Perfect Turkey on the Big Green Egg
Ingredients:
1 – Thawed Turkey (cavity emptied)
1 – brining kit (brine, brining bag, and rub)
4 Cups – Liquid of Choice – White wine or chicken broth or apple juice or water
1 Cup – Apple Wood or Pecan Wood Chips (soaked for 30 minutes)
6-8 – Chunks of Apple or Hickory Wood
Helpful Tools and Gadgets for better results:
- Digital Probe Thermometer – When you’re lookin’, you aren’t cookin’. Wire-probe thermometers are a game changer.
- Concave Cutting Board – Tent-and-rest, carve it up, and serve it…all on 1 juice-saving board.
- Sharp Carving Knife – we have awesome specials on carving sets right now, and we also sharpen knives in-house…and if you haven’t ever used an electric carving knife…well…they carve turkey like butter.
- Fat Separator – Although a little fat adds a lot of flavor…too much is simply too much.
- Cedar Planks – Because scooping mashed potatoes, plopping them on a plank and adding some cheese on top just doesn’t make any sense…or does it.
Brining the Bird
Place the turkey in the Brining bag and add disolved liquid Brine mixture. *Add additional cold water so the entire turkey is submerged in the solution. Make sure the turkey is breast side down.
Refrigerate overnight-or 1/2 hour per pound of turkey. Remove turkey and discard bag and brine and pat dry. Turkey can sit in refrigerator for up to 24 hours after the brining process which helps with getting crispier skin.
About 1 hour before grilling, add any rub of your choice. Insert thermometer probe into the middle and thickest section of the breast meat.
*tip – Thermometer probes can burn out easily. Loosely wrap cord in aluminum foil to protect the cable from over-heating.
Setting up the Egg and cooking the Bird (in order)
– Fill your charcoal up to the line where the firebox and the fire-ring meet.
– Start your fire, and get the grill temperature to 350 degrees
– Add Wood chunks, and chips to the coals, spreading/mixing them around evenly into the hot coals
– Add plate-setter (feet up)
– Add drip pan with “liquid of choice”
– Place grill grid on top of the plate-setter feet
– Shut the lid, and allow the grill to come back up to 350 degrees (allowing some of the heavy smoke to cook out)
– Open grill, and place turkey breast-side up on the grill grid over the drip pan.
– Close the Lid, and let the egg do the rest!
*tip – The turkey will cook for about 12-15 minutes per pound (but please cook by temp, not time)
– Pull turkey at *157-160 degrees (see comment below) then loosely tent the turkey with aluminum foil as it’s resting. We recommend letting it rest for at least 1 hour (2 hours is best) before carving.
– Take all of the drip-pan drippings, separate the fat (although we encourage you to leave a little in there for flavor) and use as the base for the best, smoky gravy ever.
*Tip – If using disposable drip pans, put 1 pan in, fill it 1-inch high with water, then add a 2nd drip pan inside of that….this prevents the drippings from burning so you have awesome gravy.
*tip – Recommended temperatures for cooking turkey is 165 degrees. The turkey will continue to cook after it is pulled from the egg, so we recommend pulling it at 157-160 degrees, leaving the thermometer in as it’s resting to make sure the temperature carries over the 165 degree mark.
*tip – Take Pictures, add your own twists to the recipe…and share all of it on the Coastal Cupboard instagram page or the Lowcountry Eggheads instagram page.
