Luke's Big Green Egg Thanksgiving

November 30, 2015 1 Comment

Lukes vertical turkeyEgg SOS! So I have been bragging to my parents for the past 4 months that I own an XL Big Green Egg and how delicious the food is off the Egg. My parents drove down from CT and were anxiously waiting for me to cook something for them on the Egg. I had high hopes. My best Egg cooking is wings, and I crush those. Wings were unavailable, as I was on a no bird diet until Thanksgiving. So we cooked baked potatoes and a Sirloin Tip Roast. I have to admit, I didn't do it right. I got the Egg to 400 degrees for the potatoes for an early cook, then cooled it down to the 325 degree temperature that the meat recommended. The baked potatoes were awesome, but the roast wasn't fully cooked. I felt embarrassed. Trying to show my parents why the Egg is so awesome, I failed. There is a learning curve to Egg cooking. As an XL Egg owner I am still figuring it out.

But my Big Green effort to impress my parents was far from over. My wife and my mother challenged my father and I to see who could cook the better Thanksgiving turkey. The men would cook one on the Big Green Egg while the ladies opted for a traditionally stuffed turkey in the oven and let our taste buds and filled bellies be the victors. Both teams were given 10lb birds. Dinner time was set at 3:30.

My father was quite excited as he had never cooked on the Egg before, and was quite surprised at how his son was going to prepare the mens’ bird. So at about 11am I got to firing up the Egg. Desired cooking temp of 325 degrees. We were cooking the turkey vertically, so I had purchased the Sittin’ Turkey Ceramic Roaster at Leisure Depot before I left for the holiday. Inside the Ceramic Roaster, we emptied one bottle of hard cider, along with a bit of regular cider, and 1 stick of butter. We also injected the bird with a Cajun butter sauce. The final ingredient was coating the outside of the bird with BGE Whirly Bird rub. Yes, I had to help pick my father’s jaw up off the ground.

Turkey platter

With the Egg at 325 we put the turkey on at 11:30 am. The ladies, as usual, took their sweet time in preparing their classic rendition of a southern stuffed turkey with dressing and put their bird in the oven at 12:30. With the birds cooking, we took the kids to a turkey hunt (similar to an Easter Egg hunt) and watched the football games as we prepped the rest of our delicious feast.  About 2.5 hours later the mens’ bird was looking rather good and so we checked the temp, and the thermometer read 170 degrees. Perfect! Just one problem, we were an hour and a half early! But in the spirit of competition we were forced to wait until dinner time before we could determine a winner. Both turkeys turned out to be delicious and the final verdict was that the white meat from the Egg turkey was better than the oven cooked bird, while the dark meat from the oven cooked bird proved better than that off the Egg turkey. The real winners in all this were all of us. We had a wonderful day spending time together, and creating some new family memories that will last a lifetime. Happy Thanksgiving indeed!
 





1 Response

Frances Boyd
Frances Boyd

December 01, 2015

This entry is very heartfelt and ever so appropriate for a Thanksgiving reflection.

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