Essay: Who's the turkey here?

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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"The turkey will be ready by five, honey!"
Perhaps it was the cold weather. Perhaps I didn't replenish the charcoal sufficiently. Perhaps there were errors in my extrapolation of cooking time from a quarter-pound hamburger to a 20-pound turkey. Whatever, the great winged beast refused to cook despite the fact it caught fire on several occasions.

To make matters worse, the more my relatives drank, the less inhibited they became in pointing deriding fingers at my now openly shivering body on the porch.

I had a meat thermometer at standby. Had I done some planning, I might have known that the barbecue lid would not close when the thermometer was in place. I was reduced to repeatedly cutting into the bird, desperately searching for "clear juices" to gush forth. Sadly, this never happened.

The juice remained pink until, by late in the day, I had made so many incisions that NO juice came forth. Uh oh! It was Sahara dry!

The holiday turkey's fate
It was very dark and very cold by the time the cooking process mercifully ended and the platter of what could best be described as "remains" was placed before the guests. The wings had been reduced to charcoal and the lower portions of the bird were essentially fossilized. The white meat transformed to saw dust.

It was not a total loss, though. Anticipating the worst, my wife had quietly placed a ham in the oven some time earlier. And despite the shriveled remains of a once proud bird, the dressing somehow emerged in edible form. In all, it wasn't a half bad meal.

The silver lining? As long as the in-laws could draw breath, we were not asked — no, not allowed — to cook Christmas dinner again. It's an ill wind, as they say...

Merry Christmas and may your turkey be moist and delicious!

Want to do it up right? Homemakers shows you to grill turkey to perfection in a Best-Tested recipe for Grilled Cranberry Glazed Turkey.

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