Chad Mendes: How To Smoke Wild Turkey Breast!

what’s up guys hopefully everybody isstaying sane out there during thesecrazy times today I’m gonna show youguys one of my favorite things to dowith well turkey breasts our season justopened this last weekend here inCalifornia and I was lucky enough toarrow a big mature Tom yesterday so I’mgonna do like a honey smoked turkeybreast on the Traeger but I’m gonna adda couple little secret ingredients tofirst things first we got a brine thissector so I just got this is one half ofthe breast so obviously there’s one fullside on this side and one full side onthe other side I just took one of thesides cleaned it all up try to get anyfeathers any of that stuff off of itnice clean piece of meat and what I’mgoing to do is brine it you can brine itfor 1215 hours I’m I’m just gonna do itovernight you can do it for 24 hours andwhat that’s gonna do is keep thatmoisture Wow turkey can dry out reallyfast they’re super lean and so addingthat brine to it is gonna keep a lot ofthe moisture in it and just add a reallygood flavor to it as well so first thingwe have is I have four cups of waterjust cold water I put this in the fridgelast night I like letting it after Ikill it getting it in the fridge just asquick as I can I’m letting it chill outso it’s nice and cool I got four cupscold water I’m gonna do one whole cup ofbrown sugar I’m gonna do two tablespoonsof real maple syrup I have a quarter cupof salt I’m using some kosher salt butjust any regular salt work and 2tablespoons of cracked pepper so we’regonna get all that stuff mixed into thebrine mix it up and then like it we’regonna get that breast in there make sureit’s completely submerged if you have toput something on top of it you can dothat and then we’re gonna cover it getthat sucker in the fridge and thentomorrow we’re gonna get this thing onthe trigger[Music]hi guys so it has been 24 hours we’regonna get this breast out of the brinenow and just Pat it dry then we’re gonnaget the seasonings on it[Music]all right now we have this thing allpatted dry what I’m going to do is add alittle bit of olive oil and this is justgonna act like a binder and help a lotof the seasoning stick it’s super leantoo so this will help help anything fromsticking to the the grate I’m just gonnarub this one the seasoning that I’mgonna put on this this is one of myfavorite ones to use for this type ofturkey so and the reason why we’re doingthat is we’re gonna use this for lunchmeat so here I have a blues hog sweetand savory main reason why I’m usingthis is one of the first ingredients issugarit’s salt sugar and it’s brown sugarit’s got paprika garlic bunch of goodstuff we want that outside to be sweetso we’re gonna go ahead and cover thissucker with this and then we’re alsogoing to do some honey but we’re notgoing to do that till later later in thecook kind of the same way we did thejerky and just kind of based it on whenthis is just a little bit further intothe cooking process one of the things Ilike to do too especially when you’redoing lunch meat for sandwiches andstuff like that this is going to be agreat way like you can vacuum stillafter it’s smoked you know if you wantto slice this up and just eat it throughthe week for sandwiches for the familyor whatever this is a great way to dothat one of the things I like to do -once it’s sliced is actually reseasoning it is if you think about itwhen you see it in this it’s just theoutside that’s giving that flavor sowhen you slice it then it’s just a lotof the insight that doesn’t have anyseasoning on it so I personally like tojust put a little bit of seasoning on itand mix it all together when it’s allsliced and finished too so you don’thave to do that that’s just my personalpreference all right so this thing isall seasoned up we’re gonna go ahead andget this on the grill so I just turnedthe Traeger on at 180 and we’re gonnasmoke that till it hits an internal onthe thickest apart at 160 and this isgonna continue to cook for a little bitso we’ll take it off and just lightlywrap it in foil and it’ll cook till ithits 165 after it sits for a little bitin rest so let’s go ahead and get thissucker on it’s probably going to takethis size probably fiveto eight hours but let’s go ahead andget this sucker on now and we’ll havethis thing done for a little bit alrightguys so that turkey breast has been onfor about four and a half hours internaltemps about 148 to 150 thread it onthere I’m gonna start coating it withhoney now we get big tubs of honey fromour friends up north so we always have aton of it you’re gonna heat this upbecause it is a little crystallizedbasically just put some in a containeryou guys can soak this in like warmwater for awhile if you have time if notyou in rush they’ll just throw in themicrowave for just a few seconds andgive it a little runny and we’ll justpepper alright so I just switched thisthing over to the Ranger just to save ona little bit of colorwe’re gonna basically just base thissucker coat it with honey on both sidesand we’ll let it go till it’s finishedyou if you guys want to baste itmultiple times you can I’m probably justgonna do with this one time just coat itreally goodalmost done all right guys we justpulled her off I was a little over eighthours by eight and a half hoursbeautiful color on this thingshe just hit 160 so I’m gonna wrap itloosely in foil just let it sit for afew minutes I mean 10-15 minutes andit’ll hit 165 and then she’ll be readyto slice up all right so we just let itrest for about 10-15 minutes let’s getthis thing all sliced up there you goso what this is gonna be good for andwhat we’re gonna use it for is I’m gonnaslice you have a meat slicer you can useit if not just slice it really thin andit’s perfect for sandwiches you can makewraps stuff for lunch mmm super supertendergreat smoke flavor you have that honeykind of caramelized on the outside it’sreally goodall right guys well that’s a wrap forthis little episode of what to do on myfavorite recipes for turkey I have acouple other cool ones I’m going to showyou guys with some of the legs and mythighs drumstick and we’ll do that nexttime but for now I’m gonna slice this upwe’re gonna enjoy[Music]