Is is better to skin the turkey before smoking


 
William E.

William E.

New member
I did a test run with brined boneless skinless chicken breasts before attempting a turkey. NICE……smokey and moist. I am now thawing a 16 pound turkey that, when thawed, will be brined overnight. Question. I am concerned about the smoke permeating the meat through the skin. Our family is not interested in eating the turkey skin. I am wondering if it would be better to skin the bird prior to brining to ensure smoky meat.
 
William E. said:
I did a test run with brined boneless skinless chicken breasts before attempting a turkey. NICE……smokey and moist. I am now thawing a 16 pound turkey that, when thawed, will be brined overnight. Question. I am concerned about the smoke permeating the meat through the skin. Our family is not interested in eating the turkey skin. I am wondering if it would be better to skin the bird prior to brining to ensure smoky meat.
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I did a turkey last month, first time. While I liked how the skin came out, if your family doesn't like it, then you should probably skin it prior to brining it. You could probably do it after brining it too.

I let the turkey defrost in the brine, during the last few days of the defrost. It was a 14.39 lb. turkey.
 
Leave the skin on when smoking, you can remove it before you carve it. It will help with flavor of your turkey.
 
AND when you bring that burnished bird to the table before carving, the ooohs and ahhhhs will be all the sweeter:D

Remember, presentation is very very important.
 
If you smoke your Turkey at high heat (above 300 degrees) you will love the skin, but if you do a low temp cook (225-250) you could skin it and the meat will get a slight crust to it. I've done it both ways, and I prefer to smoke it HH with the skin on
 
The above comments is why I always cook my whole turkeys on my Performer kettle. I cook it indirect in the middle of the grill with coals on either side along with soaked wood chips. When I first got a Weber kettle probably 25 years ago, we also got a Weber grilling book and the recipe and process were in that book. The turkey that Thanksgiving was the best and everyone raved about it. The skin was golden and crisp and the meat was tender and juicy. Since then, I now brine my turkey overnight before using the same technique and it is even better. The one year that I smoked my turkey on the WSM, it was ok but not as good as my normal birds. The high heat method is to me the best way to do a turkey. I will try to find the recipe on Weber's site and update this post.

This is the link to the basic process on the Weber site.

While I love smoking most meats, for me poultry is better with high heat and this method works for me.
 
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Bob Ivey said:
The above comments is why I always cook my whole turkeys on my Performer kettle. I cook it indirect in the middle of the grill with coals on either side along with soaked wood chips. When I first got a Weber kettle probably 25 years ago, we also got a Weber grilling book and the recipe and process were in that book. The turkey that Thanksgiving was the best and everyone raved about it. The skin was golden and crisp and the meat was tender and juicy. Since then, I now brine my turkey overnight before using the same technique and it is even better. The one year that I smoked my turkey on the WSM, it was ok but not as good as my normal birds. The high heat method is to me the best way to do a turkey. I will try to find the recipe on Weber's site and update this post.

This is the link to the basic process on the Weber site.

While I love smoking most meats, for me poultry is better with high heat and this method works for me.
Click to expand...

I kind of do a combo of both. I start off smoking at a low temp. Then prop the door open to bring the temps up to around 300-325.
 
I love me some smoked turkey. Totally different than kettle grilled/smoked ( which I also love )
Poultry is easy to over-smoke. Leaving the skin on ( to me ) would be a barrier against that, but I recall member Shawn W did a skinless turkey awhile back and he liked it.
I tried doing a search for that thread, but no luck.:(

Tim
 
Turkey was one of the first things I learned to do using a 22! Forty years later, I'm still doing them and getting rave reviews, my band played a gig where they were using six or seven offsets for do all kinds of tasty treats but, they were consistently butchering the poor turkeys, wasting lots of meat and just making me cry!
Between sets I told the guys who were in charge of "watching" the turkeys to let one rest and give my a heads up when I had about five minutes so, I could stop and show them how I had been taught how to carve in a "slightly different" method.
I told the guys, all outdoorsy guys, "Think of it more like a fish, lift the breast off like a fillet!" All of a sudden eyes lit up like LasVegas at sunset! The legs will take care of themselves with out much trouble. Lift off the whole breast and slice it across the grain into lovely medallions.
Cut down the breastbone and out across the rib cage keeping the blade as tight to the skeleton as possible. It might take you one side before you see the advantage but, this is so much quicker than trying to do big slices at table and mangling the project, a platter delivered with nicely carved slices of breast meat and the dark laid out in its glory really trumps the "Norman Rockwell" whole bird images. At least I think so.
 
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