Anyone smoked a spatchcocked turkey in the PBC?

[rcrabb22]

I was going to get 2 birds about 12lb each.  I was going to cook one traditional in the oven and the other spatchcocked.  I haven't decided whether to hang it with 2 hooks or use the grate.  Anyone have experience with this?

[pmillen]

Interesting question.  Do you visualize an advantage to spatchcocking it?

[rcrabb22]

Interesting question.  Do you visualize an advantage to spatchcocking it?

Last year I did a whole bird using the PBC turkey hanger and the thighs took forever to reached a food safe temperature the breast meat was dry as a bone.  Pit temp was a steady 235F then faded below 200F after 3 hours or so.  I do not remember the weather outside but late November in northern Illinois is rarely above 45F.  I kept screwing with the lid and the lower airflow cover to raise the pit temperature and it became a very labor intensive cook.

[pmillen]

Smoked turkey can benefit greatly from brining to keep it moist.  Here's a useful brine for turkey.  Then stick the bird in the refrigerator, uncovered, for a day or two to dry the skin making it easier to crisp up.

My PBC benefitted greatly from the addition of a stoker.  See this post.

[Bacala]

Here's a thread from several years ago describing one I did, but it was cut in half entirely rather than spatchcoked. Probably would cook pretty much the same, though.

And yes, we have no pictures today! 

https://www.letstalkbbq.com/index.php?topic=12226.0

[rcrabb22]

I was going to get 2 birds about 12lb each.  I was going to cook one traditional in the oven and the other spatchcocked.  I haven't decided whether to hang it with 2 hooks or use the grate.  Anyone have experience with this?

Well I have more time to think about this.  The pandemic has postponed our family Thanksgiving get together for a bit.

[rcrabb22]

I cooked the spatchcocked turkey this past weekend and it turned out well.  I was able to keep the PBC temp at 265 F for the entire cook which was about 3.5 hours.  I used (1) 3" square of pecan split into 3 smaller pieces and Kingsford blue bag charcoal. The bird was open side down on the grate.  After 2 hours I temped each breast and one was 135F and the other was at 125 F so I rotated the bird 180 degrees.   

[akruckus]

Looks pretty darn good to me.  Did you keep the skin up the whole cook? If skin side up the whole cook any reason why you didn't flip it?

[rcrabb22]

The skin was crispy as it was.  I used the PBC all purpose rub to the whole turkey and applied vegetable oil spray to the top of the bird just before putting on the grate in the PBC.  I watched a number of videos on YouTube smoking a spatchcocked turkey and none of the videos showed the bird flipped over.   I never considered doing that.