How To Make Homemade Dessert Turkey

Jonathon

Dessert Turkey

Learn how to make a delicious Dessert Turkey that will really impress your guests. After eating it though I don't think you would have any problem serving this as your main Turkey at a holiday meal!

Prep Time

30 Minutes

Cook Time

6.5 Hours

Ingredients

15 lb Turkey
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
5 Granny Smith Apple
Bread Crumbs
Cinnamon Toast Shake
Soluble Apple Cinnamon

Utensils Needed

Flexible Cutting Mats
Injector
Thermometer
Sop Mop

Instructions

First we want to prepare the injection for our turkey. You can use either tap or distilled water but if you are using tap water it's not a bad idea to let it sit in an uncovered container overnight to let any chlorine or other chemicals evaporate out. The entire package of apple cinnamon soluble seasoning is just over 2.3 lb and is dissolved in a gallon of water for a 10% pump, so since a gallon weighs 8 lb and the seasoning is 2 that means this whole bag would be enough for a 100 lb of turkey. Since our Turkey weighs 15 lb we really only need 1.5 lb of the injection however we recommend you make more than what you need so we are going to double that and use whatever is left over as our base to marinate it overnight. We are going to use 3 lb of water and .87 lb of seasoning plus 2.4 oz Cold Phosphate (which helps increase water holding capacity to increase the juiciness of our smoked turkey), this will be just over double what we need. After we are done injecting we should have about 1.5 lb of our injection left so we will just add another 1.5 lb (or whatever we have left) of water to that to create our 50% strength cover solution.

We recommend doing an 8 point injection, with 4 injection points on each half of the turkey. Start with the turkey lying flat on a counter or cutting board and on its back with the bottom facing you. Your first injection will be in the middle of the breast and angled down towards the top of the turkey (repeat this injection on the other breast). Injection number 2 will be parallel to the counter, through the middle of the breast, towards the top of the turkey (repeat on both sides of the turkey breast). The third and fourth injection points will be into the drumstick and leg, and then inject into the thigh muscle (again repeat to inject both halves of the turkey). That gives us 4 injection points on each side of the turkey, for 8 total injection points. Since this Turkey was 15 lb we want it to weigh at least 16.5 lb after injecting, thus hitting our 10% pump goal.

Process

The turkey marinated overnight and we added our stuffing to it. To make the stuffing we skinned and diced up 5 apples, softened a 1/2 stick of butter and added 3 cups of unseasoned breadcrumbs. Then we mixed it all together to make sure the butter was holding everything together. We stuffed the cavity of the turkey with that and now we are going to rub it with Cinnamon Toast Shake.

We are going to rub it on both above and below the skin. If you have never rubbed under the skin of a turkey before you need to loosen the skin first. You can start at the neck or the cavity side, just start working your fingers between the skin and the meat until the skin begins to pull away. Be careful not to break the skin and make sure you separate all the skin around the breast. Now rub it under the skin with Cinnamon Toast Shake seasoning, and then coat the entire outside of the skin and you are ready to cook!

Thermal Processing & Smoking

Stage 1 - 120° F for 30 minutes
Stage 2 - 135° F for 2.5 hours
Stage 3 - 160° F for 30 minutes
Stage 3 - 190° F until internal meat temp of 165°