Brain gassed turkey still turned out delicious.........just a bit darker than I like

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noboundaries

Epic Pitmaster
Original poster
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SMF Premier Member
Sep 7, 2013
10,245
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Roseville, CA, a suburb of Sacramento
I had to cooked our turkey on the Weber Kettle on Wednesday due to schedule issues.  All kinds of things going on and my head was in ten places at once.  The bird was a 17lb frozen turkey we had in the big freezer that was completely thawed then brined for 36 hours, once again, due to schedule issues.  The choice was 12 hours or 36 hours.  I usually brine for 24 hrs but I went with 36 and cut the amount of salt to 2/3rds what I usually use.

I splatched the bird then used my usual prep of a paste made with a cup of melted butter and a jar of Litehouse Poultry seasoning spread on and under the skin.

300F-325F is my favorite poultry range for anything that once grew feathers.  This is where the brain gas took over.    

I ran the temp at the grill surface up to 300F, which meant the temp at the top of the bird, which was only about 1 1/2" below the vent, was closer to 450F!  When it hit me what I'd done about 45 minutes into the smoke I checked the vent temp.  465F!  Yikes!  The skin was almost as brown as it should have been at 4 hours!  Glad I caught it though.  I dropped the vent temp to 320-330Fwhich put the grill surface temp at 245-250F.  The only thing I ended up with was a darker skin than I wanted but the bird was delicious and juicy when it reached 165F at 4.5 hours.

 
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