Smoked Boneless Turkey Breast
April 28, 2014 | Updated February 15, 2021
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Anyone who’s ever cooked any sort of turkey, wild or domesticated, knows that the breast meat can get dry in a hurry. Smoked boneless turkey breast chief among them.
That’s because a boneless turkey breast doesn’t have the breastbone to protect it from drying out. Fear not, however, I’ll show you how to go about it.
The end goal is that tender, juicy turkey breast, smoky, maybe a touch sweet, but you don’t want it dry as the Sahara, or with the thinner, tail end of the breast turned into jerky.
I do this with two techniques: First, slice off the triangular tail end, and use that for another recipe, like maybe turkey parmesan, and just smoke the thick part. Here’s how you cut it:
The second technique is to brine or salt cure the meat: That’s the secret to fantastic smoked boneless turkey breast.
And while you can get away with not brining a store-bought turkey, smoking a wild turkey breast requires a salt brine. Period. If you are not familiar with what brining does, it uses the power of salt and osmosis to slightly denature the proteins in the meat, swelling them with salty moisture and trapping more liquid in the meat than it would otherwise be able to contain.
So when you cook it, and you get the inevitable moisture loss that heat causes, there was already so much moisture in the brined meat to begin with that it remains juicy.
I use what is called an equalization cure for my “brine,” which is not really a brine. It’s dry salting. You do this by weighing the turkey breast in grams — yes, you need a scale
— and then weighing out 1.5 percent of that weight in kosher or sea salt. Add to this some brown sugar (that weight need not be exact) mix and massage into the turkey breast.
Ideally you’d vacuum seal it and set it in the fridge for at least 3 days, and really up to a week or more — this cure will not make the turkey breast too salty, unlike other ways of brining or salt curing.
Once you have that set, you need to dry the turkey breast to form what’s called a pellicle on the surface of the meat. A pellicle is a thin sheen or skin of denatured proteins that, when it dries out a bit, becomes tacky. This allows smoke to adhere to the meat far better then if you put wet meat into a smoker. This is an important step in smoking ignored by a lot of amateurs. Don’t be that guy.
I like smoking over fruit woods (cherry in this case), but you can use whatever. Oak, hickory, walnut, beech, alder, mesquite… Whatever you want will be fine, only no conifers! Pine pitch and turpentine are not good eats.
To give the turkey one last punch, I paint it with something sweet. I used honey here, but maple syrup, birch syrup, agave nectar, a fruit syrup or even molasses would work. Why do this? Um… is there a person on earth who doesn’t like the combination of sweet-salty-smoky-meaty?
I didn’t think so.
I generally use a smoked boneless turkey breast as lunch meat, for sandwiches. But if that’s not your thing, make a meal out of it and serve your smoked turkey warm. Maybe with a gravy. You can also slice, then roughly chop, your smoked turkey for the meat in turkey tacos.
Once made, this will keep about a week in the fridge, and it freezes well.
Smoked Wild Turkey Breast
Ingredients
- 1 skinless turkey breast, trimmed (see note above)
- kosher salt (see note above)
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 cup honey, maple syrup or other syrup
Instructions
- Mix together the salt and sugar. Massage the mixture into the meat and, ideally, vacuum seal it. If not, put the salted turkey into a freezer bag. Set in the fridge for at least 3 days to cure.
- Remove the turkey breast from the bag and set it in the fridge, uncovered, for an hour or three to form the pellicle, a sheen that allows the turkey to take on smoke better. Turn the turkey over a few times while you do this. Don't skip this step!
- Smoke the turkey slowly at about 200ºF until it reaches an internal temperature of about 160ºF -- this takes about 4 hours with my smoker. Let the turkey smoke undisturbed for an hour, then paint it with honey every 45 minutes or so until it's done. When the turkey is ready, take it out of the smoker and set it on a rack. Paint it one more time with the honey and serve any way you like it: Warm for dinner, or cold for sandwiches.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
This is so good that it’s the ONLY thing I do with my wild turkey breasts! I use organic maple syrup. I have tried several different kinds of wood for smoking. I thought the fruit woods were a little too sweet. I prefer oak chips from an old whisky barrel. Perfect! Don’t skip the step where you dry the pellicle. This is critical for sealing in all that juicy goodness!
Followed this recipe to a T with one of last years birds to make sandwiches to take afield on this years turkey hunt HUGE Hit!!
This recipe is phenomenal! I have compared it to others who take turkey in to get professionally smoked and they all like this recipe the best. I used “real” maple syrup for brining and basting and it was incredible. Great recipe Hank!
