turkey breast

brined and smoked turkey breast

Having a relatively small family means we don’t always need to buy a whole turkey come Christmas time so breasts can be the better option. As we always do when smoking turkey, we dry brine the meat first. As well as being a natural flavour enhancer salt, given enough time, will penetrate into the meat loosening up the proteins enabling them to hold onto more moisture thus resulting in a juicier piece of meat.

With brining you have the option of dry or wet brining. Dry brining simply means sprinkling the meat with salt whilst wet involves submerging the meat in a salt water solution. Dry brining is slowly becoming the more popular option as it effectively does the same thing without having to use water and allows a greater portion of the salt to penetrate. Another benefit of dry brining is that if you are brining a cut with skin that you want to golden and crisp up the skin won’t become waterlogged thus making it harder to golden.

Many recipes out there call for wet brining with added ingredients such as peppercorns, bay leaves, juniper berries and so on. These spices, herbs etc won’t penetrate into the meat and are therefore wasted. Besides salt, not much will actually work it’s way into the meat. Sugar is the one exception however it will take a lot longer to penetrate than salt, at least a few days. For an extremely detailed discussion around the benefits of brining, including the pros and cons of dry brining vs wet brining check out Meathead from Amazing Ribs article.

ingredients

• turkey breast
• mayonnaise
• salt (preferably kosher) and/or your favourite poultry rub

directions

1. Remove the skin from the breasts and any other bits of white-ish membrane.
2. Brush the breast with a small amount of mayonnaise and then apply the kosher salt at the rate of 1 tsp per kilo 24 hours before smoking. If you are using table salt adjust the rate to 0.5 tsp per kilo of turkey due to the finer crystals. You can use a commercial rub and allow the salt in it to do the work however you won’t know exactly how much salt you are using.
3. Set up your barbecue, grill or smoker for indirect cooking and aim for an ambient temperature of somewhere around the 275f/135c mark.
4. At this point you can add other spices such as paprika, garlic powder or dried herbs to the turkey. You can add a commercial rub at this point however be careful not to oversalt as the store bought rubs can be heavy on salt. To counter this you can always reduce the level of salt in the dry brining process knowing you’ll be adding more when applying the rub.
5. Add one chunk of wood to you’re cooker, then add the turkey breast.
6. Smoke and cook until the internal temperature of the turkey reaches 150f/65c. This is well below health food standards recommendation of 165f/74c which inevitably will produce a dry and stringy piece of turkey or chicken. It is however, perfectly safe and you can read why below.*
7. Wrap the breast in foil with a knob of butter and allow to rest for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes unwrap, slice and serve.
8. Enjoy your brined and smoked turkey breast!

*For a detailed look into safe cooking temperatures of poultry have a read of this article on Serious Eats by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

For chicken recipes and ideas click here.