Reheating a Turkey on a Grill?

[Michael_in_TX]

So I've had this fully-cooked turkey breast sitting in the freezer since Christmas. It was part of those Thanksgiving or Christmas meal packages that Cracker Barrel does.

Malcom Reed often reheats (double smoke as he says it) hams on his grills. My plans was to reheat the turkey on the pellet grill to give it just a hint of smoke flavor, if possible; however, I'm struggling with what temp to use and also what temp to reheat it to.

This is a turkey breast, so I want to minimize the chances of it drying out. I was thinking at 300 F might be a good compromise between not over-drying it and also not having it take forever. I was a little surprised that most web sites insist that a cooked turkey be reheated to 165 F, not a lower temp. I suppose this makes sense as this is poultry after all.

I could use a water bath..... I could have the turkey sit on a wire rack in a sheet pan filled with chicken broth.....

Thoughts?

[Jerod Broussard]

I'd throw on there wrapped, then sear before serving. Make a sauce.

[FireMan]

Hmm, what about searing before with the thought of preventing dryin it out? Then wrapping.

[WI Bubba]

If it was fully cooked once, then you only need to get it back to a serving temp. If you want to try and add some smoke to it as well, then I would set the pooper to around 180° to give maximum smoke flavor without drying things out. After an hour or so of high smoke/low heat, I would wrap with foil, add a little stock to the package, and then run the temp up on the smoker to 300° or so, and let it go until you get an internal meat temp of 145°. The down side is the skin is not going to be the least bit crispy. You could help solve that with a torch, or under the broiler.
Or just chuck it in the sous vide for a couple hours, and call the dogs, it's dinner time.

[fzxdoc]

I've successfully reheated frozen smoked turkey breasts using this method, ( HouseHomey provided sage advice for this a few years back):

Thaw the smoked turkey breasts in the refrigerator. Takes a couple of days.

Preheat oven to 375 deg

Place a rack in a large rectangular foil pan or roaster

Pour a quart of homemade chicken or turkey broth into the pan. Don't let the liquid touch the turkey.

Place the whole turkey breast on the rack.

Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil

Place in oven until the breast reaches 160 degrees Takes about an hour. Only slice what is to be served immediately. Pour some of the pan broth over the sliced turkey in the platter.

Perhaps you can adapt this method to your smoking setup?



Kathryn

[jfmorris]

My mother in law was famous (or infamous) for buying pre-smoked turkey for Thanksgiving that she didn't have oven space to reheat, and I would end up rigging a gas grill in indirect mode to reheat it. Once the pre-smoked Turkey was thawed of course, I just got the grill to stabilize at 350F, just like the oven directions for reheating the turkey, and heated it until it reached 140F in the breast, since it was pre-cooked. I didn't see a need to take it to 160F again.

If I go over there for Thanksgiving any more, I take a turkey with me, and make sure they know I am bringing the turkey, and I just smoke a fresh one here and pack it in a cooler for the couple of mile ride over.

[bbqLuv]

A pellet grill, an EZ Bake Oven with smoke, so in your scenario, reheat in "oven" with smoke.
If you are going to wrap there is no point in wasting pellets, so the oven will work.
Let us know what you decide and how it turned out.

[rickgregory]

A few thoughts - the above approaches will probably work. What you want is to move through the 40-140 range quickly, so I'd likely opt for a higher temp vs lower. 325 minimum. Secondly, I doubt it's going to take on much smoke. You don't want it to sit around at temp for hours after all... it's cooked so it doesn't need to cook again. Thirdly, I don't think 165 is a HUGE deal assuming it was cooked to that temp, rapidly chilled then frozen right of... but you didn't do the prep. So I'd opt to take it to 165 but then eat right away (vs holding it there or at 160 for a longer time.

I'd not SV. I don't think it would get to temp as fast as I want. Not an issue if I'd done the prep so I *knew* it was cooked, chilled and frozen properly. This isn't a hit against the Cracker Barrel folks, just caution.

[Michael_in_TX]

Well, this is going to be anticlimactic. I wish I could say that I did some elaborate synthesis of yall's suggestions or, perhaps even more fun, threw caution to the wind and bought a Santa Maria attachment for my Weber, but.....

....but....

...in the end....I used.....I used....

The microwave. (I'm not totally crazy. 3-4 lbs of turkey breast, but the wife was had to be away this week, so I only needed to heat up a small portion for myself. The rest will be turkey pot pie tomorrow, most likely on the pellet grill. )

[Jerod Broussard]

I got a 1200 watter that gets used to reheat everything.