For the Best Smoked Turkey Breast, Break This One Rule

Smoking a turkey is a pro holiday move. When done well, the method keeps the relatively lean meat moist and juicy, while the smoke adds a lot of flavor and creates an incredible lacquered mahogany finish. And while a whole smoked turkey is a thing of beauty on a holiday table, frankly, it can be both a lot of work to wrangle a big bird and just too much meat. If your holiday gathering is a bit smaller, a turkey breast is probably a smarter option. It cooks faster, requires less room in the fridge, and you won't need to force-feed family and friends leftover turkey sandwiches for countless days. And if you're worried about breast meat's reputation for being dry and flavorless, don't be—that's typically the result of overcooking and underseasonings, two pitfalls that the recipe I am sharing here avoids. 

Turkey and smoke are a natural pairing, as anyone who's looked at a deli case can tell you, but there's a difference between the average cold-cut turkey you'll find at the grocery store—with its sometimes slimy texture and fake smoke flavor—and real barbecued smoked turkey. I'm talking about the kind of smoked turkey you want served in thick, glistening slabs that are shiny with juice and fork-tender, with a deep smoke flavor. Achieving this requires just a handful of ingredients and a mere 20 minutes of hands-on time—a simple brine and your grill do the rest of the work, infusing your bird with incredible smoky flavor. Here are the key techniques for perfecting this exemplar of smoked turkey at home.

How to Dry Brine and Prep the Turkey Breast for Smoking

The first step to a perfect smoked turkey breast, is dry brining it with a simple mixture of salt, pepper, and brown sugar. While wet brining does make for juicy meat, it actually won't help in the flavor department—wet brining will cause the meat to retain moisture and become waterlogged, diluting the flavor of your turkey. Not to mention the fact that wet brining is a big sloppy mess; even for a smaller breast, you need a large container that can hold gallons of water plus the turkey, somehow find the precious fridge space for it, and wrestle it into the fridge without raw turkey water slopping all over the place. No thanks.

Instead of a traditional wet brine, we at Serious Eats have long recommended dry-brining. As we describe in our deep dive into dry-brining, this is the catchy term for a very simple process of salting and resting a protein before cooking it. While it sits, the salt penetrates the meat through a process of osmosis and diffusion, which loosens up the protein’s muscle structure, thus keeping it moist as it cooks. It's easier and just as effective as wet brining at helping maintain juiciness, and far better for flavor. The dissolved salt is absorbed by the meat through diffusion, moving from an area of high concentration (the surface of the meat) to a lower concentration one (the meat's interior), so every bite is well seasoned.

To do it, all you have to do is rub your turkey with salt (preferably kosher salt, which has large flakes that are easier to spread around than table salt) and let it sit in the fridge for at least 12 hours or up to two days. For the smoked turkey recipe below, I also add brown sugar and freshly ground black pepper for flavor. In addition, I rub the turkey skin with baking powder since the slightly alkaline mixture raises the skin's pH levels, which allows proteins to break down more efficiently, giving the turkey crispier, more evenly browned skin. At the same time, when the baking powder combines with the bird's natural juices, it forms a tiny layer of carbon dioxide gas bubbles on the turkey skin—this increases the skin's surface area, which further enhances the skin's crunchy texture.

While many smoked turkey recipes call for seasoning the bird with an array of spices, I don't call for any additional seasonings.The smoke is the meat’s primary seasoning and I don’t want an assertive spice rub to compete with the woodsy, nuanced flavor the smoke adds to the lean meat. Of course, if you feel differently, you can stir your favorite spice blend into the dry brine before rubbing it onto the turkey. The Cajun spice blend from this spatchcocked turkey recipe by our editorial director, Daniel, is one good option. Just note that if you are using a spice blend that’s written for an entire turkey, you should scale it down by half when using it in this turkey breast recipe, and stick with the salt amount listed below.

