How To Cook The Perfect Christmas or Thanksgiving Turkey
The best Turkey recipe of all time!
(brined and apple/hickory smoked)

By: Jeff Ostroff

Cooking Method: Indirect Grilling with wood smoking.
Prep Time : 48 hours. 24 hours to soak in the brine, 24 hours to sit in the refrigerator.
Cooking Time : About 5 hours at 325 F for a 16 pound turkey.

TIP: Click on photos on this page to enlarge them

It's holiday time and it's you're turn to cook the turkey this Thanksgiving or Christmas, but you're in a panic. Your biggest fear is overcooking and serving a dry bird, or a mediocre gravy. This is where we come in, giving you techniques below for that perfect bird every time. This is a turkey cooking recipe that we came up with in 2007 which arose out of a discussion thread among several of us in the forums over on barbecuebible.com. The recipe you see on this page is based on the results of tried and true methods and changes I made to known author recipes, strategies and cooking techniques whose goal is to produce the most delicious turkey using the finest ingredients and cooking methods to keep the turkey moist. If you follow the steps I have outlined and photographed for you on this page, you'll be the hit of your family, guaranteed! Strategy is everything! The above left photo shows the turkey I cooked Christmas 2007.

How To keep that bird moist and tender

First, keep in mind that everything you do should be with the goal of keeping your turkey moist on the inside. This strategy starts first with the turkey you buy. If you can avoid frozen turkey, and if you can spend the extra few dollars, pre-order your fresh refrigerated, non-frozen turkey from your local butcher counter. One of the better known turkeys of this type which I ordered was the Bell & Evans turkeys, which are slow growth raised in free range farms in PA, they are all natural, and have ½ the fat of most other turkeys, and they come in clear bags so you can see what you're getting. The biggest selling point for me is they come fresh, they are never frozen. The reason why you don't want frozen birds is freezing often results in water trapped in the meat and draining out the juices when the turkey thaws.

The Bell & Evans turkey processing plant uses a hanging type conveyor system where the temperature slowly drops in the refrigerator chambers as the birds move along the path. This keeps the meat juices inside and fresh, and more tender than frozen birds. The Bell & Evans turkeys also come with a built in pop-up timer. It's a red plastic button that pops up when the internal temperature reaches the fully cooked value. Use this in conjunction with your own digital thermometer readings.

How to Brine Your Turkey and Lock in the Moisture

48 hours before cook time: The next strategy in producing a moist turkey is to soak it in a brine solution. This is a fancy name for a salt water mixture with sugar and spices thrown in. Brining your poultry adds moisture and flavor to meats that otherwise dry out easily when you cook them. Every time I cook chicken breasts or salmon on my grill, I always brine them for a half hour first. The brine solution permeates into the meat to preserve moisture, and provide flavor. I especially brine pork chops when I cook them. Since you are brining the turkey and flavor is infused into the meat, you do not need to use any type of flavor injectors to squirt flavor into your turkey. The brining process performs this flavoring for you. The brine recipe which I used below is based on Steven Raichlen's awesome barbeque cook book, BBQ USA: 425 Fiery Recipes from All Across America. He's well a known guru, teacher, and author in the barbeque world. I have several of his books and products. I always adapt recipes to suit my own tastes. Here's how I mixed the brine:

Above: My Cast of characters for the brine

Above: Mixing up the brine solution in a large pot

1-1/4 cups kosher or fresh ground Mediterranean sea salt
1 quart hot water (to dissolve salt and sugar crystals)
4 quarts cold water
1/2 cup Turbinado sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 medium sized onion, thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
10 peppercorns
5 bay leaves
4 strips lemon zest
2 cloves

I mix it all in a big pot, dissolving the salt and sugar in the hot water first, then adding the cold water, then all the rest of the ingredients.

The above ingredients are for a 12 pound Thanksgiving turkey. If your bird is more like 16 pounds or more, you may have to scale the recipe upward to ensure you fully immerse the bird in the brining solution when you place the bird into the brining bag. At the left you can see the ingredients I used, and I'm adding the maple syrup to the brine mixture. This will help give a lightly sweetened flavor to the meat. I'm drooling already!

Brining Your Thanksgiving Turkey

Remove the giblets from the main and front cavity, and wash the turkey inside and out before brining. Now that you have mixed up your brine solution, you need some type of container to brine your Christmas turkey in. That's where large brining bags come in. You can get these at Amazon.com or from Williams Sonoma. To the left you can click on the product sold at amazon. These bags should be large thick bags big enough to hold 20 pound turkeys.

I like to use my large plastic storage bins to hold the turkey and brining bag while I pour in the brine. You can also use your small Igloo cooler.

