Turkey Day

I have started about 4 posts for this blog offline, all on different subjects, all stuck somewhere between the beginning and the middle. So while I continue to work on those, I thought I would post SOMETHING...

My birthday was a couple days before Canadian Thanksgiving, and for my party, my friends and I gathered and had a potluck Thanksgiving feast (not very occult/witchy of me, but oh well. The food was great!) We had potatoes, salad, veggies with dip, fresh bread, stuffing, cake, and the thing I slaved over - the turkey!

I did a recipe I saw on a show called License To Grill - a brined and smoked turkey done on the BBQ!! It turned out well, despite not being brined enough, and my turkey being small enough that I couldn't get all the ingredients for inside the body cavity in there lol.

It's not a very hard recipe, but it DOES take quite an amount of prep work (but it's worth it!) I think the total cooking time was abooout 3.5 to 4 hours. At the 3.5 hour mark the breast was cooked to the suggest temperature, but the legs still had some pink and blood near the bone, which resulted in the turkey being shoved into the oven by my mother to finish it off for leftovers (I reccomend continuing to cook on the BBQ if this happens - A LOT of juices came out when she put it in the oven...)

So now, for some pictures! Beware, contains one photo of a raw turkey lolThe turkey, post marinating for 16-18 hours in the brine, and covered in the rub, before going on the grill

After the first hour on the grill - we were late getting it on, so the first hour was done on a higher heat. Here you can see the foil smoke pouch to the left, and the drip pan with the white wine under the turkey pan.

Hour 3, basting the turkey with the basting butter for the second time (I split the batch in half, basted once after the first hour, second hour used what was in the pan, third hour the rest of the basting butter)

And the finished product. Now please note, this turkey does NOT have bread stuffing inside. It has apples, orange, onion. Also supposed to have garlic, thyme and maybe a lemon lol. I forgot those last two or three... oopsies!

Was a very yummy bird, and not horribly complex to do either. It seems like a lot - the shopping list almost gave my mom a heart attack - but it's worth it!