Once the turkey is brined and just before you are ready to cook it, gently pat the skin dry and pierce it all over with a skewer or toothpick. Piercing the skin allows some fat to render evenly over the surface of the turkey, which ensures crispier skin that doesn't coil up or shrink as it cooks. Finally, just before grilling you'll rub oil on the turkey, giving it a final coat of armor that ensures crispy, glossy skin.

Forget Low and Slow for Smoking Turkey

Many hardcore barbeque and smoking aficionados will argue that smoking meat (including poultry) is best when done at a lower temperature range of 225 to 250℉. This low and slow cooking approach makes sense for collagen rich and fattier cuts of meat, such as beef brisket, that need time to slowly render and soften, but when it comes to smoking lean poultry like turkey breast, I disagree with this approach. When lean turkey meat is cooked over a longer time at a lower temperature, the meat dries out and loses flavor. It also takes on too much smoke in this extended cooking time, which overpowers the delicate flavor of the meat.

The best approach to smoking a turkey breast is to cook it at around 350℉. It’s not a traditional barbeque technique, but instead it’s what I refer to as “smoke-roasting” the bird. At this temperature, the turkey will cook in about the same time as it would in an oven (about an hour) and will retain its moisture while the skin crisps and develops just the right level of smoky flavor.

Smoking on a Charcoal Grill vs. Gas Grill vs. Smoker

You don’t need a smoker for this recipe, and I’ve written this for both charcoal and gas grill set-ups. As Kenji, our former editorial director, points out in his article highlighting the differences between gas and charcoal grills, there are pros and cons to grilling with each. The same is true when using a grill to smoke. The advantage of a charcoal grill is the smoky flavor the coals give to foods, but it's more difficult to manage a charcoal grill's temperature once the coals are lit. On the other hand, a gas grill is easier to use, more temperature-stable, and requires less monitoring than a charcoal grill, but you'll lose some of the fantastic smoke flavor you'll get with charcoal, though my recipe calls for using wood chips if you are going to use a gas grill, which will help impart a nice smoky flavor.

Tips for Smoking on a Charcoal Grill

That’s not to say managing a constant heat level is unachievable with a charcoal grill. In fact, with the proper setup, it’s easy to create a steady temperature of around 350℉ for cooking the turkey breast. The first step is setting an empty aluminum pan in the center of the grill. The hot coals will burn on each side of the pan. This creates an indirect cooking zone where the turkey cooks above the pan rather than directly over hot coals, which helps keep the underside of the turkey from getting too much direct heat exposure and burning before the top of the breast is properly cooked. 

You'll also add a small amount of unlit coals on each side of the pan along the grill’s edge before topping with the lit coals. Why unlit coals? When the hot coals are poured over top, they’ll slowly ignite the unlit ones, extending the time the grill will hold a steady temperature of 350℉. This is a way to ensure the charcoal grill doesn’t lose heat and prematurely die off before you’re finished cooking.

Tips for Cooking the Turkey on a Gas Grill

While I recommend using a charcoal grill in this recipe for the best results, you still can smoke a turkey on a gas grill. To do so, you'll preheat the grill with all burners on high, but then you'll create a similar indirect cooking zone as one does in a charcoal grill, hereby turning off all the burners except the primary one. (The primary burner on a gas grill is the burner that is connected closest to the gas source; it is the burner that is lit first on the grill and that regulates the gas flow to the other burners. Without the primary burner on, the other burners will burn out, as the connection to the gas source is cut off if the primary burner is turned off.) 

What to Do If You're Using a Smoker

If you are cooking your bird on a smoker, don’t worry—you’re not forgotten. You’ll need to follow the manufacturer’s instructions and make sure your smoker is designed to reach 350℉. Some smoker models are designed to only reach lower cooking temperatures—if that's the case with your smoker, this recipe won’t work for your smoker, and I recommend you use a grill instead.

