oven broke, need to make a turkey

[NVNVGirl]

What kind of gas grill does your neighbor have? If it's a Weber, I highly recommend the Weber rotisserie. It can be tricky to get a bird precisely balanced around the spit (truss it tight!) but actually the result is very moist, evenly browned, and almost completely unattended. The rotisserie is a little under US$100, and is very useful.

Walt

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Any time estimations for a rotisseried bird? My dh wants to try one on our rotisserie...probably around a 12-14 lb one. He thought it would be a good idea to stuff it too...I said NO....any comments?

[Rachel Perlow]

Here is our bird, a 13 lb Empire Kosher, cooking on the grill right now:

And yes, that is bacon on top.

I started it with chicken broth, wine, carrots, celery, shallots and onion in the bottom of the pan. The turkey is breast down on a rack.

As I mentioned elsewhere, we aren't "present the beautiful turkey to the table before carving" people. So, this will cool, then be carved tomorrow. That way I can use the carcase for soup on Thursday and not have to mess with it on the day.

Our plans got changed so we ended up just four of us for Thanksgiving, so there should be plenty of leftovers from this bird.

[Rachel Perlow]

When the thermometer said the turkey was nearly done,* I removed it from the pan and put it directly on the grill to crisp & brown the breast skin. Allowed to rest, it was then carved. The meat is nicely layed out in the pan it will reheat in, with some skin covering the meat. A stock is now bubbling away on the stove. Some of the stock will be added to the meat, to provide moisture during reheating. A separate gravy will also be prepared.

* Since it was to be sliced and reheated, I took it off just slightly underdone. Even so, with the carry-over cooking during the resting period, there was barely any underdone-ness to the meat.

[daves]

We were faced with the same problem (broken oven, not neighbor) a few years ago, although it was at Christmas instead of Thanksgiving. We ended up roasting on the bbq (Kamado instead of Weber, lump charcoal instead of gas), and it has become a tradition ever since.

Favorite prep: get the bbq up to 350 and cook the spatchcocked bird indirect 'til nearly done. That was about 2 hours for a 13# bird. Then I put it breast-side down on direct heat for the last 30 minutes to crisp up the skin. We loved the outcome when combined with brining/air drying skin/smoking with some apricot wood.

In fact, I'm brining this year's bird right now, and it'll be air drying soon. I think this year will be a little more smoke and a lower temperature...

Edited November 24, 2004 by daves (log)

[wnissen]

Any time estimations for a rotisseried bird? My dh wants to try one on our rotisserie...probably around a 12-14 lb one. He thought it would be a good idea to stuff it too...I said NO....any comments?

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Weber has a recipe for a rotisserie turkey that quotes a 12-14 lb. bird as taking 2-1/4 to 2-1/2 hours on indirect medium to reach 180 in the thigh. That's about right, maybe a tad long, and I would definitely check at 2 hours to be safe. Just assume that it's going to take 2.5 hours, and cover with foil if it finishes early, like it probably will. Oh, and in cold/windy weather turn up the front and rear heat till the grill's thermometer registers 350F. I've been bitten by that! One final tip: If your turkey is still lopsided on the spit and not rotating evenly (weighted toward breast side *bad*) despite having the counterweight extended all the way in the opposite direction, you can duct tape rocks to the counterweight to add mass!

I don't have any practical experience with stuffing, having never made it inside the bird, but the conventional wisdom that cooking that to 180F extends cooking time and dries out the bird unnecessarily makes sense to me. But then, I'm mostly Alton Brown's slave.

Walt