So, it's Turkey Week. Help me cook a turkey.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m sort of faced with a dilemma this year.

Out of twenty-five years of existence, I have never been faced with the task of actually cooking a Thanksgiving turkey. Don’t get me wrong, I relish the chance of this adventure. However, I don’t quite even know where to get started.

I know how to cook the peas and corn. I know I’m supposed to cut the can-shaped cranberry sauce into something resembling slices. I can follow the directions on the box of Stove Top stuffing. I know that it’s aesthetically pleasing to put some rolls in a basket with a little cloth napkin over top.

The metrics of applying heat to a turkey, however, escape me and confuse me to no end.

All I’m doing this year is cooking a turkey on a grill. In my two-car garage. With a friend or two, and a few dozen beers. A nice quiet Thanksgiving day. :cool:

But I’m still clueless as to how to actually cook the bird. Can I just slap it on the grill like a piece of beef or chicken? Aren’t I supposed to use a pan and broil it? Do I have to save the drippings? :confused:

So help a poor soul out. Give me a few turkey recipes. . .

Tripler
But I make a mean mashed potato dish.

2

Advice?

Use a roasting pan. They come with a rack you can put the turkey in.

I’ve had great success with brining- it seems to help keep the bird moist.

Use a meat thermometer to see when the bird is done rather than 15-20 minutes/lb. Breast meat @161, I think dark at 180.

I don’t do stuffing, so I’m not sure if those temperatures change is you stuff the bird.

And just leave the silly thing alone once it’s in the oven, and let it cook. :slight_smile:

3

oops- missed the grill part.
:smack:
Ignore the oven comments.

4

There is some info about grilling a turkey in this thread.

Evidently it’s like grilling a big chicken? I think you’re supposed to butterfly the thing but I don’t remember.

5

I know there was a thread about this last year, but I can’t find it.
And I know you said “grill” but this is my method. I use an oven.

You need a box of Reynold’s Cooking Bags, the turkey size (not the “large” size, be sure it says “turkey size” on the box). You can find them in the aisle with foil and plastic wrap.

I do all this the night before, so it’s ready to go Thanksgiving Day, and then take it out of the fridge about an hour before I put it in the oven to let it get to room temperature.

First, make sure it’s thawed. Take out the various body parts that are packed inside. You can throw them away.

Rinse the turkey inside and out.
Coarsley chop about 5 ribs of celery, and a couple of medium onions. Prepare the cooking bag as directed on the box.
You add a tablespoon or two of flour and shake it around. Put the bag, open end draped over the end, in a large roasting pan.

Add some of the celery and onions for the turkey to sit on, and set the pan aside.

Rub it all over with canola oil or another neutral oil. Sprinkle all over with kosher salt, fresh-cracked black pepper and a little powdered garlic (NOT garlic salt).
Then put the turkey in the bag. You will need two people for this, unless you’re lucky enough to have four hands. Two hands hold the bag open and two hands put the turkey in the bag.
It’s a little tricky, and the bird is slippery from the oil, so be careful. You can stick one hand inside the body cavity to make lifting it easier.

Then you put the rest of the chopped celery and onions inside the turkey, along with a stick of chopped up butter or magarine. Add some fresh rosemary (about a couple of tablespoons), some more salt and pepper, and some finely chopped fresh garlic.

Tie the bag shut with the little twist-tie included and cut some slits in the top, according to the directions.
Cook according to the directions on the box, according to how much your turkey weighs. I usually get a 20-pound turkey and it cooks in about 2½ hours.

The bag will keep the turkey moist, and also reduces cooking time from a regular open roasting. I’ve used the cooking bags for years and always have a moist turkey. I swear by them.

Be sure to let it rest for at least half an hour after you take it out of the oven, before slicing, regardless of how you end up cooking your turkey. This lets the juices redistribute and keeps the meat moist.

I never, ever stuff my turkey. Adding the aromatic veggies and rosemary make the meat taste really good, too.
I prefer making the stuffing separate. Stuffing it also increases cooking time, potentially drying out the turkey.

6

There’s several recipes for grilling a turkey here and an article here.

Despite cooking directions that tell you how many minutes per pound to cook the bird, you still need to get a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature to be on the safe side.

Happy grilling!

7

If you’re grilling it, you won’t have drippings. Buy turkey gravy in a jar.

I’ve never actually cooked a turkey on a grill, but I’d guess that you’ll be better off, and it’ll cook better and more reliably, if you pretend that it’s a really huge chicken and cut it up, like you’d cut up a whole frying chicken. Do you know how to do that? You can do the same thing to a turkey, render it into its component parts, then you can cook the parts separately, which is desirable as the breast and drumsticks definitely need different cooking times.