The photos below show my setup just before pouring the brining solution into the large brining bag containing the turkey. The plastic bin helps support everything so that the bag remains upright and open. You then pour the brine into the bag, covering the turkey. Then squeeze all the air out of the brining bag, pushing the liquid up over the top of the turkey so that the turkey is immersed in the solution. You should feel almost a vacuum on the liquid as all the air is squeezed out.

Brine the Turkey for 24 hours in the refrigerator

At left you can see my Christmas turkey brining in my refrigerator out in the garage. You brine it for 24 hours, moving and adjusting it several times throughout the day to make sure the brine reaches all parts of the bird. You may have to manipulate the bird inside the bag to roll it around if you don't have enough liquid to immerse the turkey.

Last year I bought this nifty turkey roasting pan at Costco, shown at the left. The pan has a built in dripping spout on one of the corners. You can use this same pan to hold your turkey in the refrigerator during the brining process.

24 hours before cook time: Now that the 24 hour brining process has come to an end, it's time for the dry aging process, which dries out the skin to prevent it from getting rubbery when you cook it. This process, combined with the garlic butter basting recipe below, will serve to make your turkey's skin nice and crisp. Just drain the brine solution out of the brining bag which your turkey has been sitting in the last 24 hours. Then rinse off the turkey, get all chunks of onion and other stuff off it, and pat it dry. Then place the turkey in your roaster pan and put it back into the fridge with no covering on it. The bird will now sit for another 24 hours, uncovered in the refrigerator. This will age dry the skin, but rest assured, the meat inside your turkey is still moist with brine, and well protected.

Melting the garlic butter prior to basting

Basting sauce and dry rub

For basting sauce I decided to go off the beaten path and make this awesome herb roasted garlic butter. This is the recipe that's in Steve Raichin's other awesome book p. 450 of How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques. I've used his recipe for years, my girls love it so much they want to eat it off the spoon. I chose it because it has rosemary and other spices begging to be used on turkey dinners, so for me it was the perfect match. I make 3 rolls of this butter at a time. At left you can see I've removed my roll of garlic butter from the refrigerator, and I'm melting it just prior to basting it onto the turkey. Yum, just look at all those herbs in the enlargement.

Recipe for the garlic butter basting: One head of garlic, which you roast for 45 minutes inside a foil pouch, then squeeze out the garlic ooze. Get ¾ stick of butter melted it at room temperature to a soft pile, then mix in garlic, and 2 tablespoons of chopped mix herbs: parsley, basil, rosemary, oregano, chives. Add to that 3 tablespoons of freshly grated parmesan cheese, and sprinkle in some coarse sea salt and pepper, then whip it all up with a whisk, and form it into a roll with plastic food wrap. This will solidify in the fridge in a half hour. This butter is awesome on any food! Back to the Thanksgiving turkey. When the turkey is ready to be basted, mix up the following dry rub components.

My recipe for the dry rub:

2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons Onion Powder
1 teaspoon Basil
1 teaspoon Rubbed Sage
1 teaspoon Rosemary
1 teaspoon Tarragon

Above: Cast of characters for my dry rub

Mix the above dry rub ingredients together and dump the dry rub mixture into a cheese shaker bottle, as shown below in the photo on the right. This helps evenly disperse the dry rub all over the turkey. Be sure to get it under the armpits, and under the drumsticks. These 2 photos below show the turkey just before we apply the dry rub, and on the right, as we are applying the rub using a cheese shaker.

Applying a thin even coating of dry rub all over the turkey.

Next you can get some slices off another roll of your garlic butter from the refrigerator, and slide them under the skin of the turkey, as shown below. Reach way down and slide little slivers into the tightest nooks and crannies. When you're done with that, pull the skin back over any exposed areas of meat. Try to minimize any exposed areas, to prevent them from drying out during cooking.

Applying the liquid basting to the turkey

Now that the dry rub is on the turkey, it's time to apply the liquid basting as shown in the photos below. I don't think it matters if you put the dry rub on first, or if you apply the liquid basting first. Heat up a pan with the herb roasted garlic butter roll in it. Once it melts, you have to act fast, because the liquid butter will want to congeal back to a solid at room temperature. Once melted, stir the melted butter and herbs and use a silicon basting brush to apply the baste onto the turkey. Paint the turkey with the baste, getting good coverage all over, and get the wings and drumsticks real good too. Left up the wings and get the armpits, and all other hidden areas. Make sure the whole Turkey is greased down nicely 100%, just like an oiled up sunbather at the beach. This butter basting is what makes the skin crisp.

Melting the butter in a pan, then baste the butter to the turkey. Cover evenly over all surfaces.

