Christmas Turkey:
Friends, family and my work colleagues find this highly amusing but for the 2nd year in a row I cooked our Christmas turkey on the BBQ rotisserie and it was amazing!
For years I haven’t really enjoyed Turkey at Christmas, it’s usually dry and not very tasty. This is even after spending out big bucks on free range or organic turkeys.
Last year we decided to give Turkey one final chance but we would cook it on the BBQ rotisserie after having enjoyed so many great rotisserie chickens leading up to Christmas. It had the added benefit of releasing space in the oven to cook everything else!
As with last year, I bought the Turkey from Turner and George – it was a free range, dry plucked bird from http://herbfedpoultry.co.uk/ Great quality and you really notice the difference with dry plucked birds when you touch them as they are dry and the skin has a bit of resistance.
There is a lot of debate on the Internet about brining turkeys. I took the advice of Kenji and dry brined by pushing a salt and rosemary mix under the skin then leaving the turkey overnight to take the dry brine. Here is a link to Kenji’s article: http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/quick-and-dirty-guide-to-brining-turkey-chicken-thanksgiving.html
Our Turkey wasn’t a big one, only 5kg and from previous experience I expected it to take about 90 minutes on the rotisserie. As always with the rotisserie I set up the fuel baskets at the sides to cook indirectly and lobbed a few cherry chunks on.
After 30 minutes I added another couple of cherry chunks, repeated on the hour mark when I also checked the temperature (I was aiming for a shade over 70c in the breast and thighs). Once you get past the hour mark poultry can run away with itself temperature wise so it’s worth keep checking the temperature regularly to avoid it drying out. This one got to 72c, I took it off, covered it in foil and left it to rest for a bit. The great colour was purely achieved from the cherry chunks, no rub was used on the outside.
In future all our Christmas turkeys will be cooked on the rotisserie!