Did a 13lb Kroeger cheapy turkey this past Sunday night ($.99 a lb). 8% preinjected. Thawed for a week, dry brined with 7 tsp of Diamond Kosher salt Sat night into Sun. Pics below of what happens from dry brining. Skin definitely tightens up. If you're going to put butter or a rub manually under the breast skin (not an injection), I'd
strongly recommend you stretch the skin before you dry brine.
Rubbed with 2 TB of the Simon and Garfunkel wet rub recipe from Amazingribs.com under the skin and the rest on skin, then injected the breast with unsalted butter. Into the PBC after 20 mins for the Kingsford blue coals to get going (I'm in Denver at 5600ft) and hung with the new turkey hanger. No wood added. Took 4 hours to cook (more later).
Some thoughts....
1. The turkey hanger makes it incredibly easy to cook a bird. Neck down/butt up and it worked perfectly. How this PBC doesn't burn the ever living crap out of meat that's right over the coal basket I'll never understand. But the breasts were juicy. Wings were good. Nothing torched.
2. Injecting the breasts was HUGE mistake for the PBC with a vertical hang. Within 30 seconds of the lid on, the butter that had stiffened because of the cold bird warmed up and started gushing out and sizzling the brand new coals. I'm positive I killed the temps and that introduced too much grease fog.
3. Probe in breast seemingly jumped to 120 degrees in no time but did level off and then seemed to work like you'd think.
4. After 3 1/4 hours, decided to crack the lid to both hurry it along and crisp the skin. Pulled it at 4 hours when breast was about 155-160 depending on where I Thermapenned. Thighs were 175+ or so. Coals got going again and that helped but I'm sure my temps were too low in the beginning.
5. Rested for a half hour as the sides weren't getting done as fast as the recipe said. Damn brussel sprouts.
Like I mentioned, meat was juicy. Not salty at all even though I dry brined an injected bird. But there was a definite grease fog taste that I seem to like in ribs and a brisket I've done, but I didn't care for in turkey. I also used WAY too much rub and that just overpowered the turkey. Reading some other chicken threads here, it seems the coals did get snuffed a bit in the beginning from the dripping butter and that most likely contributed to the grease taste.
But the hanger worked perfectly. But I'm not 100% sure I'm going to use the PBC for Thanksgiving. Bought the Slow N Sear for the Weber and may give that a shot.
