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.
Mesquite wood is a popular choice among barbecue enthusiasts for smoking meats like brisket, pork shoulders, and beef ribs. Its strong, earthy flavor adds bold smoky notes that enhance the taste of red meats beautifully. But when it comes to the more delicate white meat of poultry, opinions differ on whether mesquite is the right wood for the job.
In particular, mesquite’s intense smokiness makes many backyard pitmasters hesitant to use it when smoking turkey. The light flavor of turkey can easily become overpowered, resulting in an acrid, bitter taste.
However, with care and restraint, mesquite can be used to add rich, complex flavors to smoked turkey. The key is balancing mesquite with other milder woods and using it judiciously
The Bold, Intense Flavor of Mesquite Wood
Mesquite imparts an assertive earthy flavor that is much stronger than fruit and nut woods like apple, cherry and pecan. Its smoke can have potent bacon or whisky notes that complement beef beautifully but may overwhelm poultry.
This makes mesquite a controversial choice for smoking turkey. Many pitmasters advise avoiding it entirely, warning that its strong flavor will make the turkey taste bitter. They recommend using mellower fruit and nut woods.
However, others feel mesquite can be used successfully for turkey if mixed with other woods and used carefully. By itself, the flavor may be too intense. But blended and balanced with other woods, mesquite provides a complexity and smoky richness that enhances the turkey.
Benefits of Adding Mesquite to Your Smoked Turkey
While mesquite may be divisive when used for turkey, it does have benefits that make it worth experimenting with:
-
It burns hotter – Mesquite’s high heat helps form a flavorful, crispy skin on the turkey. Fruit woods won’t sear and crisp the skin as well.
-
Adds smoky depth – Mesquite provides a smoldering, charry flavor that gives great smoky notes. Using it sparingly adds nice complexity.
-
Traditional flavor – Mesquite smoke is quintessential barbecue flavor in the American South and Southwest. Adding some can make the turkey taste authentic.
Many award-winning pitmasters use a touch of mesquite along with other woods when smoking turkey to take advantage of these qualities.
Best Practices for Using Mesquite to Smoke Turkey
If you want to incorporate mesquite wood when smoking turkey, here are some tips for success:
-
Use very sparingly – Only use a small amount, less than 25% of your total wood. More will quickly make the turkey taste bitter.
-
Mix it with milder wood – Balance the mesquite smoke flavor with sweeter, softer woods like apple, cherry, maple, or pecan.
-
Don’t use mesquite chunks – Use mesquite wood chips which provide less concentrated smoke. Chunks can overwhelm the turkey.
-
Smoke for a short time – Limit smoking with mesquite to the first 1-2 hours. Switch to a milder wood to finish.
-
Keep temperature low – Smoke the turkey at 225-250°F. Higher heat will make the strong smoke bitter.
-
Watch the smoke carefully – Thin blue smoke is ideal. Billowing white smoke means you are oversmoking with mesquite.
Combining Woods for a Balanced Turkey Smoke Flavor
One of the best ways to use mesquite when smoking turkey is to blend it with complementary woods like fruit and nut varieties. Here are some excellent wood combinations:
-
Mesquite and cherry – The tart sweetness of cherry balances out the harshness of mesquite. A flavorful duo.
-
Mesquite and apple – Apple adds mellow fruity notes to temper the intensity of mesquite smoke.
-
Mesquite and pecan – Pecan’s richness plays well against mesquite’s earthy flavor. A perfect pairing.
-
Mesquite and maple – Maple’s inherent sweetness offsets the bold smokiness of the mesquite wood.
Experimenting with different wood mixtures allows you to create complex, nuanced smoke flavors that enhance the natural taste of turkey.
Other Tips for Delicious Mesquite Smoked Turkey
To get the best results when adding mesquite to your turkey smoke, keep these additional tips in mind:
-
Brine the turkey – Brining ensures the turkey stays juicy and doesn’t dry out from the mesquite smoke.
-
Cook to proper temp – Cook until the breast is 160°F and thighs are 175°F to prevent drying out.
-
Allow the turkey to rest – Letting it rest 15-20 minutes makes the turkey juicy and allows smoke flavors to set.
-
Apply a rub – Use a basic poultry rub to add seasoning that stands up to the smoke.
-
Carve across the grain – Slicing across the grain of the meat ensures tender, juicy smoked turkey.
Mesquite wood lends a bold, intense flavor that can overwhelm delicate poultry like turkey. But used carefully in moderation, balanced out by sweeter, fruitier woods, mesquite smoke can provide wonderful complexity and richness to smoked turkey.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with small amounts of mesquite chips blended with apple, maple, cherry, or other woods. With the right technique, you can achieve incredible smoke flavor that enhances the taste of your turkey without going overboard.
So try adding a touch of mesquite to your next smoked turkey. The depth and character it contributes may give you the best-tasting Thanksgiving bird ever.
Q: Is mesquite bad for smoking turkey?
A: Mesquite is a very strongly flavored wood that can easily overwhelm the taste of the turkey. We recommend you keep it for more robust BBQ meats and stick to lighter woods for smoking turkey.
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.