Can you smoke a turkey? You bet!

You’ve heard of the oven-roasted turkey, the deep-fried turkey, the grilled turkey. All are great, but in our humble opinion, they all pale in comparison to the champion of Thanksgiving—the smoked turkey.

Yes, you can smoke a turkey, provided you’ve got room in the smoker and plenty of patience. (Trust us, you will be rewarded.) Here are a few basic tips from our own experience and from around the experts on the web.

First things first: You cannot smoke a frozen turkey. Because smoking is at low temperatures, even a thawed turkey is going to cook very slowly. What you don’t want is for bacteria to have plenty of time to multiply—and that’s exactly what they will have if you try to smoke a frozen turkey for like 20 hours.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, and you’re planning to use a thawed or fresh turkey, it’s time to get it ready. If you like, you can brine it for 12 hours in water, salt, and spices, an optional step but one that will help keep your bird moist. Then, you’ll want to season it with a rub or other spices (if you brine, watch the salt in your seasoning afterward) and get your smoker up to temperature. 

For a faster cooking time, you can smoke at 250 or even 275 degrees, but for a regular-sized turkey, we like 225 for about 30 minutes per pound. In fact, it might be best to avoid smoking big birds (say, 20 pounds), because the increased time required could increase your risk of the bacteria issues we noted above.

We’d recommend adding a pan of water as well, to help keep the smoking chamber moist.

When your turkey reaches about 160 to 175 degrees (individual preferences vary, but the USDA says 165 degrees is safe), you can pull it out—keep in mind that it will continue to cook for a bit while you let it rest in foil for 15 minutes or so.

Then, all that’s left to do is carve it up and wait for the compliments!