Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Vertical Roasted Turkey on the Big Green Egg

In preparation for cooking a turkey at Christmas for the family, I wanted to do a trial run of a vertical roasted turkey on the Big Green Egg. Turns out Turkey's were on sale at Byerly's. For an extra 20 cents a pound you could get it pre-brined, so I went that route to make things simpler.

We bought a 14.75 lb turkey pre brined.

For the set-up I bought a Vertical Turkey Roaster similar to the one linked on this page. To keep the mess down as well as keep the turkey from coming into direct contact with the egg I used the 3 legs that came with the egg, put a cake pan on top of it and placed the roaster in the cake plate as show in the picture.


For flavoring: Since the turkey was already brined I wanted to stay low on the added salt. So for a rub, I blended butter, rosemary and targon in the food processor. Once mixed together I carefully used my hand to separate the skin from the turkey and rubbed in the seasoned butter mixture. I also spread what I had left of the butter mixture and covered the outside of the turkey in it. Placed the turkey on the roaster and we were good to go.

I had just recently bought a bag of wicked good charcoal that is known for having a very neutral flavor allowing lighter wood smoke to be added. Fired the egg up to 325, put a couple of chunks of apple wood on the coals. I then used the plate setter leg up, then placed the roaster, cake plate combo directly on top.

The turkey took approx 2.5 hours to reach an internal temperature of 165.



Took the turkey off, let it rest for 20 minutes and it was ready to be carved.

Overall the Turkey came out great.. We are going to do the exact same thing for christmas with the family.