Smoked Turkey with Good Skin

[tostitobandito]

I'm doing another smoked turkey this year for Thanksgiving, and am researching ways to get better crispier skin instead of skin that basically just gets thrown away. To be clear the meat has been perfect; I'm just trying to improve the skin without sacrificing that. In the past with my 3Dwifi I've done more or less the following:

• Spatchcocked 20-22 pound turkey, wet brined for 48 hours, rinsed, dried, and allowed to sit uncovered in fridge overnight
• Season all over with ground pepper and pack herb butter under and on top of the skin
• Smoke at 250 with hickory/cherry, basting with more butter after leaving undisturbed for the first couple hours
• Pull at 160 internal (approximately 4-4.5 hours)

This time I'm thinking of trying a dry brine for at least 48 hours instead of wet, potentially reducing the amount of butter (gasp), and also pulling at a lower temp and finishing in an oven at 375 or something. I found some articles and videos from reputable sources talking about these things, but they mostly use offsets or pellet smokers which don't always directly translate to smokers like ours. Any of you guys tried any of these approaches? How did they work?

 

[Lonzinomaker]

I think that crisp skin is not possible because of the low heat and low airflow through the smoker.
I'm lucky because the skin is not part of the turkey I eat.

 

[old sarge]

If you want crispy skin, place the smoked turkey skin side up under your oven broiler or skin side down on a hot grill (make sure you lube up the grates to avoid sticking. In either case it should only take a couple of minutes. And for the record, I have never smoked any poultry or fish so my recommendation is from what I have read in the past and some good guesswork. Pork and beef for me and mine.

 

[MR BBQ]

The butter won't hurt the browning process, butter, oil and sugar is a browning agent. What is going to hurt the browning in the smoker is if you keep opening the smoker and basting. First of all you are letting the heat out every time you open the smoker and heat is your friend when wanting to brown. Also you don't need to baste things in these smokers, they cook real moist and are basically self basting, they trap a lot of moisture inside the smoker. You also need to kick up the heat, everything doesn't need to be cooked at down in the 200* range, turkey takes on smoke flavor real easy in fact if your smoker is seasoned real well you can cook one with no wood and still get a decent smoke flavor. You need to crank up that heat, you need a bit over 300* to obtain crispy skin. Last resort you can rub a little bit of Baking soda on the skin while season and it helps to crust the skin. If its spatchcocked towards the end of the cook you can move the turkey to the bottom rack skin side down right over the wood box and the heating element while the smoker is on high, just keep an eye on it.

 

[tostitobandito]

The butter won't hurt the browning process, butter, oil and sugar is a browning agent. What is going to hurt the browning in the smoker is if you keep opening the smoker and basting. First of all you are letting the heat out every time you open the smoker and heat is your friend when wanting to brown. Also you don't need to baste things in these smokers, they cook real moist and are basically self basting, they trap a lot of moisture inside the smoker. You also need to kick up the heat, everything doesn't need to be cooked at down in the 200* range, turkey takes on smoke flavor real easy in fact if your smoker is seasoned real well you can cook one with no wood and still get a decent smoke flavor. You need to crank up that heat, you need a bit over 300* to obtain crispy skin. Last resort you can rub a little bit of Baking soda on the skin while season and it helps to crust the skin. If its spatchcocked towards the end of the cook you can move the turkey to the bottom rack skin side down right over the wood box and the heating element while the smoker is on high, just keep an eye on it.

I know I can get the smoker up to 325F in theory, but since it's so humid in there as you point out I'm not convinced it would be as effective as moving it to a 350F grill/oven to finish, or something along those lines. Have you done one at 300F+ in the smoker the entire time? Or do you raise the temp at the end?