Fare for your feast
Holiday barbecue: Texas-style turkey, fresh off the grill
Thanksgiving is here again: that glorious celebration of gluttony, football and napping. No matter what part of this nation of ours you call home, odds are you will be eating more than your fair share of turkey this week. Perhaps you're even preparing one.
The old-fashioned method of cooking a turkey would have you laboring over a stove in an undoubtedly crowded, stifling kitchen for hours and hours. If you are slightly more adventurous you may try the newer deep-fry method. But if you don’t know precisely what you’re doing, you could end up with more than just a ruined entrée (like a crispy, charred shell of what used to be your house). If you happen to live in Texas, there is a third option we highly recommend: turkey on the grill.
First, get a turkey that fits within the confines of your particular outdoor grill. Baste and stuff the bird to your liking; In our house, we butter the skin and the area just between the skin and the meat, then stuff with celery, carrots, onions and apples.
Place the bird in a turkey bag and onto a roasting pan, breast down. Let the turkey cook on indirect heat, setting it on the middle of the grill, using the outside burners to cook it for around three hours at 350 degrees—it's best to use a meat thermometer to chart when it hits optimal temperature. The end result is a quickly prepared bird with crispier skin and the juiciest meat you’ve ever tasted.
A grilled turkey not only frees up oven space for other dishes, it also allows for the injection of a little local culture into the holiday. Given that we live in a part of the country still prone to relatively warm temperatures through the month of November, cooking a turkey on the grill gives Thanksgiving the flavor we love so much: barbeque.
Gather your friends, break out the light jackets and enjoy a festive brew on the porch while grilling the bird. Happy Thanksgiving!