BBQ Pulled Turkey Recipe

Hi this is Chef David Bishop from Chef to You, welcome to my kitchen. Today, I like to
show you how to make a barbecue turkey. Popular in Eastern, North and South Carolina,
this is a very delicious dish. I’m using a whole turkey, using the vinegar based sauce.
Let’s go and start with the sauce.

We will take ¼ or quarter cups of Apple cider vinegar, two teaspoons of ground red
pepper, two teaspoons of black pepper, one teaspoon of crushed red pepper, one
tablespoon salt. We’ll take this and stir it well, put down the stove, bring it to boil, turn it
down to simmer then it simmers for 10 to 15 minutes.

We have a sauce made, let’s go and take a look at our turkey, we want to go ahead and
washed the turkey, we want to make sure it’s thoroughly thawed out and then take a
paper towel and dry it. Right here I’ve got a mixture of one tablespoon of salt, one
teaspoon of ground red pepper, one teaspoon of black pepper, I’m going to take that and
swirl all that, and mix it well together and then we’re going to rub it into our turkey.

I like to turn my turkey over and start and back side, take some of the spice and just
sprinkle it, turn it back over, just take your time, and spread it all over around the turkey.
Our next step we going to grab our turkey, we pick it up, put it inside of our baking bag,
you want to buy a baking bag for turkey. Follow the instruction of how to coat the bag
and place it inside the bag. We’re going to slide our baking pan over here, you want a pan
with at least two inch sides, big enough that your bag is not going to hit against the side
of the bag, I recommend a pan at least this size, an aluminum will be great, if you got a
reusable pan. The reason I recommend the pan this size, this will be our pulling pan and
we’re going to pull the turkey, meat off the turkey later on.

We got the turkey neck, I go and put it right back inside of the cavity with my sauce right
here. We’ll take about a half of sauce and pour it right on top of the turkey. I know you
maybe thinking, where you washing off some of your spice, it will wash out some of it
but will stay inside the bag. Stir this sauce well and you don’t want just to season on the
top, you want a good even mix of sauces.

Let’s go one more and drip all the away across the back. Let’s put the entire bag up, the
turkey bagged up I got it tied, I’ve tucked the corners off underneath so it doesn’t hit the
side of the pan, we’re going to place this in a preheated 325 degree oven for four hours or
until we can push down on the cavity and we know that this is definitely little bit past the
done state.

Our turkey is done. I’ve got it stating for the last 15 minutes, we can’t see too well right
now because the bag is still out and we’ll cut it in just a minute, see the nice golden color.
Before we do that we’re going to get the juices out of this turkey, this is one of the key
behind the dish in fact all the moistures stay in side this bag and you’ll see we’re going to
get about two to three cups maybe four cups of liquid on this turkey.

We want to use those drippings to go back in the turkey. Very carefully cut the corner
off, you want to grab your bag very carefully, pour your liquid into this bowl, into a cup
or a bowl of some kind. Let’s go ahead and cut our corner bag as I want to show real
quick what you got in here. Once that’s steamed, do see that beautiful color there, color
up nice beautiful flavor, this will start to fall apart, you see when you push down on the
breast right here, you see it’s very soft what we do now is I’m going to take it and try to
slide it out of the bag and put in this pan, now we’ll start picking in about five minutes.

I’ll let the turkey cool for about 15 minutes, I broke the breast apart so the heat will get
out of that area. You will not need a knife today because we’re going to pull all this
turkey today, we’re going to shred by hand. We’re just going to start by pulling out the
breast out of the center, grab some of our meat and I’m just going to break it up in small
pieces, put this pan over here.

Big pieces like this, just tear them up, put it in this pan. We’ve got our turkey pulled
underneath this lid right here staying warm, let’s go back and look at our drippings what
we want to do is about a half inch of grease on the top right here, we want to take that off
so will end up going back into the turkey. Our final step we pull the turkey ahead
underneath the lid, try to keep it warm while you’re pulling it. It took me about 10 to 15
minutes to pull these, we took the grease of our drippings right here. What we want to do
is label about two to three cups of these drippings over top.

Remember, it has the sizzling in it plus the broth of the turkey, we’re going to pour this
over the top and we want to toss it after we put it a little more of our vinegar sauce on
too. You think that it’s going to settle in the bottom actually it’s going to absorb right in
when we stir. What I did with that sauce we had it earlier today that we cooked, I put an
amazing jar, this sauce will last when you cover it, you don’t have to refrigerate it for
several months, this is basically vinegar and seasoning so it does not need to be
refrigerated what I like to do is put in here so I can shake it a really well, here are my
herbs are nice and spread, so everything comes out evenly and we’re going to pull over—
I’m going to approximate it half a cup right now.

I’m going to go ahead and toss this and taste it. Here’s our final product, this nice
beautiful pulled turkey, the light and dark meat, plenty of sauce out it and if you want to a
little bit spicier add a little more sauce or you put the sauce on the table and individual
people can add a little bit more sauce to theirs.

As you notice, I get into this pretty chasing in it today, I’m plan to taking this to a party
tonight. We have a 14-pound turkey which should yield between six and seven pounds of
turkey. If you’re planning on serving just the turkey, you’ll figure three servings per
pound and if it’s -- you have a second meat or third meat there, then you’ll figure four
servings per pound. So 18 to 24 people, this will feed. You could take this and put it in
Ziplocs, this size that your family is going to need in Ziploc six or seven bags. All you do
is bring it out, let it thaw and warm it up enough just to get it warm, don’t microwave too
hot or you’ll dry it out.

One other thing I’d like to mention to you, some of you may not live in the Carolinas and
you’re not familiar with the sauce, I recommend you trying this recipe just like it is but if
you choose to use the red sauce and the mustard sauce, the orange based sauce that you
make in your area, I would start the turkey out with the vinegar sauce that I make. And
after you pick it off the bone, then you can add the type of sauce that you would like, the
red sauce or mustard bake sauce, or whatever your family would prefer.

This is Chef David Bishop, cooking and teaching, may God bless.