Spice Up Your Holidays with this JUICY Spatchcock Turkey

Let's smoke this delicious spatchcock turkey and also make a gold rush. Welcome back to the show. Excited to finally be getting into our Thanksgiving content. Turkey is definitely what we're known for in the fourth quarter. So I prefer to wet brine all of my turkeys. I'm going to jump into that before I tell you what we're going to do today. I simply take my bird baptism brine. I dump the entire package in a medium stock pot for a turkey. I add a few cups of water and I'm going to heat it up and stir it to dissolve all of that. Then I'm going to take that. I'm going to dump it in a food safe container, a Yeti loadout bucket in this case, put a turkey in it and then add water to completely submerge the turkey. You want to make sure that that brine mixture is completely cooled off before you do that. And then honestly, I like to brine overnight. So you're going to want this to be nice and cool. You can set it down in a cooler if you don't have room in your fridge. First thing I need to do is I need to go rinse this off so it's not too salty and pat it dry and I'll be right back. My preferred method to cooking a turkey is to spatchcock it. That's where you remove the backbone, lay the turkey flat. The benefits of that, it cooks quicker, it cooks more evenly. I think it presents better and it's also easier to carve. So that's my preference. With that said, we've got videos both ways. You can do it however you like. If you don't want to spatchcock it, then just skip ahead past this step. So I'm going to turn this turkey over. I'm just going to take these poultry shears I got from Messermeister. Thanks for sending me these. You can press this button, they come apart so they clean in the dishwasher nice and easy. I'm going to use these to cut alongside this backbone and remove it. Turkey's a lot harder than a chicken, but if you have a quality product like this, you will get it done. So we have 20 different turkey videos on this channel. We have wet brine, we have dry brine, we have traditional turkey, we have spatchcock turkey, we have beer can turkey, turkey legs, we have turkey breast of many styles, Texas style, Cajun Creole style. We've got maple bourbon glazes to go on turkeys. We've got fried turkeys, we've got smoke fried turkeys. So however you want to prepare your turkey, we have a video on this channel with a recipe on Meatrix.com. So we really take pride in the holidays. This is why you cook outside. It's all about sharing good food with your family and making those memories and you're going to be judged when this hits the table. So we want to help you make it look really good. Alright, well I've got one side cut and now I'm actually going to cut the other side. Get it out of here. Anything I remove from turkey, I want to save. A lot of people say they make stock. We really do. We actually have a video on leftovers on Meatrix.com. You can find what we love to do with leftovers. We're going to make stock and then we'll make either pot pies or turkey noodle soup. Big fan of all of that. Alright, so with my knife here, I just made an incision to where it kind of naturally stops on top of that kill bone and from here, what we're going to do is we're going to open this up and press it down. There we go. So see it's nice and flat. Now from here, you can stop if you like or you can remove this little membrane here and peel the kill bone out. I'll leave that up to you. Why would you take it out? If you take it out, you can cut the turkey in half when you're done if that's something you desire. Well let me flip it over here and show you how this will lay down now. As you can see, it is much more flat. You can apply some pressure. Try to really get it to lay flat. Now this is an illustration of how it's going to cook more evenly. You don't have the breast way up high. You've got it nice and low. So this is my preferred method. Now you want to trim off anything, any excess. If there's any extra fat or anything like that, I trim this off of the back. I'll use this for stock as well. All right, now we've got our brined spatchcocked turkey. By the way, you could have spatchcocked this before you put it in the brine. I always get asked that. So that's just honestly whatever you want to do. So from here, I want to put a slather on it and then I want to season it. A lot of things you can slather with. Big pro tip, mayonnaise is a great option for poultry. Not only are you helping the seasoning adhere to the turkey, but you're also adding a nice fat that will help baste during the cook and also it actually adds a little bit of color. So always Duke's mayonnaise and barbecue. I'm going to use my poultry hand here to just kind of rub this in. Mainly I'm wanting it on the skin, so I'm just kind of putting a little bit underneath. I'm going to spend most of my time on this side. Why do I choose Duke's? You know, the cider vinegar twang. To me, it's a perfect companion for barbecue. There's no really other mayonnaise I like to use unless I'm using Asian stuff and I use some Japanese mayonnaise. But otherwise, you guys know that Duke's is in all of my recipes. So get this in all, you know, all around, all in the cracks here underneath. I'm actually, I like to get my hands underneath in between the skin and the meat here and kind of separate this because I will, after I take my glove off, I'll actually apply some seasoning to the actual breast. So just work your hand up in here. You can separate it. Be careful because you don't want the skin to break. That way you can actually season the meat is too. That's optional. That's something that you want to do. All right, I've got it nice and slathered on there. So let's talk about seasoning. Seems like this is planned every year, but it's not. We're actually going to use our hickory all purpose today, but I always feel like we come out with new seasoning right before the holidays. It just happens to work on turkey. Hickory is amazing on turkey. You guys are going to love it. I always say season with what you like. Maybe you make something, maybe you buy something non-meat church, do whatever you want to do. But if you are a meat church person, I will tell you a little bit about these seasonings that we have right here. These are our most popular turkey seasonings. Voodoo is definitely number one and 1A is honey hog. Those are, you can get those in a kit on meatchurch.com along with a brine, holy gospel, our honey pecan, our Texas sugar, our brand new Hail Mary rub and the gospel. Those are all great choices that you can put on turkey. So use whatever you like. All right, I like to start on the underneath side first. We're going to flip this over, season away. I like to go pretty liberal right here on the underneath side. You're