The Turkey Has Landed...

So my neighbor raises turkeys. Really good ones--free range, good feed, etc. "Sure," says I, "I'd love a turkey for Thanksgiving. But I'll be out of town--mind holding one for me, and I'll cook it for Christmas?" "No problem," says he, "they run about 20 pounds." A bit more than I wanted, but hey, turkey leftovers are really good. Well, I get home, and my turkey is plucked and frozen and...

...thirty three pounds. (Yes, 33). There were going to be seven of us for dinner, including two small kids. Call it 5 1/2. (That's a bruise on the leg of the turkey, thawing in the sink. I know, I know...but do you know how long it takes to defrost a 33# turkey in the fridge? 7-10 days).

I had two weeks until Christmas, and I immediately started stressing about this turkey. I wanted very much to cook it on the Big Green Egg, and made a posting on the BGE forum. Several guys basically said, "No way. Way too big for the large BGE. You need the extra large." (The forum, by the way, is for the maniacal followers of the Big Green Egg, known as eggheads. I aspire to be welcomed into their ranks.)

Being somewhat stubborn (OK, more than somewhat), I kept at it. In the end, I didn't get to try out my final setup until (gulp) Christmas morning, and would you believe it? It was an absolute perfect fit--I couldn't have planned it any better. And the turkey was the best I've ever had, bar none. Needless to say, we have one or two vacuum sealed bags of leftover turkey...


So here's the whole sordid arrangement.

I started by re-reading bbum's web-log-o-mat, which has been the inspiration for the Big Green Egg from the beginning. Someday I gotta meet this guy. Though I don't even know his name, he's pretty much my hero--übergeek, loves good food, writes code for Apple. Anyway, also inspired by his site, I ordered a Stoker, which is a temperature controller for charcoal cookers. It turns on a small fan when the temperature drops below a set point, and chokes the damper if things are too hot. It also has a web server, and is network capable. How is geek/gearhead like myself supposed to even begin to resist such a contraption??? As I said to my mom, "You can administer your turkey from anywhere in the world." She went into near-hysterics, laughing for a good five minutes or so. As an aside, Kathryn's parents recently gave us a generous cash gift for Christmas--Kathryn got diamonds and rubies; I got the Stoker. Mind you, in-laws, 85% or more of your gift was spent on aforementioned jewels... Anyway, I rest my nerdy case.

Next I looked at a bunch of brine recipes, and settled on a maple brine that sounded great. For reference, that box the turkey is in is 18x12x12 inches, and holds five gallons of brine in addition to the turkey!!!

I checked in at the Big Green Egg forum pages, and asked for opinions there. Though mostly the guys didn't think I'd fare well (and I have to say that was a reasonable assumption on their part), one guy had the recommendation that I replace the 4-inch fire ring with the 2-inch fire ring, which would give me an extra 2 inches of clearance in the dome of the cooker. That turned out to be the winning ticket. I couldn't get the ring in time, so I broke the corners off of a 2 inch thick brick, and placed those on the firebox, with the plate setter resting on top of them.

One of the forum guys also recommended Mad Max's Turkey Recipe, and I followed that pretty much to the letter, with the exception that I brined the turkey also, with the brine mentioned above. It took 5 gallons of brine to cover the bird, and I let it soak for about 36 hours. The bird was not salty in the least--just juicy and lightly smoky. I also covered it with strips of bacon after about two hours of cooking time, and basted it maybe once per hour.

Conventional wisdom says that turkeys take 15-18 minutes per pound of cook time, at 325F. The farmer of my turkey said his customers were reporting that the birds were cooking in about 11 minutes per pound for some reason, so my mother-in-law and I estimated cook times for 11 to 18 minutes, and decided that starting the bird at 6AM would be a safe starting point, making dinner neither too early nor too late for the range of possible cook times. As it turned out, the turkey was done in 7 hours, and actually was a little hotter than I was shooting for. It was 190F thigh, 170F breast.

Some lessons learned.
--The maple brine uses soy sauce, and most of that runs out into the pan when cooking. The resultant gravy was snap-your-head-to-the-side salty. I also used salted butter and there were bacon drippings in there. Really no cure for this--just have to not brine if I want a non-salty gravy next time.
--The bird cooks fast and even in the Egg. About 12 minutes per pound was great.
--A large oval aluminum roasting pan was just the right size to fit the bird and the Egg. I had to tie the legs together, as well as tying the wings to the body to keep them out of the way of the lid.
--The Stoker totally rocked and was the star of the show. It kept the Egg within a few degrees of 325 at all times.
--Using the Stoker also made the Egg very fuel efficient. Per John's advice (maker of the Stoker), I laid the charcoal by hand, big pieces on the bottom, then medium, then small. I mounded the charcoal up slightly above the top of the fire box (about 1 inch in the middle). I used three starters on top of the coals instead of nestled into them. I let the fire burn for about 30-45 minutes before adding the turkey, and after eight hours total at 325F, I had about 1/3 of my charcoal left. Awesome. I think I could have gone another 3-4 hours without needing to reload the firebox.Can't wait for next year...but in the meantime, I'll have to find other things to gorge on...er, test the Stoker on...

Thanks to all who helped out with this!!! It was worth the obsessiveness I think.

bmc