Thanksgiving turkey results

[Woodman]

I’m sorry I don’t have any pics but everyone has seen a cooked turkey before. I wanted to share my Joetisserie experience yesterday for my family’s Thanksgiving. I had plans for spinning a perfectly cooked turkey. I watched John’s video on YouTube and had my turkey rinsed and dried overnight in the fridge. Grill was up to temp and ready to go until things went downhill from there. 

 

After watching John’s video on trussing the bird, I followed his instructions and placed the bird in the heat. First problem was my charcoal divider didn’t allow my bird to spin. Out comes the divider. 

 

After 20 minutes, I thought I better check and see how the spinning is going and the wing is catching on the side of the firebox, thus reversing the rotation of the Joetisserie. It would spin halfway, reverse, and spin the other way for half of a rotation  and then reverse again.  I move the bird over. 

 

After 20 more minutes I check progress and the bird has come loose from the forks and is touching the fire. I remove the bird from Joetisserie and reconfigure my cooking setup. I feared I didn’t have enough fuel so I had added more lump, put in the heat deflector, and now I’ve lost my stable temp that I spent an hour obtaining. Clock is still ticking as guests are coming in two hours. 

 

Get out the flameboss boss so I can have a fan blowing on the fire, open the top vent all the way, and temp recovers quickly. 

 

After 2 hours, I remove the bird at 165 and it is awesome. I have been cooking on my Classic for five years and have never felt like such a rookie. Guests never knew the crap I went through but it was all my fault. 

 

The point here is: be sure to tie your bird down more than you think you’ll ever need. Truss your bird, then tie it to your forks too. The bird changes shape and composition as it cooks more than you think, and gravity is always fighting you. 

 

The Kamado style cookers produce great food. It’s just sometimes things don’t go as planned and it’s all about how you react. 

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

[KismetKamado]

Great story. Thanks for sharing.

 

I just started using a rotisserie and had a similar expericence with several hiccups along the way.  I also felt like a total rookie.... 

 

Sounds like it turned out fantastic and the guests were none the wiser. Good thing you kept your cool to power through it. 

[gotzero]

Wow. I did our practice turkey tonight, I could have posted this. We had an emergency reforking an hour in. Pulled after 2.5 hours, it might be the best turkey I ever had. Everyone that did not see the cook raved about it. Cannot wait until Tuesday with the high end bird. 

 

Thanks for the advice about tying to the forks, I will do that next time!

 

[grill seeker]

Im just hoping I don't mess anything up.  My good bird, I'm scared to do on the grill.  We have a semi local farm that reserved a certain amount of heritage turkeys for our local/organic/free range grocery.  I missed out last year, so reserved this one in August.  Free range never frozen......  So I am going with the traditional, brine - oven high heat, foil the breast, then 350 to finish. 

I also picked up a standard 7 pound breast at the chain grocery, that I am going to dry brine, and spin on the joetisserie.  It's going to be a fun thursday morning for me.  The best part is we are having the dinner at my wife's aunts house a few miles away.  I would rather cook and take it somewhere than to deal with that many people here.

I will definitely snap a few pics of both.