Is there a stall on turkeys like there is on briskets? I smoked 3 spatchcocked 11 lbs. turkeys yesterday at 240 degrees. Internal temperature, monitored in a breast, rose steadily during the first 3 hours. Once the temperature reached 154 F it shut down. It took an hour to reach 158 and another 45 minutes to reach 160. Since the rise was so slow, I was afraid that there would be no or very little carryover cooking. After resting for > an hour, the meat deep inside the breast was fine but the meat near the outside was overcooked. The breast were in the smoker for 5 hours. Since they were spatchcocked, I had expect about 3 hours cook time.
Anyone else ever experience a stall on their turkey?
Anybody have suggestions on how I can avoid drying out the outside of the breast?
Perhaps the way I prepared the birds for cooking contributed to the dry flesh and the stall. I trimmed off the extra neck skin. Then I punctured the flesh with a tenderizing device made up of multiple needles. On one bird, I filled the pocket with herb butter. On the other bird, I used Cajun marinade. The thought was that the melted butter and marinade would ooze into the puncture holes and make the breast nice and juicy. It did not work.
During cooking, the skin pulled back some and exposed the top end of the breast directly to the heat. This area of the breast was the driest. The lower end of the breast, which was well covered by the skin and was not punctured, was rather moist. I wonder if the punctures allowed moisture to escape from the flesh, drying it out and causing evaporative cooling. This could have caused the stall.
What do you think?
That's what I thought after my first turkey cook. It was a Honesuckle breast. Just use oil, salt and pepper. It was WONDERFUL --juicy and smoky. Although, the skin was not crispy. Unfortunately, I did not keep notes on that cook. The next 2 cooks were not so good. On the second cook I tried to crisp up the skin. It was a whole bird cooked at 325-350 until breast was 165 degrees (20lbs for 4 hrs). Carryover heating took it to at least 169. It was over cooked. Had some creosoting going on too. At that temperature, it did not have a stall. Went from 157 to 165 in 20 minutes. The second cook was yesterdays which I described in the original post. It was the product of reading many recipes on-line. But I must confess the hole punching was a last minute idea of mine. I can't blame that on anyone but me. The fancy complicated approach did not work out very well. I'm going back to a simple and easy approach --10 lb bird, spatchcocked, oil, salt, pepper, neck skin on and cook at 270-275.