Turkey Time

So I finally gained the courage to bbq a turkey. I have been avoiding doing since it is the centerpiece of the whole dinner, but after having my "new grill" for a year or so and cooking several things I decided it was time. After agonizing over what type to cook: butter turkey, regular roast turkey, smoked turkey, etc, I decided on Beer Can Turkey. Why not? I like beer and have had several successful Beer Can Chickens come out well.

So here we go with what you need (or at least what I have):

1. Decent Grill
2. Turkey (in this case 17.75 pound behemoth)

3. Beer, Veggies, and Turkey are ready to go. Veggies are for the water/drip pan placed below the Turkey for indirect heating. Keeps the temp manageable below the turkey.

4. Preheat bbq to 350 degrees and add smoke chips (soaking for 2 hours in beer ;)). Place turkey carefully on beer can and position "hostage style" on grill.

Since the turkey was so big, I needed to prop up spare tin cans I normally use for cooking pizzas in the grill. These held up pretty well and the Turkey stayed upright the entire time.

5. Close grill and manage temp to 350 degrees at 12 minutes per pound (this turkey took 3.55 hours). Here is what she/he looked like 1 hour after smoking/grilling.

6. After 3.5 hours, here is what popped out of the grill.

7. Carved up, here is what it looked like.

8. Safe to say, that it came out tastin' good


"Learn from everything you do" is something that I believe in, so here are the things that I would change after bbq'ing the Turkey:

1. Less smoke or a different smoke
2. Maybe lower temp, but longer time
3. Not pulling skin away from the meat of the Turkey. People have recommended it, but it just ended up in the drumsticks pulling away from the body cavity. The rub and fresh garlic I used were enough to penetrate the meat and the beer kept the meat moist

All in all, I think it went successful, since I am writing this 2 days after Turkey day and we no longer have any Turkey left :)

Looking forward to documenting more successful bbq'ing adventures...