not going to see it. Otherwise I would tell you, be careful with your seasoning. You eat with your eyes first. Told you in the beginning, you're going to be judged on this. This is going to be on your table with your family. So season up kind of high and evenly when we get over to the meat side. So high and even. Great thing with the hickory, it's definitely a southwestern all-purpose, a little more savory than some of our other seasonings. But I think you'll see as we cook this turkey, it's going to end up having a very beautiful color, which, you know, you always, I say you eat with your eyes first, but when it comes to Thanksgiving, it's never more apparent than when you've got a bunch of people sitting around the table looking at something. So if you're undecided on what seasoning you want to use, I would check out hickory. You can get it at meatchurch.com. You can also get it at Ace Hardware. This is an Ace exclusive product or directly from us. If you didn't know, we were Ace Hardware vendor of the year last year, and they were excited about potentially doing something unique together. They're a great partner. We love all of our retail partners, but it just made sense to do one with them. And don't forget to season underneath the skin on the meat like I told you to do, but I forgot to do in the video. Well, there we have it. Let's talk about cooking. So cook on whatever you like. First off, as long as it's outside, it's going to taste better. We are rocking on a Traeger Ironwood XL today. We're using their turkey blend pellets, which are maple and hickory. Wood is your first ingredient to any type of cook. So no matter what you're cooking on, think about what the wood is going to be. I like hickory, pecan, maple, alder, things like that are going to taste great. They're also going to really create a beautiful turkey. I have five different offsets from little backyards to thousand gallons. I think a pellet grill cooks a prettier turkey. Also, one of the things I love about a pellet grill, when it comes to the holidays, you need to be in the house or outside, whatever, hanging with your family. It's about the memories around your family, less time cooking. So prep in advance, hopefully use something that you don't have to put a lot of time and effort into. So a pellet grill is a great option. With that said, cook on what you got or whatever you like, just follow along the cooking lesson. We're going 275 degrees today. This is a 12 pound turkey. A 12 pound turkey at 275 will take around three hours. I would always budget a little more time to make sure that you're done on time. Big thing at the holidays, people are always late with their cooks. And then I'm going to baste with butter every 45 minutes or so, add a little more, you know, a little more color if you want, that's optional, but I'm going to open this up. I'm going to put it directly on the rack and just let it ride. While the turkey's cooking, great opportunity to make one of my favorite holiday cocktails, a gold rush, which is super, super simple. All right, so we've got our shaker cup with ice in here. We are going to do three quarters ounce of freshly squeezed lemon juice. Then you want three quarters ounce of honey syrup. The way you make honey syrup is you mix equal parts, honey and water, heat it up and then basically stir it until the honey kind of becomes one. Some people like two or three parts honey. That's personal preference. I use this Blanton's barrel H honey because delicious. Two ounces of bourbon. I love Buffalo trace. Shake it up eight to 10 seconds. Smells delicious. Made some clear ice with our ghost ice system. Garnish it with a twisted lemon pill. That's delicious. Well, it has been exactly three hours and 10 minutes and using my instant read thermometer, we've hit 160 in the deepest part of the breast. That's the maximum internal temperature I want to go to because I don't want to dry it out. So let's pull a turkey out. Trying to tell y'all about that color. Dang, that's pretty. Listen, you slap that down on the table. Even your mom's going to be impressed. Well, we need to let this rest. I always talk about the importance of resting your meat. I rest at least half an hour when it comes to turkey. Gordon Ramsey says that you should rest a turkey equal amount of time that you cooked it. So in that case, you'd be resting three hours and 10 minutes. You're letting the juices redistribute throughout the muscle fibers in the meat. So rest it as long as you like. You got to give it at least half an hour. So I'm going to lightly tint it with some foil. Just lightly or loosely tint it with foil. Put some stuff over here to hold it down. We're going to let it hang out. We will be back to carve it up with our cocktail and see how we did. Cold rush is delicious. Okay, well, this has rested plenty of time. So let's get into it. I mean, I can't get over it. It's absolutely beautiful. So the hickory is a winner before we even get into it. My Montana knife, chef knife. By the way, y'all been asking about these like crazy. I've convinced Montana not to bring them back the week of Thanksgiving. So they sold out in 17 minutes back in October. So if you want these, I would go hit up their website, sign up for notifications. Okay, well, here we go. We've got our turkey kind of split up here. And I'm just gonna do what I normally do, which is kind of take a little off the edge here. Video safe, woo, super juicy. Just running out of there. All right, I want to get some of the skin, you know, some turkey here. Nice, good shot. Ooh, that flavor. That might be my favorite seasoning that we have on turkey. That is that is so good. Super juicy. All right, so we brine this thing overnight. I mean, it's probably 12-14 hours. Some people do an hour a pound kind of thing, but I don't have to be precise. We slathered in mayonnaise. You didn't have to baste, we still basted. And it is it's crazy juicy. But man, that flavor. That's, that's unbelievable. My goal is not bite through skin, still bit through really good. Higher temps would help with, with that dry brining, you know, is the way you can get it. Leaving your turkey on a rack in a fridge overnight after you brine it is a way you can get it. But that wasn't my goal. But that skin is good. My wife would like that. So that would be a win in my book. Remember, this is going in our turkey playlist. Also our holiday playlist, Turkey's Not Your Jam. We have 27 videos on our holiday playlist, prime rib, beef wellington, whole tenderloin, whatever you need. We've got all that stuff in there as well. But be sure you like and subscribe. We drop a straightforward, no frills how to cooking video every Wednesday morning at 10am central. We will see you guys next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai