Smoked Turkey Seasoning Rub
The BEST seasoning rub for turkey whether you're cooking smoked turkey or just wanting to bake, pan fry, or air fry turkey recipes. Infused with dried herbs makes it perfect for your holiday turkey too!
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 1 tablespoon ground onion powder
- 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
- 1 tablespoon chili powder
- 2 tablespoon fine sea salt
- 1 tablespoon course ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoon brown sugar
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1 teaspoon minced dried rosemary
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- ½ teaspoon dried sage
Instructions
- Add the garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika, chili powder, sea salt, black pepper, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, dried rosemary, dried thyme, and dried sage in a small bowl. Mix the smoked turkey dry rub until the ingredients are well combined.
- Store the rub in a small mason jar or container for up to a year or until it starts to lose flavor.
- The turkey dry rub recipe makes about 10 tablespoons of seasoning, which can be used for many recipes. Most recipes just call for a couple of tablespoons of rub for something like a smoked turkey breast but you might use 3 Tbsp+ for a whole turkey.
Smoked Turkey Recipe Tips
- To use this smoked turkey rub for a Traeger or pellet smoker, we recommend making a paste with the rub by mixing a 1:1 ratio of rub to olive oil.
- Rub the paste under the skin, on the top of the skin, and on the bottom of the turkey.
- 1-2 lbs of meat will use about 1 tablespoon of turkey seasoning, adjust accordingly if your turkey parts or whole turkey are much larger. We just made a small 1 ½ lb bone-in turkey breast and 1 tablespoon was perfect but for our 10 lb turkey we used 3 tablespoon rub to 3 tablespoon olive oil.
- You can also add more seasoning rub paste halfway through cooking for a strong herb flavor, but we don't typically do this.
Notes
The turkey seasoning dry rub recipe will work with any type of turkey parts, plus with chicken and pork ribs too. Use it not just in a smoker but for air fryer, oven, or grilled recipes.
Do not use table salt in place of sea salt or kosher salt, table salt is much stronger and the recipe will taste too salty.
To make a sugar-free version, swap the brown sugar for golden erythritol, golden monk fruit, or coconut sugar.
To save (a lot!) money buying spices, get tiny quantities from the bulk section at the grocery store instead of purchasing entire bottles of each spice.
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