Well, there's only one time a year that I cook whole turkey. However, the Egg does add it's magic even to something as typically boring as turkey. Now, a couple of words about preparation - there are many ways to spice up a turkey. Many people will brine the bird with a mixture of herbs and other flavors, and I highly recommend it, as it does make the bird juicier and more flavorful. The only drawback (from my lazy perspective, anyway), is that there is quite a bit of planning and preparation involved in brining. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but just have some time set aside - you'll be pleased with the results.
If you do choose to brine and take some time with your bird, I have to recommend Mad Max's Turkey Technique. It's a labor of love, but you'll wow your guests for sure. I do plan to give his method a try next Thanksgiving when I have more prep time.
Now, if you want something that's less labor-intensive, but still has great results, here's what I did this Thanksgiving. I took a 14 lb bird (which was the absolute biggest bird I could get that still would fit on my Medium Egg, as you can see above), and I "spatchcocked" it, which is what I do with chicken. Basically, this means butterflying - i.e., you cut the backbone out, then lay the turkey flat on the grill. The benefit of doing this is that the bird will cook faster and, in most cases, more evenly, since the bird is flatter and more of the meat is closer to the heat. This method works GREAT with chicken, and so I decided to try it on turkey, which, I suppose, is essentially a big chicken.
The drawback of spatchcocking is that you lose the "stuffing cavity." To make up for this, I cut all of the skin back away from the meat using a sharp filet knife. In those pockets now created between the skin and meat, I stuffed an herb paste that I whipped up with some fresh herbs from the grocery store. Included in the mix was rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, sage, parsley, garlic, butter, and olive oil. I had some pearl onions too, but I forgot to add them! I just finely chopped the herbs and garlic, then melted a stick of butter and mixed it in, then added as much olive oil as I needed to make a nice paste consistency. With what I had left after stuffing the pockets I rubbed on the outside of the skin, as seen above.
My setup on my Medium Egg, as can sort of be seen above, was just inverted platesetter on fire ring, then drip pan on platesetter and cooking grid on feet of platesetter. I poured a Coke in the drip pan. The Egg was set at a dome temp of about 325. I did not use any smoking woods.
Now, my target temperatures were 165 in the breast and 172 in the thigh. As I spoke of before, spatchcocking usually has the benefit of allowing the breast and thigh to finish at the same time, so that you don't overcook the breast while waiting for the thighs to finish. On a chicken, which is obviously smaller than a turkey, all of the meat sits at about the same level, with the breast just elevated above the thighs. The usually works perfectly, as the thigh temperature runs 10 degrees or so above the breast temperature throughout the cook, which is the final temperature differential you desire.
On the turkey, however, because it is much bigger, the breast sits up a little more higher, thus what actually happened on this turkey is that the temperature differential was more like 20 degrees. Since most eveyone I was cooking for likes white meat, I was most concerned about hitting the temp perfectly on the breasts: 165. In order to do that, though, I did overcook the thighs slightly - then went to 185 or so. The lessoned learned here is simply to tent the thighs in foil next time once they approach their "done" temp and continue to monitor the breast temp until it's done. This will keep the thighs from overcooking.
I was shocked at how fast this bird cooked. A spatchcocked chicken, which usually weighs on the order of 5 lbs, takes about an hour at 350 degrees DIRECT. I cooked this 14 lb spatchcocked turkey INDIRECT at 325 degrees and it took just 2 hours for the breast temperature to reach 165. I should mention, though, that my dome temp crept up to about 360 for about 10 minutes before I caught it, so that for sure played into the shorter cooking time.
This is just a picture without all of the temp. probe wires going everywhere.
Because the turkey cooked so fast, it was done THREE HOURS before we were ready to eat. What to do? Well, I simply put it in a pan, wrapped the top in foil, then threw a towel over the whole thing. It sat like this for three hours, and when I finally sliced it the meat was still too hot to hold, steaming, and plenty of juices ran out onto the pan. In fact, I think that the long rest allowed the juices to redistribute, because the breast meat was still very moist. The dark meat was expectedly not as moist, since I overshot my temp there by 10 degrees, but the flavor was still wonderful.
You can see some of the herb paste in the picture above. I will certainly do the paste again, even if I brine or don't spatchcock, because the medley of flavors was wonderful, and some of the flavor was even infused into the meat - not so much as it would have been with a brine, but still it was very much noticeable.
The comments from the crowd were all very positive. I was very pleased with the results, almost so much that I will use this method again and probably more often than brining, simply because the ratio of final quality to prep time was so great.
Good luck on your next Thanksgiving Turkey! Remember: experiment, experiment, experiment.
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