Hey friends,
I am going to smoke my first turkey breast on Saturday as a trial run for Thanksgiving. Here is my question. The bird will be fresh, not frozen. My plan is injecting it and doing a nice rub on it. Because of this plan would I still need to wet brine it?
I generally try to avoid wet brining turkeys. I did that for a few of them and the meat ended up with a somewhat ham-like texture. But I do dry brine it. Basically just sprinkle it with a decent amount of salt and let it sit in the fridge for a couple days. If your rub has salt in it you can just use that. I found the texture and flavor of the meat to be much better.
If you have a totally fresh bird with no type of solution added, then definitely use a dry brine. I then use a Simon & Garfunkel mixed with a salt free butter that I prepare the night before to let the herbs flavor the butter. I will then place the butter mixture under the skin just before placing the breast or whole bird on the grill. My grill temp is 300 - 350. I do a couple of breasts a month and a 16-17lb bird at Thanksgiving and Christmas and maybe Easter on my Weber 22. Per my pic to the left.
Just got done smoking turkey breast this weekend. It turned out moist and tasty. I dry brined it at 1/2 tsp kosher salt per pound. The meat was plain -- it had not been treated at the packer with a brine solution.
Be careful if your injection liquid contains salt -- you want a total of 1/2 tsp kosher salt per pound.
Last edited by IowaGirl; October 21, 2019, 03:23 PM.
Call me old fashioned, but I still wet brine and butterball my turkeys. I found it too ineffective to try dry brining such a large bird, even shoving salt way up under the skin. I've also been injecting with Tony C's Butter Injection in lieu of butter balling of late. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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