Thanksgiving is almost here and a fellow blogger, Joe Pastry, has some pretty good instincts about cooking the bird.  I think it's fair to paraphrase it by saying his opinion is just do it like you've been doing for years and to continue tradition.  His point is there's no sense in ruining the day with complicated new methods.  I have cooked a few birds over the years and have a different opinion: the traditional "butterball in the oven all day long" tastes awful.  It's dry, it's bland, and it's a pain in the butt.

I prefer to roast the turkey in a Webber grill.  Yes, roast it inside the grill.  It's really easy, it tastes great, and it frees up the oven and the chef for cooking all the rest of the stuff.  I can't tell you how much easier Thanksgiving is when the turkey isn't in the oven.  All the other good stuff can be made inside.

Let's walk through the process, shall we?

First I like to brine the turkey.  This is an overnight marinade in salty sugary solution.  The basic brine is about one cup of salt per gallon of water.   I like to put the bird in a large bag, you can find really big ones in the closet organizing section at Wal-mart.  Then you ad the brine solution, seal the bag, put it in a cooler, and add ice around it to keep the whole thing cool.  If you have a second fridge, and can make room, you can do that instead.



My basic recipe for brine is: (Click here for a lot of other recipes)

• Put a fist-full of chicken bullion cubes in a two cup measuring cup.
• Top off with salt for a total of two cups of salt and bullion.  You can use any combination of sea salt, Potassium (KCl) salt and regular old table or kosher salt to help lower the sodium.  Keep in mind that most of the salt stays in the brine.
• One cup of sugar.
• One can of orange juice concentrate.
• Thyme - about half the bottle.

Put everything in a pot with a half-gallon of water and heat until you get everything dissolved.  Then add ice and water until you have two gallons of cool brine.  Put the bird and brine in the bag and the bag in the cooler as I described above.  This should sit for 12 to 24 hours.

Tip:  Get a "replacement" grill thermometer, drill a hole in your grill lid and install the thermometer.

A few hours before the scheduled eating time, fire up the grill.  Put a ring of coals around the outside edge of the bottom grate on your Webber grill.  Douse in liter fluid and ignite. 

Go and get your turkey ready.  Pull it out of the brine and rinse in cool water.  Coat the skin in olive oil and rub in more thyme.  Make sure someone is watching the dogs as you go back to the grill.



You put a piece of aluminum foil to cover the middle of  the grill.  This catches the grease.  Warning:  You will not have grease to make gravy from.  If you need gravy, you will need to rely on canned or powdered.  Place the top grill on.  Put your turkey in the middle of the grill and cover with your modified lid.  Adjust the air to maintain about 400 degrees.  This is really easy to do.  A big bird should take three or four hours.

These photos show the traditional Webber method.  I prefer the ring of coals and just a foil center.  I've found that produces the most even heat.  If you use a pan, you can put some of the brine in it, or water, or beer, anything really, to make a humid cooking environment and stop the fat from burning.  I've always had some trouble with the heat being on just two sides and the solid side of the pan kind of chokes the coals. 



Do not rely on the pop-up thermometer.  Even if the sugar doesn't make it stick, they are set way too high.  Although they claim the bird should be 180 degrees in the thigh, this is way over-done.  OK, that might kill every germ known to man, but no pathogen can survive 140 degrees.  Calibrate your meat thermometer by putting it in boiling water.  They all read low.  Why?  Because if they read high, and you got sick, you'd sue.  So most of them read ten degrees low.  They also advise you on the dial to over-cook the meat.  Take the bird off at 145-150 degrees at a deep portion of the breast and thigh.  It will "cook up" or get hotter internally as the heat continues to migrate from the hot outside to the cooler inside (and outward into the air).

This thermometer costs about $5.

Let the bird set up for 15 minutes or so.  Cover it with foil to keep it warm.  I like to carve the breast completely off the carcass and then slice through it across the grain.  That way everyone gets a little strip of skin and the tasty brine.  Plus the meat will have a pink or reddish tinge near the edge, this is the acid in the smoke reacting with the proteins in the meat.  It sealed your bird up and tastes wonderful.