If it works for burgers, it must work for turkey, too
At the risk of seeming over-confident, I have to say that I used to consider myself an expert at the barbecue; an artist, even.
And I'm not talking about those fancy gas contraptions with the rotisserie and the side burners. I'm talking about the old kettle jobs that eat up charcoal briquettes (once you manage to light them, that is). The ones that require you to stand close by with a pail of water so that at precisely the right moment, you could extinguish the fat-fuelled flames which inevitably flare up and threaten to turn your quarter pounders into loonie-sized black lumps.
No doubt it was the cockiness born of this expertise that led my twisted mind to rationalize that what's good for hamburgers must be better for turkey.
Grilling turkey seemed like a good idea at the time
And so it was on that Christmas long ago, our first Christmas in our first house, I announced that I would do the honours. Not only would I cook the turkey, I would cook it on our front porch, on the barbecue.
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at my heels...
My wife was incredulous. The assembled relatives — slightly to moderately hung over from the previous evening's Christmas Eve festivities — were impolitely open in suggesting I was crazy.
In Christmases past, we had Christmas dinner at either my parents or my wife's parent's place so neither of us had ever cooked a turkey in an oven, let alone a barbecue.
But how hard could it be?
I stood my ground and, despite the negative forces aligned against me, quite proudly placed the large, fully stuffed bird over the hot coals sometime around noon. In my mind's eye, I pictured bringing a beautifully done, golden-brown creation to that table of disbelievers amidst choruses of "Ooh!" and "Ahh!"
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