Smoke-Tastic Thanksgiving Turkey!

In Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October.  I don’t know the historical reasons as to why we are different from our southern friends who celebrate in November, but there you have it.  So last weekend, I decided I’d try doing our turkey on the Big Green Egg instead of the boring oven indoors.  I should mention that I’ve never actually cooked a turkey in my life prior to this.  I’ve been blessed enough (or thankful ;) to always get to eat my Thanksgiving with family at their house.  But there comes a time in a man’s life, that you need to learn how to do it on your own…and the time had come.

So, Kelly and I discussed the plan of attack and essentially I would do the bird, and Kel would look after the sides. We invited some friends over for dinner and all was planned.  Having no experience with how much turkey was needed for 5 adults, I relied on a Google search and discovered a “turkey calculator” which said I’d need an 8 lb turkey.  That seemed way too small so I ordered a 12 lb turkey from The Butchery.

To prepare, I read up on turkey roasting and smoking methods.  I found a couple online and one in my Big Green Egg cookbook.  The recipe/steps that I settled on was written by someone called “Mad Max” and considering my penchant for post-apocalyptic preparations, this one spoke to me. 

So following in Mad Max’s footsteps, I went for a long motorcycle ride the day before (but without the worry of roving gangs trying to run me off the road to steal my gasoline) and then started on the turkey the next morning.  I had heard rumors that the butchers like to leave you some treats inside the bird after they behead and gut it.  My bird didn’t appear to be frozen but on further inspection, it turned out she was still fairly frigid.  For the life of me, I couldn’t spread the legs to get in there and look for the stuff inside.  The bird and I spent about 45 minutes in the kitchen sink under some luke warm water as I washed and worked at opening it up.  My turkey eventually relented and I cleaned her out and then proceeded to coat the bird in an excessive butter/herb mixture.

I set up the grill for indirect heat cooking and added some apple wood chips in the charcoal for additional smoky flavor.  Now, a little Jamie tip that I just made up on the fly…in the water pan underneath the grill level, I poured the water that had been used for soaking my woodchips and then added some chicken broth as well just to create what I like to call ‘flavor-steam’!  I have no idea if it added much, but it smelled good.

I put the turkey on at precisely 2:50pm and following the instructions, I started basting it every 20 minutes.  This was an awesomely stressful part of the day and required my full attention which meant I had to sit on the deck outside, sipping beer, and then wine in the horrible sun and oddly warm weather.  I really wanted to help Kelly with the sides, but the turkey was just too demanding, honestly. ;)

Within an hour the turkey started to brown.  You can see from the pictures the progression to the final browned and outstandingly smoky turkey after the four hours of smoking on the grill at around 300 Fahrenheit.  The inside temperature on the meat was at about 180 at this point.  During this time, Kelly had whipped together mashed potatoes, stuffing, bacon braised green beans and apple butter pumpkin pie complete with homemade whipped cream.  Then together, Kelly and I made the gravy using the remnants from the turkey pan. 

1/3rd of the way done

2/3rds done

Done

Originally we were planning for five adults, but due to a series of conflicting events that occurred, it ended up being Kel and I along with our friend Shawn who thankfully came with enough wine for the original five adults.  The three of us were treated to an outstanding meal, and I was blown away by how you could really taste the smoke flavor in the meat.  Shawn said it was the best turkey he's ever had, which I tend to agree with.  Also, special call out to Kelly, her apple butter pumpkin pie was so very good and an excellent end to the meal.

Thanksgiving dinner!

So to all my American friends, if you are thinking of doing turkey on US Thanksgiving in November, I strongly recommend you do Mad Max’s recipe which he specifically says can be done in the oven if you don’t want to, or don’t have a BBQ/smoker.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

The Flank Steak Repeater

Last weekend we had our friends Deb and Dave over for dinner and since they looked after our cats while we were away this summer (and live nowhere close to our house) I wanted to prepare something really special for them as a thank you dinner.  After much thought, I decided to do a tasting style dinner on a variant of a surf and turf, Canadian themed. 

