Turkey Breast, Not Pretty


 
J

Jerry Pollard

TVWBB Super Fan
I followed the cooking topics procedures for cooking a self-basting butterball turkey breast on the wsm. Light coat of oil and a powdering of Tony C's creol seasoning . The breast cooked at about 360 for 2 hours, it was about a 7 pounder.
Got done (160* internal) and it did not have the dark bronze color like i thought it should according to the pix in topics. I was hoping to present it with this appearance. It just looked like a uncooked "chicken" sprinkled with some rub, Any ideas?
 
what type of wood did you use? i have found that hickory doesn't give much "color" to poultry or other food. i pretty much just use cherry wood. and was there any sugar in the rub?
 
Tony
I used hickory, and reading the ingredients in the Tony Ch creol it doesn't say sugar!! So, thank you and that must be the answer. However, everyone thought the Turkey was gooood!
Thanks again
Jerry
 
You need to get it hot enough to render the fat on the skin to bronze the bird. Open all the vents and go for a hot cook. As hot as you can get it. Use lump that will get hot and go fast.

The best bird I have done was with a ecb - it leaked so much air getting hot enough was not a problem. I could never get it low enough for buts or brisket.
 
I have found that too much oil on the bird will prevent browning. A very light coat is best. I also think olive oil produces a better skin than vegetable oil.
 
I probably did put too much veg oil on it.
I will try this a again soon. Like i said the turkey breast was good, but i had a lot of folks over for the feed (spiral ham, and all the christmas goodies and wanted to present a "bronze" bird!
 
Jerry, try using some pecan wood on poultry. I use it exclusively since there are so many pecan trees around here (Albany, GA). If you can find a tree, just pick up some limbs from the ground. It's a little milder than hickory, but a similar flavor.
 
Jerry, I see you cooked it @ 360 and that's plenty hot enough to brown a bird up. At that temp even if you did put too much oil on, but remember the law of gravity and physics, I'm sure at that heat and gravity the excess oil would have run off. The problem with putting oil on is it will block the coloring of the skin somewhat. If I oil the skin (which is rare anymore) I like to use butter because it will brown/turn color. As far as the best wood to use for color, hands down Cherry wood, I use it on all my poultry cooks. If you like you can mix it with oak, pecan, apple hickory, orange, etc.. I always use a 50/50 ratio if mixing woods. HTH
 
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