Optional Step: Stuffing the turkey prior to cooking.

Some people like to stuff their turkey before they cook it. In my case to the left, you can see I chopped up some Granny Smith apples into tiny bits and stuffed them into the turkey cavity as shown below. They will give off a sweet steam during the cooking process, coating the inside of the turkey. Some people stuff in oranges or cranberries or onions, do what you want. I don't think it's worth wasting a lot of time on, because no one eats the inside cavity of a turkey. For real stuffing mix, I prefer to make it later and not have it cook for 5 hours inside a bird.

One hour before cooking: Soak the wood chips

If you are cooking your Thanksgiving turkey in an oven, you can skip this step. If you're cooking it in your grill or smoker outside, this is the MOST important step. Mix up a large Ziploc bag of 50% apple wood and 50% hickory wood, add water to the bag, squeeze out all the air, and lay the bag down, letting the wood chips soak for an hour before you start cooking. By soaking the wood chips, this will help prevent them from just burning black smoke. They will steam up and smolder, and you'll smell the sweet delightful smell of apple wood and hickory. Usually you have to go to specialty barbeque stores to find apple wood, whereas hickory wood can be found just about anywhere. At left is a photo showing my wood chips soaking and my gas grill. I don't have a smoker like other folks do, but don't underestimate my ability to make my gas grill act just

like a top notch smoker with my smoker box. My food comes out just as good as Texas barbeques. Many people also swear by their turkey fryers which supposedly produce superior turkeys, but it's a luxury item that not many people have.

Indirect Heat cooking method

The method we are cooking with is called indirect heat. This means there will never be a flame directly underneath the turkey, as this would burn the bottom of it. This is the opposite of direct heating, which is how you cook steaks, right over the heat. If you enlarge the photo of my grill at left, you can see I have the smoker box on the right, grill removed, and it's sitting on top of the burners. This is the only way to get my grill to smoke wood. The 2 rightmost burners will provide the heat, while the turkey will sit in its cooking pan over on the left side away from the heat.

Some thoughts on grill and meat temperature control

Accurate temperature readings are important, as grill gauges can be off by 100 degrees. I use 2 types of thermometers. My favorite digital thermometer of all time is the Thermapen Instant Read Thermometer by Thermoworks, and it's worth every single penny. There's a reason why the pros use it, because it has the fastest one second instant read time, and leaves such a pin hole tiny foot print in your meats, so juices don't escape like they do with the large forks. Professional kitchens need perfection and can't leave circumstances up to chance. I use it on everything I cook, for temperature perfect steaks every time. I also use the Redi Chek thermometers shown below on the left. This digital thermometer set consists of a transmitter which feeds 2 probes into your grill, one measuring air temperature inside the grill, the other probe is inserted into the meat to measure the meat temperature throughout the cooking cycle.

You would use these thermometers on the left while smoking ribs, cooking roasts, whole chickens, and other long cooking time meals. These temperature readings are transmitted to the receiver unit shown on the left, with a dual display, which you wear on your belt all day as you relax or work about the house. Every once in a while, you glance down to make sure the smoker temperature is where it belongs, to make sure your heat source has not extinguished itself. I can't tell you how many times this has saved me when my grill ran out of propane. You just throw on another can of propane. Always make sure you have 2 FULL cans of propane days in advance. You don't want to wait in line at the propane store on cooking day.

It's turkey cooking time!

Preheat the grill or oven to 325 or whatever temperature the instructions from turkey company tells you to do. Let the grill preheat about 20 minutes to get it up to temperature, and make sure it's stable. To collect drippings for making gravy, your turkey will be placed in a large foil roasting pan, or a more professional metal roasting pan with handles like my black pan that I showed you earlier with the pourer spout built into one corner.

Important Temperature Warning:

Every time you open your oven door or lift the grill lid up, you will lose 15 minutes of cooking time. This is due to the fact that it will take about 15 minutes for the grill to get back to the temperature it was at when you opened the lid. So don't keep opening your lid to check on the bird. Have faith! If you have the temperature set right, and you can read the meat temperature on your remote receiver, there's no reason to open the lid!

Hopefully you soaked enough wood to run 3 batches through your smoker box. Once the wood stops burning, have the next batch ready, about every hour or so. Quickly open the lid to your grill part way, and use tongs to get your smoker box out. If you have a built in slider smoker box, this is all the better for you.

Quickly open the lid, replenish your wood chips and put the smoker box back in for the next batch of wood to start smoking. Continue this until 3 hours have elapsed. No need to smoke it beyond this time. If you are really chomping at the paranoia bit, wait until 4 hours, then quickly lift the lid up part way enough to see the bird, make sure it looks ok, not burnt, then close the lid again. When your food temperature reading matches your desired internal meat temperature, or your pop-up timer has popped, your turkey is done.