And, you don’t necessarily have to buy a whole turkey and attempt to cut it up yourself. You can just buy a whole turkey breast and drumsticks separately. How much of the whole turkey-cooking ritual do you require for psychic satisfaction?

With the whole turkey, you also have the problem of what to do with the wings and back, which IMO are not really edible, although they do have meat on them, and are suitable for soup.

Here’s some info.
http://www.woodbridgechips.com/turkeygrillindex.html

Short version–it’s going to take a LONG time to do a whole turkey, so have lots of briquettes on hand, and be prepared to stand there for what sounds like most of the afternoon on Thursday, watching over it.

The safe (and easy) thing to do, Tripler, if you’re the one who’s being depended on to supply actual cooked turkey meat for a group, is to oven-cook it. Foolproof. Pop it in the oven according to any set of standard “How to cook a turkey” instructions, then set the timer and go watch football.

Make sure it’s thawed out first, and remove the package of giblets from the body cavities (there are two, the big hole and the neck hole).

And don’t throw away the turkey’s wrapper until you’ve ascertained exactly how much your bird weighs (it’ll be on the label next to the price, in “lbs”.) You need to know this in order to calculate cooking time.

8

Even better, unless you really want drumsticks: buy and cook a turkey breast or two instead of a whole turkey.

The idea is, since they’re smaller, they take less time to cook all the way through - only a couple of hours, rather than most of the day.

The key thing is that “cook all the way through” part. Whether you’re cooking a whole turkey, or a turkey breast, you need to know when the middle’s done.

Whole turkeys are frequently sold with those thingies that pop up when the bird’s done. Turkey breasts are rarely sold with 'em; if you go this route, invest a few bucks in a meat thermometer that you can stick into the bird. You can get 'em in the grocery store in the aisle with all the kitchen doodads. Like the article that Jessica2 linked to, you want 170° F. in the interior of the breast.

9

Oh yeah: with a lot of side dishes, a single turkey breast is a sufficient main course for 4-6 people.

But since it’s you and a couple of buddies drinking beer in the garage while the turkey grills, I’m guessing minimal side dishes. Get two turkey breasts, just so you aren’t cutting it close. Besides, turkey sandwiches for the rest of the weekend is the good part. :slight_smile:

10

RT has good advice for grilling. As a minor hijack, though, I’ve never understood why people make such roasting a turkey out to be such a big deal. Basically, you take a turkey, stick it in the oven for a few hours, and blam, you have a roasted turkey. That’s basically my method, and it’s always produced very yummy results.

11

OK let weigh in here and dispense some much needed advise. (OK it’s my personal opinion but I consider it sage advice.) I have grilled turkeys for T-day and/or Christmas for the past 12 years. I speak from experience.

First, plan to have the garage door open. This helps to avoid the nasty complications of carbon monoxide poisoning.

For beginners get a bird that has been injected with turkey juice this will help prevent drying out on the grill. Most Butterball turkeys come this way. Also just get one with a pop up timer. It’s easier. Look for a bird that wide but not tall.

Prepare as others have suggested but DO NOT put it in the baking bag. You will miss the best part the slightly smoky flavor.

Start a pile of charcoal after it has reached the nice even white ash stage, split the pile in half moving to opposite sides of the grill. Weber makes nifty little hold back things for this very purpose. Other wise your on your own.

Next before you put the cooking grate on place a roasting pan below where the turkey will be. It’s best if it doesn’t touch the coals.

Put the cooking grate on. Move it such that the openings for the handholds are over the piles of coals. Then set the turkey on the grate. Now you can just cook from here till done adding 6-8 new pieces of charcoal to each side, every 40 minutes. However I prefer to smoke the turkey. I add apple wood chips, which have been soaked in water, at the start and every time I add coals. Just a handful per side. Make sure to shake them out slightly before you add them.

Other than adding coals every 40 minutes, don’t look. The pan should collect enough drippings to make gravy. It always has for me. I’ll be doing this on Thursday myself. Just incase the popper doesn’t work; take it off the grill after 13 mins per pound. Remember the turkey will continue to cook for up o 30 minutes after you take it off the grill, before you carve it.

