Smoking is an excellent way to impart some serious flavor into the meat and an excellent cooking technique to cook a large bird like a turkey without drying it out.
Of course, the first choice you need to make when smoking a turkey is the kind of turkey you plan to use. However, coming in a close second is the kind of wood you’ll be using and what flavor you want it to impart.
Now personally, we prefer cherry wood with a touch of hickory for that mixture of sweet-smokiness and rich color.
However, what wood you use will depend on your personal taste, so we’ll be laying out all the options for you to choose from, rather than insisting on one right choice.
Smoking a turkey is a classic way to prepare it for holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter. The wood you choose to smoke your turkey with can make all the difference in terms of flavor, aroma, and appearance. But with so many types of wood available, how do you choose the right one?
In this comprehensive guide, I’ll walk you through the pros and cons of the most popular woods for smoking turkey. I’ll also offer tips on the form of wood to use, how much you need, and where to buy it. Let’s get started!
Why the Wood Choice Matters
Unlike beef or pork, turkey is a lean and mild tasting meat. This means it can easily take on the flavor of the wood you use to smoke it. The right wood can infuse your turkey with nuanced flavors like fruit, nuts, and sweetness. The wrong wood can make it bitter or overpowering.
Wood also impacts the final color and crust of your smoked turkey. Fruit woods like cherry impart a pinkish hue while hickory lends a deep rich brown. The aroma while cooking and when carved is determined by the wood as well.
So put thought into your wood selection – don’t just grab any bag of chips or chunks! Take the flavor profile you want to achieve into account.
Top Woods for Smoking Turkey
Here are the most recommended types of wood for smoking turkey
Cherry
Cherry wood is a go-to choice for many pitmasters. It has a mild, sweet, fruity flavor that complements the turkey nicely. The hint of sweetness balances the savory smoke notes.
Cherry also gives the turkey a beautiful reddish color. Overall an excellent all-purpose wood for beginners to advanced smokers alike.
Pecan
Pecan imparts a nutty, bold, earthy flavor. It’s stronger than fruit woods, so use a lighter hand or blend it with something milder. But the delicious flavor pecans lend to poultry is hard to beat.
Apple
Apple wood chips or chunks provide a delicately sweet, fruity smoke flavor. Apple also burns slowly and evenly, making temperature control easier.
Great choice for those new to smoking turkey who want to add a touch of sweetness without overwhelming the meat.
Maple
Similar to apple, maple wood offers a light, subtly sweet smoke. It gives turkey a beautiful golden brown exterior while allowing its natural flavors to still shine.
Maple’s mildness allows herbs, spices, or brines to be the star if desired. An easy wood to work with.
Alder
Alder has an incredibly mellow, earthy flavor profile. Barely detectable, it puts the seasonings and turkey itself center stage.
If you want a hint of smoke but for other flavors to still dominate, opt for alder wood when smoking your turkey.
Woods to Avoid for Smoking Turkey
Some woods are too harsh and overpowering for the delicate flavor of turkey:
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Hickory – This bold, bacon-like wood can easily make turkey taste bitter. Best used in blends.
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Mesquite – The intense, earthy smoke mesquite produces will overwhelm turkey.
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Oak – While oak works great with beef, it’s too strong for poultry. Imparts a bitter taste.
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Cedar – Has a strong, resinous flavor that clashes with turkey.
Stick to fruit and nut woods or use strong woods sparingly. Never use resinous softwoods like pine.
Wood Chips vs Chunks for Smoking Turkey
Wood chips and chunks both have benefits:
Wood Chips
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Easy to find. Sold everywhere from grocery stores to hardware shops.
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Light quickly and produce smoke faster.
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Require soaking before use to slow burn rate.
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Produce smoke for a shorter time – need to replenish.
Wood Chunks
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Burn slowly and steadily while smoking for longer periods.
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Don’t need to be soaked first. Can use right away.
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Provide a more consistent smoke flavor over time.
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More difficult to source than chips. Mostly sold at BBQ specialty shops.
For hot-and-fast turkey smoking, wood chips are the way to go. For low-and-slow smoking, opt for chunks. You can also use a blend.
Estimating the Amount of Wood Needed
As a general guideline when smoking a whole turkey:
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Wood Chips – Use around 2-3 cups of wood chips, or 6-8 oz.
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Wood Chunks – Use around 2-3 chunks, or 4-6 oz.
The actual amount can vary a bit depending on the size of your turkey, type of wood, and smoker. It’s easy to add more if needed, so start on the lower end.
Where to Buy Wood for Smoking
You can source wood chips and chunks both in-person and online.
In Person
- Hardware stores like Home Depot and Lowes
- Supermarkets and grocery stores
- Specialty barbecue and grilling stores
Online
- Amazon – carry a huge variety of brands/types
- Fruita Wood – sells all wood smoking products
- BBQ specialy stores like Wildwood Grilling and Que Club
Shop around to find your preferred wood type, form (chips vs chunks), brand, and quantity. Buying in bulk online can save money.
How to Smoke a Turkey Step-By-Step
Follow this simple process for smoking turkey at home:
- Prep the turkey – Brine, rub, inject flavor, etc. Refrigerate until ready to smoke.
- Light your smoker – Get it up to temp (225-275°F) before adding turkey.
- Add wood – Add soaked chips or dry chunks once smoker is hot. Avoid too much white smoke.
- Place turkey in smoker – Put on opposite side from firebox/heating element.
- Maintain temperature – Keep smoker temp steady in the target range.
