Oooh on a turkey once I mix in the salt, sugar, and cure #1 I take some of the solution with my injection needle and inject the liquid into the breast especially. I inject in all other parts but I basically hedge my bet for cure penetration. Cuts down the curing time a ton.
For a cured turkey I cure/brine probably a min of 4 days with the injection so it gets cured all throughout the breast.
I smoke my cured turkey (and chickens) at 325F so the skin behaves. The cure is to get that smoked turkey (hammy) flavor that is so loved with smoked turkey. The added benefit is that if u are doing a very big turkey u don't have to worry about it hitting 140F in the breast in 4 hours because the cure covers u there BUT this is the rare case where we dont care about the cure doing that job. We want the cure to give us the magical cured smoke turkey flavor :)
Don't make the mistake of smoking your turkey under 315F smoker temp and wind up with rubber skin :) Rubber skin will disappoint u so crank up the heat :)
