You know that you walk the line between normal and abnormal when you tell your kids you are cooking their Thanksgiving turkey in a garbage can and their response is “wow”. Actually, this was one of the best turkey’s I have ever had.
We started by soaking the thawed turkey for 24 hours in a salt brine.
Then, Mr. OverKill started the “process” by burning out a NEW garbage can.
You have to burn it out because it is galvanized . If you don’t the fumes will make you sick.
Then, living up to his name, Mr. OK used a torch to heat the coals.
I think you are supposed to actually make a fire and get the hot coals that way, but whatever…it worked..
So, then we put a big roasting pan on the ground to catch any drippings or meat that might fall off, and we put the stake in the ground to hold the turkey.
We lined the whole thing with foil just to be safe…
Nice, custom built Mr. OK stake…what a guy!
Then, we added the turkey…
Tootle Bug watched us put the turkey on the stake and the whole time she is saying, “Ouch, that’s gotta hurt!”
If we had some string we would have tied the wings up, but we didn’t, so…
over the whole stake/turkey combination we put the burned out garbage can.
Then, Mr. OK piled the hot coals on top of the garbage can.
He also piled them around the base of the trash can…. but I didn’t get any pictures of that, sorry!
Then, we came inside to wait, both thinking, this is going to take a while….
Then, I asked Mr. OK if he knew how long it would take to cook. He said I think about 3-4 hours, but you know what let’s look it up online. Hmm.. the first website said for a 14lb turkey it should take about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Hmmm..let’s look at another, 14 lb turkey 1 and a half hours hmmm… maybe not so long as we thought…. Sure enough 1 and a half hours later this was sitting on my kitchen counter…
Yum-O, we will definitely be doing this again, SO good.
Mmmmm, tryptophan….