- Flip and rotate – Flip turkey once halfway through cooking. Rotate occasionally.
- Check for doneness – Use a meat thermometer to check thigh and breast temp. Target is 165°F.
- Let rest and serve – Allow to rest 15+ minutes before carving. Enjoy your smoked turkey!
Don’t Have Time to Smoke a Whole Bird?
If smoking an entire turkey seems too time consuming, you can always hot smoke just turkey breasts, legs, or other cuts/parts.
This takes under 2 hours but still infuses delicious smokey flavor. Follow the same woods recommendations above when smoking turkey pieces.
Some delicious recipes for smoked turkey parts:
- Cherry Smoked Turkey Breast
- Apple Wood Smoked Turkey Legs
- Pecan Smoked Turkey Drumsticks
Can You Mix Wood Types When Smoking Turkey?
Absolutely! Blending two types of wood can provide layers of flavor.
Some recommended combinations:
- Hickory + Cherry
- Apple + Maple
- Pecan + Cherry
- Alder + Apple
Get creative with mixing woods. Try doing 50/50 blends or using a primary wood with a smaller amount of a secondary wood for accents.
Hopefully this guide has helped demystify the process of choosing the best wood for smoking turkey. Stick to mild, fruity woods like cherry, apple, maple, or pecan. Blend in small amounts of stronger woods like hickory if desired.
The wood you select heavily impacts the end flavor and appearance of your smoked turkey. So put thought into whether you want a hint of smoke or an intense, bold smoky flavor.
Once you nail down the perfect wood (or wood combo), smoking turkey at home results in incredible juicy, tender and unforgettable flavor.
What are the best types of wood for smoking turkey?
As we’ve mentioned, different woods produce different flavor profiles that work nicely with turkey. Some of the most common choices include:
One of the most common woods used in meat smoking, pecan provides an excellent combination of sweetness, smokiness, and sharpness to your turkey meat.
A little more robust than a lot of the fruitwoods we’ll discuss later, pecan has a depth of flavor and subtle nuttiness to it that is simply delicious.
Because of that depth of flavor, we don’t recommend you add any hickory to it, as you might with cherry or apple, the first time you smoke. The combination of two strongly flavored woods can add an unpleasant sour harshness to the turkey meat.
However, if, after your first smoke, you want a more robust smokey flavor, you can always add in a small amount of hickory shavings or mesquite to bump up the volume.
Maplewood adds a layer of earthy, spicy flavors to your smoked turkey without overpowering the taste of the meat.
If you’re using a rub that already has a lot of strong herbal flavors, then smoking over maple can help you to underline those flavors.
The sweeter smoke of the maple also adds an almost honey-like sweetness to the meat and gives it a lovely golden color.
Cherry is a great smoking wood because it imparts a subtly sweet flavor that can be enhanced using rubs, marinades, or small amounts of other wood.
Our pellet grill turkey recipe uses cherry pellets as they impart a crowd-pleasing mild flavor.
As we’ve already mentioned, we like to pair cherrywood with hickory to add a greater depth of smoky flavor to the turkey meat.
The other great benefit of using cherrywood is that it will give your turkey a gorgeous red-brown coloring when it comes out of the smoker.
Apple is one of the more subtle woods on this list. Smoked over a long time, applewood provides a sweet subtle fruity taste to turkey that goes very well with the earthiness of the meat.
However, the flavor can really be very subtle indeed, meaning you’ll need to smoke your turkey for a lot longer to impart that flavor.
The only downside to this is that you’ll need to babysit your bird a little, keeping a spray bottle of water or apple juice on hand to make sure the meat doesn’t dry out.
A lighter alternative to some of the heavier woods we’ve got listed below, Alder imparts a rich smokey earthiness that isn’t quite as overpowering as hickory, oak, or mesquite.
As such, it can be used to empower some of the milder woods, such as apple or maple, or tone down some of the stronger woods, making it a good standby to have on hand.
Hickory is an excellent traditional smoking wood that will find use in nearly all smokers. However, it is really quite strong, more often used in barbecue than it is in smoking poultry.
However, one of the beauties of smoking is that you don’t have to stick to one type of wood. You can cut your hickory with fruitwood like an apple or cherry, giving your turkey the rich smoky flavor and deep brown coloring without overpowering the taste.
More often used in European smoking, oak is very similar to hickory in that it provides a rich smoky flavor that can quickly become overpowering if not used sparingly.
One of the benefits of using oak is that red oak variants impart a very striking reddish tint to the meat and combine very well with cherrywood if used in small quantities.
Another wood that packs quite a punch, mesquite delivers the strongest smokey spicy flavors. Often seen in Southwestern states’ BBQ, mesquite can quickly overwhelm that taste of turkey and leave an unpleasant bitter taste if too much is used, so it’s best to avoid this one.
Use a digital thermometer
We say this in pretty much all of our cooking tips but always use a good digital thermometer.
You’ll get a much faster and more accurate read on the temperature of your turkey than using a traditional thermometer, which will make keeping it at the right temperature that much easier.
Smoking With Wood – How to Choose the Right Wood for Smoking Meat
FAQ
What are the best wood pellets for smoking a turkey?
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Baked Goods
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Alder, Apple, Cherry, Maple, Oak, Pecan
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Pork
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Alder, Apple, Cherry, Hickory, Maple, Pecan
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Pulled Pork
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Apple, Hickory, Pecan
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Ribs
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Cherry, Hickory, Oak, Maple
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Turkey
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Alder, Maple, Oak
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