Everything you need to know about firewood to smoke the perfect turkey at your next barbecue.
A whole turkey is easily one of the best meats to smoke . And while most of us think that meat is best served around Thanksgiving and Christmas, the truth is that a beautifully smoked bird can be served year-round.
The key to this great bird cut is pairing it with the perfect type of wood shavings.
But with flavors ranging from apple to pecan and hickory to maple, where do you begin deciding which ones to pair with your smoked turkey treat ?
In today’s guide, I’ll show you the best wood for smoking turkey, along with some helpful tips and recommended brands.
Cherry
Cherry wood adds a pleasant sweetness to your bird without overpowering it. Cooking your turkey over cherries for several hours will develop a beautiful deep color, making your bird stand out from the crowd!
If you want to add a little complexity to your smoky flavor, consider adding a touch(and I mean just a touch) of hickory as well. This will help add some more smoke and complement the cherry nicely.
Recommended Cherry Wood: Traeger Cherry Wood Chips
These cherry infused chips offer a clean burning wood infused with a nice rich cherry flavor.
Made from 100% natural hardwood, with no artificial additives or binders. This stuff is the real deal.
Pecan
Like cherry, walnut is a sweet-tasting wood. But unlike cherries, pecan is much richer in flavor and adds a light layer of nutty flavor to your turkey.
I think it’s slightly stronger than cherry, so if cherry isn’t sweet or tangy enough for you, pecan is a great alternative.
Caution: The walnut may be too sweet for your taste, so it is best to try out how the turkey meat reacts to the walnut wood.
Also, unlike cherrywood, pecan would not be blended with oak or hickory to add a nuanced flavor. The pecan is rich enough as-is, and adding “earthy” woods like hickory or oak runs the risk of overpowering the flesh.
Recommended Pecan Wood: Weber Wood Pecan Chips
These pecan wood chips do exactly what we want the pecan to do: they add a nice sweet, smoky flavor without overpowering the turkey’s natural flavors.
Maple
OK, sure, this is another wood that’s on the sweeter end of the scale, but listen to me.
Despite what you might think, maple hardwood is much more subtle than its softwood followers.
It adds a light, delicate layer of flavor to the turkey and is a great option when you want just a hint of flavor while still remaining true to the natural flavors of the turkey meat.
Maple is always my go-to choice for ribs (and any cut of pork), but it’s also an underrated hero when it comes to poultry.
If cherry or pecan sound too rich or sweet for your taste, then maple is a great alternative for a much lighter flavor profile.
Recommended Maple: Cameron’s Smoking Maple Wood Chips
Like Weber and Traeger, Camerons is a wood chip brand that produces consistent, excellent quality wood without the use of chemicals or additives. This is just pure, natural hardwood, and it gets the job done brilliantly.
This material is easy to light and burn evenly to give you an even smoke flavor.
Apple
Applewood is another sweet and fruity wood, but it has a much milder flavor compared to cherry or walnut.
While many people use apple as their first choice for smoked turkey woods, I find that the flavors in apple smoke are so subtle that it can actually take a long time to infuse the turkey meat and infuse it with flavor.
The problem with this is that the turkey is so likely to dry out that it’s really hard to find the perfect balance between flavorful and bird-free one when it comes to applewood turkey.
That’s not to say it can’t be done, grilling at a lower temperature often works, but if you’re new to grilling I’d lean towards the other woods on this list first.
Best Applewood: Weber Wood Chips
Anything from Weber is always worth trying, and these applewood pieces don’t disappoint. Subtle and sweet as any good applewood should be, this big bag should last almost half a year.
What to avoid
Not all flavors go well with all meats, and that’s especially true with turkey. Like many white meats, it is quite delicate and easily outperformed by more hardy hardwood species.
Also here is a list of hardwoods that I would avoid when smoking turkey.
Mesquite
Mesquite is a beautiful wood that has been used in traditional BBQ smoking for centuries. The thing is, it’s been used with tough red meat for a long time.
And it’s not difficult to understand why.
Mesquite is one of the strongest woody aromas out there. It has an extremely robust flavor, and when used with meats like brisket, it should be.
But with turkey, it’s too intense a flavor and WILL overwhelm your turkey’s flavors.
Some people use a bit of mesquite and pair it with a fruitwood for balance, but I would avoid it altogether.
Hickory
Another deep, “earthy” wood, hickory is often used as the base layer for many different meats.
While hickory is undeniably a classic wood, it has too distinct and strong a flavor for poultry.
Oak
Oak is another classic grilling wood with a deep flavor, although it’s a bit lighter compared to mesquite and hickory.
It’s not often associated with poultry, and it’s not hard to see why.
However, because it’s relatively milder than hickory and mesquite, it can be used in combination with cherry to create a more nuanced flavor.
Frequently Asked Questions
Have burning questions about where to start wood smoking? Our FAQs will help you with this.
How many wood chips should I use?
While there’s no hard and fast rule here, I tend to stick to the amount that could pass through a smoker box . These are usually around 5 ounce chips.
Keep in mind that things like temperature, smoker size, and cooking time can all affect the speed at which your chips will burn.
Start with 5 ounces, and if you find yourself refilling too often(and reflecting the internal temperature of your chamber) or if you’re not carrying enough flavor to your turkey, add more.
How Long Should I Roast Turkey?
Aim for 30 minutes per pound of meat at 225F/107C. Your turkey is ready when the internal temperature of the meat reaches 73°C.
Always aim for indoor temperature, not time.
Check out my complete guide to how long to roast a turkey .
Do I need to remove my wood chips before smoking turkey?
There’s a lot of debate about how to remove wood chips for grilling , with as many people for as against.
I personally don’t. While the idea behind this is that it helps your chips last longer, there’s a lot of evidence that water doesn’t penetrate the wood’s surface as easily as we might think. Meanwhile, the steam given off by the water is likely to disturb the embers and smoke.
Writer & content creator. BBQ fanatic!
