Talking More Turkey

A while ago @mrsbozz and I just happened to be grocery shopping ourselves and as we passed by the freezer section, we noticed that the Butterball marinated turkey breasts were on sale. If you read this post, you know that it is a pretty rare occasion anymore that my wife and I do our own grocery shopping. If you want to know the reasons, go back and read that post.

You also might remember from some of my previous posts that I have made it somewhat of a tradition in my wife's family to smoke these turkey breasts. Basically whenever they go on sale, they all buy one or we buy them and they pay us back and then I smoke the breasts for them and we deliver the end product for them to enjoy.

The have several different flavors of these things. We choose to go with the savory herb flavored ones, but they also have a cajun, a plain, and a combination of dark meat and white meat. @mrsbozz isn't a fan of dark meat, so we tend to stick with the savory herb ones. I learned a long time ago it is best to keep the netting on until after it is cooked, otherwise it kind of falls apart on the grill.

You can see from the photo that these still tend to have a little bit of fat and skin on them, so you don't really need to worry about them getting dried out too much. Best I can tell, this is actually just one half of the turkey breast. They tend to run about 3 or 4 pounds and they come with a gravy packet that we typically throw away because my wife isn't a fan of gravy anyway.

Despite the smaller size, one of these can feed my wife and I for pretty much the whole week. After they were finished we had our dinner on Saturday night and she has been using the leftovers in her salads and stuff all through the week.

While the grill was getting ready for the turkey breasts to be placed on it, I also had some onions, garlic, and a jalapeno pepper sauteing in the instant pot so we could make another batch of refried beans.

Once the charcoal was ready to go, I threw the breasts on the grates using the indirect method of grilling. That just means the coals were on one side of the grill and I put the turkey breasts on the other side of the grill. I also put a drip pan full of water under the cooking side just to keep things moist and catch any drippings.

I used my Chef IQ temperature probes to determine when the turkey was cooked to perfection. It generally takes about an hour and a half to two hours. I had both the bottom vents and the top vents wide open. This isn't really a low and slow cook like traditional BBQ. It's more of a hot and semi fast type of cook. The ambient temperature of the grill ends up being just shy of 400 degrees F depending on the environmental factors.

If you wanted to go low and slow you likely could, but I don't really see the point with poultry like this. It isn't like there is a lot of fat and connective tissue that you need to render down. I threw a small chunk of hickory and apple wood on the coals at the beginning of the cook to impart a bit of smoke flavor to the breasts in addition to the savory herb marinade that was already on it.

Just past the 90 minute mark, my temperature probe started alerting me via my phone that it was time to pull the turkeys from the heat. I quickly moved them to a pan and brought them inside so they could rest. I cut the netting off and placed one of them in a container to deliver to my brother in law the next day.

The other one I carved up after cutting the netting off for us to eat for dinner.

Despite being grilled so hot so fast, these still turn out really juicy and flavorful. It's honestly my favorite way to eat turkey anymore. I still appreciate a good deep fried turkey every now and then, but this is hands down my favorite way. I have had smoked turkey at various BBQ places across the region and I would put mine next to theirs any day without hesitation. It's just that good.

@mrsbozz made some of her famous homemade mashed potatoes to go along with the turkey and then we also had some left over dressing that I threw on my plate. Finally, we needed to have a vegetable of course, and that came in the form of a frozen green bean casserole that she heated up. We actually had a big debate this last Thanksgiving with my nieces about how nasty they think green bean casserole is.

Personally, I love it. The mixture of green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and french fried onions is just amazing. I can understand why others wouldn't like it though.

If you look at the turkey, you can see it is still quite juicy and moist. You also might notice the slightly pink smoke ring on the outer edge of the slices of meat. It's subtle and not overpowering, but the flavor is still there and it comes through really well.

These are so quick and easy to do, you basically just set it and forget it once your grill is ready to go. I would imagine you could even do one on a gas grill if you wanted to. Just turn on two of the burners and put the turkey breast over on the other side away from the burners and let it go until it hits that 160 to 165 degree mark.

Trust me, if you have never had your turkey this way, you are going to be converted in a heartbeat. I just wish I had a deli slicer so I could but it thinner to use for sandwiches and stuff like that throughout the week!