Turkey Breast Stall

[swthorpe]

I am smoking an 7# turkey breast this afternoon.  On the smoker at noon with a set temp of 240F.  Now at 3:30pm, and the breast has stalled at 154F for the past 30 minutes!  No worries, don't need it to hit 165F until 4:30-5:00.  I wanted to share this for folks that want to smoke a turkey breast to be aware that it does stall, so allow at least 4-4.30 hours for this sized breast.

 

[swthorpe]

Update:  Approaching 5pm and the IT is now at 160F!  I can't say that I have seen a 1.5 hour stall on a turkey breast before, but now I am in crunch ville!  :-X

 

[jcboxlot]

I've done two in the past few months and both had a similar stall.  6 lbs took me a tad over  5 hours.

 

[swthorpe]

Finally pulled it at 5:45 pm...much more time than I expected.  So this turkey breast that was more like 7.5# took almost 6 hours to reach temp.  But, at the end, it was really good...nice smoke flavor!

 

[DivotMaker]

That's wild, Steve!  I guess I've never experienced a stall with poultry!  I didn't think there was enough internal fat to do that, since it's evaporative cooling from all the rendered fat coming to the surface.  Whoda thunk it! ???

 

[Barrel99]

What kinda wood and how much did you use Steve?

 

[swthorpe]

I used just under 3oz of hickory for the turkey breast.

 

[Barrel99]

Perfect, thanks!