Smoking Turkey with a Beacon

Last year we posted a blog showing how to smoke a turkey on a kamado grill with a FireBoard Drive.  This has been a great resource for both whole bird smoking, and using a FireBoard Drive to control your fire.  It includes steps involved in using a Drive Program and the Predictive Analysis features of the FireBoard Mobile App.

This year, we decided to take a different approach, by smoking just the breast meat and monitoring it with our new Beacon sensor.  The results were great and if you try it you will definitely have the best leftover turkey sandwiches at work next week.

Why Use the Beacon?

The Beacon uses a long range frequency to achieve a more reliable signal than WiFi or Bluetooth.  A Beacon can be used far away from the FireBoard base station, effectively extending the range to places where connectivity would be a challenge.  A food probe or ambient probe can be used with a Beacon to monitor most anything!

The Beacon comes equipped with a port for external probes perfect for precisely tracking the internal temperatures while cooking.

Food Safety Resource

Be sure to check out the CDC’s holiday food safety page which covers safe practices on thawing, internal cooking temperatures, and reheating leftovers. 

Cook Prep

To cook the turkey our resident smoking expert John Atwell started with a  pre-brined whole turkey breast from his local grocery store. Brining is mandatory when cooking poultry because it, according to John “will keep the bird moist throughout the cooking process.”  Always multitasking John was smoking some ribs the same day he cooked the turkey.  The turkey was smoked in a  barrel smoker using a FireBoard Drive to maintain a 300ºF  set temperature.  In case you missed it, check out the blog where I built this smoker, and cover adding a Drive Blower fan to a smoker with our Ball Valve Adapter.

John smoked the Turkey on the same day he cooked some ribs on our Lone Star Grillz smoker. At the lower left his control panel can be seen. Alongside the Lone Star’s controls, are his Beacon, and FireBoard 2 Drive with S1G antenna attached.  John made a Drive Program on his FireBoard App to manage the drum smoker’s temperature while the Beacon tracked the internal temp of the turkey.

Progression of a smoked turkey breast monitored with FireBoard’s Beacon wireless sensor.

Cook Session

The FireBoard Beacon portion of John’s smoked turkey session. This chart shows the rising temperature of the turkey breast, as well as the Ambient Temperature and Humidity as measured by the Beacon’s onboard sensors. Click here to see the full session including his Drive and Spark data.

With a foil pan under the turkey to catch fat drippings, John placed the turkey on the center of the top rack of the drum.  Two hours into the cook the internal temp was at 145ºF and the skin was a dark golden brown. At this point, John wrapped it in two layers of aluminum foil and returned it to the same spot in the smoker to finish cooking.  “Once the turkey reached 160 degrees internal temperature I removed it from the smoker and allowed the carryover cooking to get it to its final temperature of 165 degrees.” Atwell summarized.

The finished product. After the internal temp read 165ºF, John used a rest time of 10 minutes before slicing.