12

I’ve never tried grilling a turkey, but I second the suggestion of using the (turkey-sized) oven bags.
Most people think oven-cooking a turkey is hard because Mom/Grandma used to baste the thing every 15-30 minutes. With the oven-cooking bags, you don’t have to baste–makes it a lot easier.
A couple of additions to Kinsey’s suggestion… Buy an actual fresh head of garlic, peel off a few of the cloves, and chop pretty small. Mix the garlic with some pieces of butter about the same size, and shove under the skin (the skin will separate pretty easily). Also, the one problem with oven-cooking bags is the skin doesn’t get crisp. If you like crisp skin, when the turkey is done or almost-done, take the bird out of the bag & let it cook “naked” until the skin crisps up.
Good Luck!

13

And of course, opening the door to baste it every 15 minutes adds cooking time, because the temp of the oven goes down every time you open the oven door. Seem like the same thing would happen with grilling, when you kepp adding more charcoal, but I might be wrong. I’ve never grilled a turkey.

Yes, some fresh garlic under the skin would be great.

I’ve never had a problem with the skin not getting crispy, but opening the bag for 15-20 minutes at the end is a good idea.

14

Personally I’m not convinced that grilling a turkey adds enough to make it worth the effort, I’m a fan of the oven in this one case.

However, as has been mentioned once, be sure you have plenty of ventilation in the garage.

Brine the bird overnight.

One important aspect that alot of people overlook is seasoning. Season the bird first by rubbing butter and your seasonings onto the entire surface and under the skin. Just jam your hands underneath the skin until it seperates from the meat, but don’t tear it away completely so that it still remains covering the meat. I like to cream together various seasonings with the butter, salt, pepper, sage, garlic, paprika and cayanne pepper. Its also good, but notnecessary to cut little holes in the bird and insert whole garlic cloves and to spear it with rosemary stems.

Also, don’t stuff the bird. Make your stuffing in a casserole dish instead. Putting it inside the bird slows cooking, makes for soggy dressing and you always end up making extra stuffing in a dish anyways.

Put roughly chopped onion, carrot and celery inside the cavity instead during cooking, as well as under the bird in the roasting pan. This flavors your bird and your resulting gravy.

Lastly, if you use the oven, cook the bird breast side down. The legs will cook to the needed higher temp, and the breasts will remain moist.

I’ve never personally done the grill method, so alot of this advice is probably useless if you’re dead set on that. Remember indirect consistent heat on the grill, and don’t use a bag on the grill.

You should still season it and insert the veggies into the cavity for flavor. My biggest issue with grilling is that the gravy usually suffers or is non-existent using this method, and I love good gravy.

15

Token Homer Reference in Every Food Post:

Mmmmm…turkey
Mmmmm…drippings

16

[MyNewFavoriteCommercial]You want me to put my hand in the what? And pull out the whatwhat?[/commercial]

Wish I could help ya, pal. But as a vegetarian, I’ll be savoring my unstuffed stuffing and ToFurkey.

17

Okay, between all my daily administrata, I’ve glimpsed at this thread a few times and seem to get the undertone that for fooling around with fowl, the grill isn’t the way to go. (Insert cliche joke here.)

Anyway, a lady in my squadron has sold me on the idea of using a Crock Pot to cook this thing. Seeing as how I’ll be up early enough to start, she recommends 6 - 8 hours on high. I’ve asked a few people around work, and they say the same thing - if it’s a small enough bird to fit in the pot, it’ll be nice and juicy when it comes out. As I post this, I haven’t picked up a turkey yet so the oven route may be taken as a last resort, in which case I thank y’all for the recipes so far.

Which leads me to my next question: Once we’re done feasting and are fat and happy, I clean the carcass, keep the meat, and have a nice potential turkey soup skeleton to use. Got any recipes for this one? Taters? Celery? Onions? What else? Can I just submerge the carcass in yay-much water and let it boil the bones? Do I need to do anything special (like add flour?)?

You are all helping to feed a dopey bachelor this year. I thank you all. :slight_smile:

Tripler
Keep in mind, it sometimes takes me all my brainpower to boil water. :smiley:

18

good grief, a soup recipe request as well?!?
i just asked my mum. she said, water, turkey carcass, veggies. when the veggies are cooked the soup is done.

this is where the crock pot comes in really handy.

19

Are you saying I should wait on the Crock Pot idea?

Okay, I’ve gotten a 10 lb. breast. It’s too big for my Crock Pot, so I think I’m going to go full throttle and do the oven thing. Is there any difference between a gas and electric oven? I’ve set the thing in the fridge for Thursday, so I have some time, but I’m still soliciting advice.

Much obliged for all you folks who are making it a “Very Trog Thanksgiving” so far . . .

Tripler
“Trog”: Don’t ask.

20

No, gas and electric ovens cook the same way.