I grilled a turkey last night… and it was good!
I like to grill, I like to cook food over an open fire (well, a contained fire at least), I like the smell of the smoke and the glow of the red hot embers. I’ve only every had one or two instances where the food I cooked didn’t turn out very good. I just have to think that I either have a natural affinity for cooking or I’m just damn lucky.
Two weeks ago, just before Thanksgiving we got a free Turkey from Kroger but since we were going out of town for the holiday, we didn’t do anything with it at the time. We just stuck it in the fridge to thaw out slowly. For the past week we’ve been trying to decide when we could get it cooked, I knew I wanted to grill it to get some smoke flavor in it, but trying to find 3-4 hours where I could keep a fire going was getting to be a challenge. I was going to take off after lunch yesterday and cook it in the afternoon, but I had an important meeting at 3:30. We left as soon as we could, but still didn’t get home until after 5:00. It took me until a little after 7:00 to even get the grill and every thing set up to cook in complete darkness in the rain and get the fire going. I kept looking at the clock trying to determine when we’d actually be eating, 7:00 plus 3.5 hours… sheesh, it was going to be a midnight feast!
Once I got the initial batch of coals burning though, things got a lot smoother. Every 15 minutes I went out to lift the lid and give the coals some oxygen, every hour I added a few more burning coals. Around 2.5 hours I started checking the temperature of the bird since it was getting really dark on the outside. At almost 3 hours (about 30 minutes short of time) the internal temperature finally reached 180ยบ. 
Heather started heating up the veggies and we were eating by 11:20.
Now I’m not going to say that it was the best damn turkey I’ve ever eaten, but it was the best damn turkey I’ve ever made. It could have used some more seasoning (I blame Heather for that), and could have absorbed some more smoke (don’t know how to fix that short of closing the top vent earlier. It was super moist and extremely flavorful. I’m going to be appreciating this turkey for days in the form of sandwiches and leftovers.
Lets’s just say it was so good that I was still full this morning.
3 replies on “Say Hello to the Grill King!”
I am SO coming over to your place for turkey sandwiches!
You’re more than welcome to come over and have a couple, as long as you don’t eat me out of meat and bone… we haven’t had a sandwich from it yet and I hate to say it, but as lunch approaches, I may still be too full to have one… Looks like I know what dinner’s gonna be!
Turkey grillinng thoughts
Hey! I checked with my dad (who grills turkey often). He recommends not opening the grill unless you have to add coals, which you should only have to do once or twice. Your turkey will taste more smokey if you don’t open the grill up, the coals should get enough air on their own. He also said you really have to rub the turkey down with spices. He sometimes wraps apple trees branches in foil and puts them donw in the coals to give an apple smoke flavor. He also said rubbing the tirkey down with olive oil and italian spices is good.