Turkey Cookin', Alfresco, Thanksgiving and beyond

[Priscilla]

Once again we cooked our Thanksgiving turk in the old Weber, although not on the rotisserie as has been our wont for years previous due to the fact that we were wrestling with a 25-pound Foster Farms from Costco. Rotiss can handle like a 14 pounder, as I recall, and gives excellent results too.

However this year it was not to be, not because we set out to not rotiss, but because at Costco all the turkeys were like 20 lbs. The guy stocking yet more there, trying to keep ahead of us Costcoers and our Costco needs, said they were ordered at the 18-22 lb. spread, and we thought we might risk an eighteener but there wasn't one even that small there, really, nothing smaller than 20. And I read every tag, in that way I have.

So we decided to go to the other extreme, and bought the BIGGEST one in the case at that moment, which was 25+ lbs.

And a very good turkey it was, too, and had g.d. better have been with Ivan and I getting up at effing 3:15 a.m. to stuff, truss, baste, & c. (We needed it to be finished cooking noonish.)

Nice plain bread and veg stuffing, as per Ivan's request this year. I personally like stuffing with EVERYTHING in there, oysters, sausage, h.b. eggs, cornbread, white bread, the whole shebang, plus. I was madly envious of the groovy salt-and-pepper lady ordering up a quart of bulk Western oysters for HER stuffing at Whole Food at the District at Tustin Legacy on Thanksgiving Eve. No bulk Western oysters for me howevah. Wah.

I can report that Lee's day-old baguettes are the PERFECT white bread for turkey stuffing, as I knew they would be.

Good thing the turkey was very good. TONS of leftovers, even sending home lots with guests, just the way we like it!

So... cooking turkey outdoors, by any method... anybody else do it?

[Priscilla]

Lee's day-old, ya, in fact, it was musing on how they would make GREAT bread pudding that led me inexorably to how that would also mean good for turkey stuffng. Can't you just see them in bread pudding?

Crispy skin takes a while to develop... esp. with a big moist steamy bird moistening and steaming up the oven. Basting with a fat helps, but seems to me it is mostly a time issue. Rotissing with its autobaste feature results in very nice crisp skin.