Cook Your Best Holiday Turkey: Supplies and Equipment Guide

Are you getting ready to cook your first turkey? Or looking for ways to improve your smoked turkey technique? Here is a list of all the supplies and equipment we use to cook a turkey so you can get up and running quickly.

Purchase the Turkey

If you're cooking turkey only once a year, it only makes sense to invest a bit of extra effort into making it the best you can! The first step in cooking an incredible holiday turkey is by choosing a Nicholas (heritage breed) turkey from Fossil Farms.

In summary, these turkeys are not only exceptionally tender and juicy, but also clean, so you can be confident about the meat you serve around your holiday table. Our customers rave about these turkeys; we're confident the quality will blow you away if you follow the method below.

Brine the Turkey

Brining is the best way to uniformly add moisture to the meat, which makes it easier to fully cook the turkey without making parts of it too dry. The easiest way to do a wet-brine is with the Briner Bucket. The dandy gadget has a height-adjustable lid for keeping the turkey submerged and the liquid contained.

We recommend Malcom's Bird Brine.

Or Inject the Turkey

If you don't have time to brine or just prefer injecting, this is a good method for pumping flavor and moisture into the meat.

Butcher BBQ Bird Booster makes a delicious injection! Mix it according to the directions on the container and inject the meat with an injector such as the one listed below.

Season the Turkey

We recommend these two seasonings on turkey. Season the entire surface of the turkey and the cavity. Also loosen the skin over the breast meat and apply some seasoning under the skin.

Got a Smoker?

There are many types of smokers that work for cooking a turkey, including Big Green Eggs, offset smokers, pellet grills, drum smokers, electric smokers, and even gas grills. In case you don't already have a smoker, here are a few great choices. Visit our showroom for a wide selection of smokers on display.

Fire the Smoker

We recommend smoking turkeys with pecan or cherry wood.

• Offset smokers: Log splits. Pecan log splits are hard to find around here so we often don't have it in stock, but we carry cherry and apple splits, which are both good choices for poultry.
• Pellet smokers: 20-pound bags of BBQr's Delight pecan pellets or Cookin Pellets Black Cherry pellets
• Kamado style smokers, such as Big Green Egg: Lump charcoal and wood chunks 
• Small charcoal smokers: Charcoal (lump or 100% hardwood briquettes) and wood chunks
• Gas or electric smokers: Wood chips or the A-MAZE-N Cold Smoker (see below) and pellets (we also carry 1-pound bags)
• Gas grills: A-MAZE-N cold smoker (see below) with pellets

We also carry both briquettes and lump charcoal for you who own a charcoal smoker.

Smoke Generators

If you are smoking your turkey on a gas grill, use one of these. Or if you have a gas or electric smoker and want more smoke flavor than what the smoker produces, this is a great solution too.

Temperature Controllers

Are you running a charcoal smoker? These handy gadgets automate temperature control in the pit.

The Flame Boss can monitor up to three meats and can be connected to Wifi for recording and monitoring the cook. It gives you temperature alerts and graphs of past cooking logs. 

The Egg Genius is a Big Green Egg controller that connects wirelessly to a mobile app. It has similar functionality as the Flame Boss FB500 (in fact it uses the Flame Boss server), but is controlled completely from a mobile app or computer.

Thermometers

One of the keys to cooking your best turkey is to fully cook it without overcooking it. To read the internal temperature of the meat, you can either use a hand-held instant read thermometer (the Thermapen is an excellent choice) or a leave-in probe, such as the Thermoworks DOT or Smoke.

Frying Your Turkey

If you prefer your turkey fried, we've got you covered too!

Rotisserie Grilling

Do you love the magic of meat turning on a spit? Try the JoeTisserie on your Big Green Egg!

Making Gravy

Don't forget the gravy. This gadget makes it easy to remove the fat from the drippings.