Aim for a deep thigh temperature of 180 degrees

Don't just use my cook times, they may not apply to your bird. Use your turkey company's suggested time and temperature. The big factor for you will be internal meat temperature, and confirm it on the other leg, and breast too with your Thermapen Instant Read Thermometer.

At the left is the fruit of 48 hours of diligence, careful planning and execution. A perfectly cooked golden brown beauty. Wait 15 minutes before you start to cut the turkey, let the juices settle back down inside the meat. This will avoid a flood of juices running everywhere when you cut. You want your guests to enjoy a moist turkey, not a moist plate.

Climb Aboard the Gravy Train!

The basic theory behind making gravy is to use the filtered drippings from your turkey, along with chicken broth, flour, and other ingredients to form a thickened liquid. This is accomplished using a process known as reduction, where you boil off half the liquid, leaving you with a thick gravy.

To assist you in straining the turkey drippings, and make your gravy, you need to use a gravy boat or a fat separator. I prefer a fat separator rather than a gravy boat, because the ability to filter out the chunks is ideal, leaving you with a perfectly textured oil. At the left you can see how to order one from Amazon, they are nearly impossible to find in most stores.

I used this fat separator shown here at left, made by Oxo. It also looks like a graduated measuring cup only much more functional. The way this fat separator works is you pour the turkey drippings over the top gray colored strainer seen at left. Then you wait a few minutes for the fat to separate from the drippings and sink to the bottom.

Then you pour the drippings into a large measuring cup. You should stop pouring when the fat starts to come creep up the spout tube and tries to come out of the spout. Add enough chicken stock to the liquid until you obtain 3 cups total of liquid. This then forms the base of your gravy.

The rest of the gravy recipe I got from Steve Rachin's Barbeque University at bbqu.net, Show 303. His recipe is excerpted once again from his awesome book BBQ USA: 425 Fiery Recipes from All Across America. I used most of his recipe below, but I'm not a coffee drinker, so I replaced coffee with a small amount of soy sauce. It still turned out perfect, and my wife was raving about the gravy even weeks later.

My modified Recipe for Steve Rachin's Maple Red Eye Gravy (Makes 3 cups)

2 cups turkey drippings
1 to 2 cups chicken or turkey stock (whatever brings your total liquid to 3 cups)
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup Madeira wine (I used real Sandeman Madeira, the key to that refined taste)
1/4 cup soy sauce (I substituted soy sauce for the coffee that Steven had here in his recipe)
1/4 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons maple syrup
Coarse salt (kosher or sea) and freshly ground black pepper to taste

The Madeira wine is a very strong tasting wine. I did some experiments and found that the Madeira wine will be the predominant taste in this gravy, so do not exceed 1/4 cup (2 ounces). Also, since I substituted soy sauce for coffee, I don't think we need to call it red eye gravy anymore! I also noticed that turkeys under 10 pounds will not yield a cup of fat dripping. A 15 pound bird barely yields one cup of drippings. So be prepared with enough chicken stock to bring you up to the correct amount of liquid.

Take your time here, get it right, and make sure you have that gravy at the proper thickness. Consistency is everything!

Finally, making the gravy!

1) Melt the butter in a saucepan.
2) Stir in the flour and cook it until it turns a dark golden brown, about 3 to 4 minutes. This step is where you gravy gets its color and thickness from. I prefer a little thicker gravy, so you might try 4 tablespoons, of flour for thicker consistency, but no more.

Then remove the pan from the heat and gradually whisk in the Madeira, the soy sauce, the heavy cream, maple syrup, and the turkey drippings with the chicken stock. Return the pan to the heat and bring to a boil, whisking steadily. Simmer the sauce over medium heat until richly flavored and reduced to about 3 cups, which should take you about 6 to 10 minutes. Correct the seasoning to your taste, adding salt and pepper to to suit your taste.

Make this meal as much of a feast for the eyes as it is for the taste buds. Serve the gravy in the fanciest gravy boat you can get, and serve the turkey on the fanciest serving platter you can get.

Now you are an expert in making the most perfect turkey dinner ever. Congratulations! Don't forget to check out the rest of our site for videos and photos of our huge Christmas lights display that we put up every year, synchronized to over 132 channels of lighting dancing to the music. Enjoy your Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays from our family to yours!

- Jeff

How To Cook The Perfect Christmas or Thanksgiving Turkey The best Turkey recipe of all time! (brined and apple/hickory smoked)

How To Cook The Perfect Christmas or Thanksgiving Turkey
The best Turkey recipe of all time!
(brined and apple/hickory smoked)