So here was the planned menu for the night:

Canadian Surf and Turf à la Casa Manuel

First Course

Wild Pacific Coho Salmon, planked on maple with a maple Dijon glaze, accompanied with some local greens
Wine Pairing – 2010 Villa Canlungo Pinot Grigio 

Second Course

Marinated Alberta AAA Flank Steak served with mashed PEI potatoes
Wine Pairing – 2008 Ringbolt Cabernet Sauvignon 

Dessert

Grilled Bananas with a honey rum glaze and vanilla ice cream
Wine Pairing – 2007 Jackson Triggs Cabernet Franc Ice Wine 

That was the plan, but we had to make a few variations on game day as I’d planned on grilling some asparagus for the “local greens” portion of the first course but the local grocery store was out.   Thankfully Kelly jumped into action and prepared some wilted spinach thing.  It was ok. ;)  As well, everyone was out of maple planks (being so late in BBQ season) so I had to revert to cedar, and bought about a dozen planks to get me through the winter.  I ended up doing a repeat of my earlier salmon dinner that I prepared when I was in the dog house, if you’re curious of the recipe.  

I chose the Pinot Grigio as I read it goes well with seafood, but mostly because the bottle had a wiener dog on the label.  I'd had it before and remembered it being tasty so I figured it would be good!!  I was not disappointed.

For the flank steak portion, I used a marinade suggested by my friend Shawn which proved to be amazing.  The recipe suggested a 6 hour time in the marinade, but I opted for 2 days!  It was incredibly flavourful and I’d recommend this marinade to anyone.  We didn’t have any red wine vinegar so I just used white wine vinegar and it worked fine.  Now as for those “PEI Potatoes”, turns out the grocery store had Ontario potatoes, which makes sense considering that’s where we live, so we had to settle for those.  I apologized profusely to Deb and Dave.

The wine I chose wasn’t necessarily recommended by anyone as a perfect pairing, I just really love that wine and everyone else seemed to like the pairing with the beef so, yeah me. 

Slice in half, grill flesh down for 3mins then flip and coat with honey/rum/cinnamon glaze

Now, here’s where things got really interesting, the grilled banana dessert.  Ever since I got my Big Green Egg, this was the dessert I’d dreamed of trying. It just didn’t seem to me that the bananas would hold their formation with the heat so I was skeptical but they did indeed.  The recipe called for everyone to get a full banana but since we’d already had two courses, I figured I’d go easy and just give everyone a half.  I should not have mentioned this as Kelly got mad at me wishing there was more.  BUT then I pulled the ice wine out and it was amazing and a wonderful finish to the meal.  

The evening was pretty awesome and all was good despite our cat Peanut knocking over Dave’s wine, which of course then caused Deb to be startled and spilled her wine.  Kind of a domino wine crisis, but all worked out though I think it may have cost Deb a sweater.

So let’s fast forward to this weekend.  We had our friend Kathleen visiting from Boston spending the night at our place and she desperately wanted to experience all that the BBQ has to offer.  Since I knew she loved beef as we’d just been to her wedding a month earlier where they served roast beef, I decided to do a repeat of last week’s flank steak recipe.  We mixed it up a wee bit by making it the full course and had grilled potatoes and I found my elusive asparagus!  Kathleen was thrilled as you can see from her smiling face.  

We also repeated the grilled bananas for Kathleen but this time, due to Kelly’s protest last time, I made sure everyone got a full banana. Thankfully, Peanut did not spill any wine last night, though she did try and drink from Kathleen’s water after dinner.  I don’t think Kathleen minded though. ;)

Next week, I will do a turkey on the Egg for Canadian Thanksgiving.  So for all you Americans, I’ll be sure to post a step by step of what I did, and what I learned, since this will be my first turkey attempt ever, Egg or not.