Friday, July 04, 2008

Friday Flashback: First Grilled Turkey!

All this talk about turkey during the last week or so reminded me that we have a picture of the first time I ever grilled a turkey on the Weber. At least I THINK it was the first time. The first time may have been a year earlier, but suffice it to say that it was ONE OF the first times I ever grilled a turkey on the Weber.

That's good enough, right?

These photos were taken by Mrs. TBF at Thanksgiving in 1989. Don't I look cool in my acid-washed jeans and cowboy boots? And how about the hood of Mrs. TBF's parents' 1979 Lincoln Continental. God, that thing was a boat! The hood must've been ten feet long!!

As you can see, we had a white Thanksgiving that year, and I remember freezing my butt off when I went outside to check on the coals. But cold be damned! Eleven minutes per pound for the turkey! Summer or winter...it makes no difference!

Like a Swiss...freakin'...watch!

Even though I had probably drooled onto the bird while I was carving it, AND that I was balding so fast at that point that each of us probably had some of my hair in every forkful, everybody raved about it. In fact, Mrs. TBF's dad said it was the best turkey he had ever had in his life.

You know what? I'm in the mood for more turkey. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law don't know it yet, but I'm really looking forward to the deep-fried turkey that they'll be making for us in a few weeks while we're in Chicago. Nudge, nudge...wink, wink!

Can't wait!

4 comments:

christina said...

Mmm...turkey. It never occured to me to throw one on the grill but we do whole chickens a lot and the come out fine.

And hey, I was already wearing acid washed jeans and cowboy boots in 1981. Long live the 80's!

Kirk said...

It's not just acid-washed jeans and cowboy boots...it's acid-washed jeans tucked into cowboy boots that really makes the outfit. You could probably still pull that look off at Barfusserplatz on a Saturday night if you had gel-spiked hair...

The Honourable Husband said...

@Kirk. Telling a bald guy how cool he might look with some kind of hair is in very poor taste. You're on our enemies list, now.

@Finnmeister. Hear, hear. Discovered this when living in Tokyo. One Christmas, bought the smallest-sized American turkey at the foreigner's supermarket, and discovered it wouldn't fit in my ultra-high-tech miniscule Japanese oven. Fired up the Weber and it was superb.

BBQ solves the big problem with turkeys. The dark meat (on the bottom) takes longer to cook than the white meat (that is, the breasts, on the top.) Cook it with a the heat source strong, coming from below, and bingo! Perfect. Plus, the smoky flavour of the charcoal--well, isn't smoked turkey a delicacy in its own right?

Now, your stuffing recipe?

The Big Finn said...

hb8 - When we were in Japan last year, I told Mrs. TBF that Japan didn't seem like an outdoor grilling culture to me. I didn't see even one BBQ on anybody's balcony. In fact, I wondered if one could even buy charcoal there.
The Weber book recommends not to stuff the turkey when it's bbq'd on the grill. Mrs. TBF makes some kind of cornbread stuffing in the oven, but I'm not sure what's in it. I'll have to look into it.