Hank – I made this for Thanksgiving and it turned out great. I used a FoodSaver marinator to vacuum marinade the wild turkey breast for about 12hrs. It was as juicy as a store bought breast. I mixed VT maple syrup with local CO honey for the glaze. I think it was about 50/50 mix and that worked really well with the pecan chips in the smoker.
I/my husband/my father-in-law plan on hunting a wild turkey this season. Thanks for your insight on how to prepare properly. I searched for info after my brother told me wild turkeys are too dry and I found your article. Woohoo! I knew there had to be a way.. I mean people didn’t have grocery stores back then..so. I did want to say, however, that #3 makes me..idk.. hesitant, I guess, because I’ve always covered things, but I told myself, ‘why on earth would this guy suggest something harmful.. I mean, after all, he’s the one with the experience, not me’. So,……I just put the BRINED, raw turkey breast in the fridge UNcovered, correct? Do I need to make sure my fridge is a certain temp? I would hate to miss just one detail & have my Thanksgiving be a disaster & buy a store-bought turkey at the last minute. Thanks for your helpful article & any reassuring response you may be able to give me. -Elizabeth
Hank – tried this and was overall pleased with results, breast meat stayed moist.
Was slightly salty for me, should I just cut down the brine time from 48 hours to 40 hours or something?
Mark: Yep. Cut the brine time down. And it will be less salty when you eat the slices cold. We can’t perceive saltiness as well with cold foods.
I wonder what you did with the ends you cut off to make the breast uniform. I just wrapped them in a bit of bacon and threw it in the smoker too. Hopefully it will work! Turkey bites 🙂
Liz: Stir fry. 😉
hey hank this sounds geat. how often do you add chips to the smoker.
Hank,
I was going to try to smoke the whole bird. Any tweaks to the method other than the time it takes? Was considering splitting the bird to speed up cooking time slightly.
Tried it tonight and it came out spectacularly! Used maple syrup instead of honey in the brine, and for basting. Took 5hrs in the smoker at 210, but well worth the wait. Definitely a winning recipe. Perfect Mothers day dinner. Thanks for the inspiration a Hank!
I’ll be trying it this week with a big gobbler I got last weekend. A minor point/question though… The photo of sliced turkey doesn’t jive with the cylindrical trussed one. Is that a rectangular cut turkey breast, and since it was fairly thick and uniform it cooked evenly without trussing?
Erik: Nope. that was the same trussed breast as in the other picture.
Great recipe. Turned out great. thanks
I’ve had a lot of people tell me that if I freeze any turkey that I should include water in the vacuum bag with it. Would having water in the bag with frozen turkey lessen the necessary brine time since it should stay moist? I’d like to spread my potential turkey meat over a few months and just want to fit this recipe in for a scavenger/gardener party my friends and I have planned for the summer. Thanks Hank!
Jeffrey: Don’t do it. The salt will prevent the water from freezing properly. I’d just vacuum seal the parts and call it a day.
this ROCKS… very very good recipe… finally.. I have found that wild turkey is okay to cook and eat…. I had zero luck previously with any cooked or prepared wild turkey… this one recipe is a HIT… very good… hats off to you.. and you are right… use the twine and do the recipe ‘EXACTLY as it is proposed..
thank you. This is super.
I have a digital electric smoker I Wounder if you wet or dry smoke the breast? I wet smoked some ribs that didn’t turn out.
Mike
I will definitely try this when I get a smoker! In the meantime, I oven roast a whole wild turkey but lay a bacon rind on top of it. My husband is a butcher and can get me the entire belly rind they cut off when they make bacon. (I suppose you could also wrap the bird in bacon itself if you couldn’t get just a rind, but the bacon does shrink as it cooks.) It is the perfect smoky-sweet flavor, plus all that delicious bacon grease keeps the meat moist.
FWIW: I have heard that black walnut smoke can get overpowering & bitter pretty fast similar to the classics hickory & mesquite. They are best used in small doses as hours of straight hickory or mesquite will likely yield a very bitter result. I use them for burgers, chops & steaks which smoke cook in minutes and very much prefer fuitwoods like apple, cherry, peach or even mulberry for longer low temp smokes like ribs, bacon, Canadian bacon, turkey or ham. Maple & oak are also nice, mild & well suited to prolonged smoke.
Hey Hank, this recipe is exactly what we in Israel refer to as a “Pastrami” (although we Israelis prefer our Pastrami made from Turkey breast instead of Beef, and sometimes we also prefer roasting it in the oven instead of smoking it…). Great post!
Cherry is good, but have you tried peach yet?
Looks beautiful! I hope you make some Eggs Benedict with that…