Has anyone tried the butterflied turkey?

Perhaps this is the wrong area but has anyone tried the Butterflied Turkey shown on the homepage? if so, what are your thoughts?
Normally, I would rub the skin but the recipe says let it be outside of butter and pepper. Maybe this is to preserve a traditional Thanksgiving flavour (ours was a few weeks ago in Canada). I"m doing it Sunday with some cherry and sugar maple and will report back regardless.

Two firsts for me this afternoon. Low/slow and butterflied. I salted the 8% enhanced Publix bird yesterday evening and will rinse thoroughly and use a peppered butter all over and under the skin. Smoking with pecan, and will serve with white sauce.

Not too worried about it, but I hope 4.5-5 hrs works out to about right for my 14 pounder at about 250. Gonna try to preheat the smoker to 275* before putting the bird on and target 265* at the vent since the grate will be filled. We'll see how it goes.

Good luck Dave. I'm doing the higher heat method and hoping for crispier skin. I'm curious as to how much salt flavour the meat absorbs.

James, you'd be surprised.

Gotta get a 22.5" wsm sometime in the future, if not for the reason that there's more space on the grate, thus measuring grate is easier.

Going by how my bird's IT* is progressing and how the fire feels, I don't have any issues getting done on time. However, I've only been running 244-254* in a fairly mild, but cool wind, that's undoubtedly cooling the dome a bit. Just saying that I seriously doubt my grate temp is 15* less, especially since there's nothing on the bottom rack.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by James Harvey:
Normally, I would rub the skin but the recipe says let it be outside of butter and pepper. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>About rub, I also wrote, "If you choose to use one, try a low-salt or no-salt rub." The meat will already be well seasoned from the salting process.

Regards,
Chris

What Chris said: Season however you like; but just don't include salt: be it the rub or what your adding under the skin.

Thanks Chris. I'm regularly impressed with how dilligent you are with posts.
I'm choosing no rub for this cook. Once I establish a baseline I'm hoping to modify it, if required, to different tastes.

My 14 lb. butterflied bird turned out fine, and nice and moist, except for the wings being dry. Bit of a rollercoaster ride in terms of times/temp management, though.

The deal was, I didn't have my probe in the right place, so I lowered the temp...thinking it would be done too soon. If I'd put the probe in the breast down by the drumsticks (since that was the last place to reach 160*), I suspect the bird would've been done in about 4:45 minutes (since I wouldn't have dropped the temp any.) Not bad for a first, though, and I thought the bird was cooked more evenly than my hot-n-fast wsm turkey.

I am dubious about the "salted" approach since I am a low-ish salt person so too much salty taste is a turn off.

I always go low/slow on turkey or turkey breast since I prefer to eat the meat off the bone without the skin. I go HH with chicken.

Was the turkey saltier than normal?

Im going to try the butterflied approach but use an apple brine and put two on the little wsm one top and one bottom.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Chris E:
I am dubious about the "salted" approach since I am a low-ish salt person so too much salty taste is a turn off.

I always go low/slow on turkey or turkey breast since I prefer to eat the meat off the bone without the skin. I go HH with chicken.

Was the turkey saltier than normal?

Im going to try the butterflied approach but use an apple brine and put two on the little wsm one top and one bottom. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Chris, since Friday's bird was 8% enhanced, I rounded down just a bit from the suggested Morton kosher amounts but wish I'd stuck with the full amounts. I'll go back to salting an unenhanced bird for better flavor next time, but under or over the skin, I haven't had any salty issues.

Personally, I'd pass on putting a butterflied turkey on my bottom wsm rack unless it was really small. My 14lb bird cooked pretty good on the top rack, but the only thing on the bird that ended up dry was the wings, since they were too close to the outer perimeter of the grate. They'd been toast if the bird was on the bottom rack, but like I said, it was a fourteen pounder.

both of my enhanced turkeys are just over 15lbs. I'm going to go with an apple brine so as to make it different than the oven turkey. I need to do 3 turkeys and only have one oven so I need to figure out how to work the two into the wsm. Thanks for the tip on the 4.5 hours. That's what I normally do for a whole turkey so butterflying it doesn't seem to speed up the cooking process, which makes sense now that I think about it.

I think I'll try putting some foil over the wings on the lower-rack bird to keep from scorching it. Also I'll fire up the cook at 7 am to make sure they are done in time to rest in foil/cooler for a 2pm departure.