe and allowing the salt to dissolve. Once this has been done, you will use ice to bring the liquid back down in temperature before submerging the turkey. Make sure you get the solution cold before putting the turkey in because you need to keep the turkey cold for the day or two it is brining. You do not want the temperature of the turkey to go above 40 degrees for food safety reasons.

When the day arrives to cook, it is time to do the rest of your prep work on the turkey.

The first thing you will do is prepare your injection to allow it time to cool before using it. I used equal parts butter and maple syrup for the injection and the flavor was incredible. Melt the butter and then mix in maple syrup. Once this is mixed, let it cool down to room temperature before you inject it.

While the injection mix is cooling, you can remove the turkey from the brine and pat the whole thing dry. This will help ensure you get some nice crispy skin and get any excess salt off the turkey. The next step will be to spatchcock the turkey. This has several advantage over cooking the turkey whole. When you spatchcock a turkey, you are basically splitting it open by removing the spine and flattening it out. This helps the skin get crispier while cooking and reduces the cooking time while also allowing for more even cooking of the bird. Another advantage I have noticed is that it is much easier to apply seasoning to since you only need to deal with one side of the bird after it is spatchcocked. What you will need for this process is a set of heavy duty meat shears.

Using the meat shears, you will need to simply cut along each side of the spine of the turkey and then remove it completely. Once this is done, you will need to flip over the bird. At this point, it will still not lay down nicely. You will need to put the palm of your hand on the top part of the turkey where it is not flattened and push down to crack the rib bone. AFter that, the bird should lay out nicely and you can start putting the rub on. I used Pit Boss Champion Chicken rub on the turkey and the skin tasted amazing. If you don’t have this, feel free to use your favorite seasonings for turkey. If you are not sure what to use , a safe bet is I always with is equal parts salt, pepper, and garlic powder. In the image you will see I have removed the thighs of the turkey. You do not need to do this. I did it to try to help fit it into my smoker.

You will now use a meat injector to inject the mix into each breast, each thigh, and each wing of the turkey. Try to slowly pull the needle out as you are pushing down on the plunger to distribute the mix throughout each part of the bird. I have included links to both a great set of meat shears and the meat injection that I used for this recipe at the bottom. These two pieces of equipment are vital to this recipe but also useful tools to have around the kitchen if you do a lot of smoking or grilling.

The bird is now ready for us to throw on the smoker. I suggest using Hickory or Maple for this cook if you have it. Preheat your smoker to 225 degrees. You will be cooking at this temperature for the first hour to help get more of that smoky flavor. I used a water pan in the smoker to help the turkey stay moist and not dry out. Make sure to throw a pan under the turkey to catch drippings as well. When you place the turkey on the grill, place a temperature probe in the breast and the thigh of the turkey to determine when it is done. If you don’t have multiple probes, you can just use an instant read one when you start getting close to the time. Both the thigh and breast should be checked if using the instant read method. After the first hour, you will crank up the heat to 350 to help crisp up the skin. If the turkey is getting close to the internal temperature and you don’t think you have enough drippings for gravy, add some chicken stock to the drip pan. The turkey is done when the internal temperature in the breast is 165 and the internal temperature in the thigh is 175. The time for this will vary depending on the size of the turkey but it should take another hour or two to complete once the temperature on the smoker has been turned up.

Final Thoughts

I absolutely loved this meal and want to cook it again. There were, however, a couple of tips that I figured out while making this that I wanted to share.

• Seperate Pieces - I ended up removing the turkey thighs from the body after spatchcocking to help make it fit nicely in the grill. This turned out to be nice for a couple reasons. It helped me fit this onto the grill but I also found it was nice because the thigns ended up being done a little before the body was done. Since they were seperated, I was able to take them off the smoker early. I am sure if they had been connected to the body allowing them to cook a little more would not have been to detrimental but it was nice being abel to take them off at the correct temp and then just resting them inside while the body finished up.
• Injecting - I loved the flavor of the injection with the turkey but the way I injected it didn’t disperse the mixture enough. I would get a couple bites where I wouldn’t taste much of the injections and then I would randomly get a really flavorful bite. The next time I try this, I am going to use the injector end with multiple holes to help disperse the mix better and maybe inject in a couple different spots in both thighs and breasts.
• Crispy Skin - I was happy with how the skin turned out following this recipe. If you want extra crispy skin, there are a couple things you can do: You can mix a little cornstarch in with the rub you put on the skin or you can spray the skin with spray butter as the turkey is cooking.
• Gravy - Make sure to try to make gravy out of the drippings you got during the cook. You might have to thin it out a little with some water because the brine contains a lot of salt. This was the best gravy I think I have ever had though. It was super flavorful and had a hint of sweetness and an amazing smoky flavor as well.

Recipe