Low Effort Mid Summer Frog Turkey

Last November I stashed 3 turkeys in my freezer while the getting was good, the reason I bought 3 was because there was not room for 4. Finally got around to thawing one out last week and wanted to smoke it with as little effort as possible. I have spatchcocked several turkeys before including last Thanksgiving's but wanted to see how frogging it would be. Turned out pretty good and was much easier to prepare. I would guesstimate the total actual "hands on" work to be about an hour.

Low effort smoked turkey:

1. Thaw turkey in fridge, mine took about a week, YMMV. Just a standard 11 lb Butterball frozen turkey.
2. Brine in fridge overnight, about 12 hours. (brine recipe below)
3. Rinse with clean water, pat dry with paper towels.
4. Frog it! Although not necessary I used my (kitchen dedicated) pair of Fiskar pruning shears to split the breast bone so the breasts would lie flatter, also trimmed out a few of the rib bones. Most of the cutting was done with a small paring knife, including removal of the wishbone.
5. Generously apply rub of your choice, no binder. I had a bunch of leftover Memphis Dust so I just used that, Myron's recipe has no salt so it worked well with the brining step. Memphis Dust is not really for turkey but I don't care, I don't eat the skin off smoked turkeys anyway (again, going for low effort here).
6. You could go ahead and smoke it at this point, for scheduling reasons I had to put mine in the fridge overnight, I left it uncovered.
7. Pull out of fridge and let come up to room temperature for about 3 or 4 hours (an important step IMHO)
8. I smoked it on my Pit Boss 700 at 250° F for 2 hours and then raised to 300° for another hour and a half or so. (my smoker has 50 degree temperature steps so 275° wasn't an option, had I had that option I would have smoked it at 275° the entire time. I ended up smoking it longer than planned because it rained in the middle of my cook and cooled everything down).
9. I basted with melted butter about 2 hours in as the skin was looking pretty dry, I don't think it had much impact. For a turkey I cared more about (i.e. higher effort) I would have injected with a mixture of melted butter and chicken stock prior to smoking.
10. Loosely cover with foil and rest for at least 30 minutes before carving.

Brine recipe:

• 2 gallons water
• 1 pound coarse Morton Kosher Salt
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

Heat 1 gallon water in a pan enough to dissolve the salt and sugar, remove from heat and add to 1 gallon ice water. I had intended to put a 1/4 c of Worcestershire sauce in it but forgot, I didn't miss it. No cinnamon sticks, pepper corns, or candied ginger nonsense, just salt and sugar.