How to Give Your Turkey the Perfect Goldilocks Amount of Smoky Flavor

While smoke can add wonderful, nuanced woodsy flavor to meat, too little smoke can be a big disappointment, while too much can be downright disgusting—and it’s easy to mess up. As for what type of wood to use, you’ll definitely want to avoid softwoods like pine or cedar, which are high in resin and oils that will ruin the flavor of the meat. Instead use a hardwood like oak, hickory, or mesquite, or a semi-hard fruit wood like apple, cherry, or even pecan wood. Since the turkey smokes for just an hour, I prefer to use hardwood with a more assertive flavor, such as hickory. It gives the meat a sweet, almost baconlike finish, which I love.

My recipe has options for using either chunks of wood or wood chips. If you are using a charcoal grill with wood chunks, nestle them directly into the lit coals. But if you are using wood chips, I recommend soaking the wood briefly and draining before using. The brief soak will slow down their burning speed, so the smaller chips will infuse their flavor more slowly into the meat over the entire cooking time, which will develop a stronger smoke flavor in the meat.

If you are using a gas grill, you can’t use larger wood chunks set over the gas burners, as this could start a large and dangerous fire. Instead you’ll need to opt for wood chips, soak them and drain them just as you would if cooking with charcoal, place them in an aluminum foil pouch with vent slits cut into the top, then place this packet directly over the primary burner.

Carefully Monitor the Grill and Turkey Temperature to Ensure Juicy Meat That's Not Overcooked or Undercooked

It’s important to closely monitor the grill temperature while smoking, especially since built-in grill thermometers are notoriously unreliable. They can warp and damage over years of use from extreme temperature fluctuations and weather conditions, and can also be located in areas (like the underside of a lid) that might not represent the actual temperature where your food is cooking closer to the grate.

Adjusting the temperature of a gas grill is relatively easy. As described above, the primary burner should be left on and the propane flow adjusted by turning the corresponding knob.

Maintaining and adjusting the heat level of a charcoal grill requires a bit more finesse. A charcoal grill starts with a hotter initial burst of heat (with the amount of coals used in this recipe, this initial burst will be around 400°F), and heat is lost throughout the course of cooking as the charcoal burns down. That heat loss over the extended time of cooking can be combated by adjusting the vents on the charcoal grill to maintain a constant temperature.

Like any fire, charcoal needs oxygen to survive. Controlling the amount of oxygen that gets to the fire controls the temperature. Most charcoal grills have at least two air vents: one on the bottom half of the grill and one in the lid at the top. Adjusting these air vents restricts or allows the air flow in and out of the grill, thus giving you a handle on the heat being produced. Open vents means more air flow and a hotter grill, while half-closed vents will mean less air flow and thus a cooler grill, so you can adjust accordingly.

I always use an ambient temperature probe thermometer when grilling (note that an ambient temperature probe is different from the long pointy ones inserted into roasts, which are often simply called meat probes). Before I heat the grill, I clip the probe onto the cooking grate at the same height of the food that I am cooking. This way I can properly track the grill temperature and adjust the temperature if needed to maintain a constant temperature.

If you have a leave-in probe thermometer, insert it into the deepest part of the turkey breast and set the alarm for 145°F. Bear in mind: A leave-in probe is useful only as an early-warning system to let you know when the turkey is close to finished. You'll want to check it again with an instant-read thermometer as it approaches doneness for complete control over its texture. The final temperature you’re looking for is 155°F. As the breast rests, carry-over cooking will occur and it will reach a final temperature of 165°F, which is the USDA recommended internal temperature. I urge you to trust the power of carry-over cooking, since the longer you let that turkey sit on the grill taking on heat once it's above 155°F, the drier it'll get.

Let That Turkey Rest!

transfer it to a cutting board and let it rest for at least 30 minutes. This time will not only allow the carry-over cooking mentioned above, it will also allow the internal juices to settle and thicken slightly so that they don't run out of the meat and all over the board as you carve.

Every piece of meat from this turkey breast is moist and flavorful, with a delicate kiss of smoke and enough juiciness that it doesn’t need any enhancement—although I’ll never say no to a little gravy.