Free Recipe Friday - BBQ your Thanksgiving Turkey

In honour of our Thanksgiving holiday on Monday, I thought I would share something that we do with our turkey that maybe some of you have never tried. We BBQ our Thanksgiving turkey. I think it was my mom and dad who started doing it years ago. Maybe it is because we are crazy canucks who like to BBQ all winter and we deem the turkey dinner a challenge. Probably though it was because as our families grew my mom could not fit the turkey in with all the potatoes, other yummy veggies and pies that are made for this special event. So since putting another oven in their house seemed too expensive they decided to BBQ the bird. Well, we all loved it and now our family has been cooking turkey's this way ever since. You might think that cooking a turkey on the BBQ would be hard but it is really a lot like roasting it in the oven. Prepare your turkey was you normally would if you were going to put it in your oven. We have a propane BBQ and use an indirect grilling method. We always use a fresh or thawed turkey that we have stuffed ourselves. Heat your gas BBQ on high until it reaches 400 degrees and then turn off one side of your BBQ. Place your turkey in a roasting pan and place your roasting pan on the side of your BBQ that is not turned on. This is the indirect grilling method. Your turkey will take 15-20 minutes per pound. We always check ours with a digital meat thermometer in several different spots just to be sure it is done. Baste your turkey as you would if it was in your oven. The other thing we do is we try to time it to take our turkey out a half hour before we want to carve it. We leave it in the roasting pan with the lid on and we cover it with blankets or towels to keep it warm. I think my mom always said that this allows all the juices to rest in the turkey. I have no idea what that means other than we get a juicy turkey when we do this! So hopefully I have helped to free up some space in your oven. Check back tomorrow and I will have another post about a great holiday craft that we did with our kids and our friends to get us thinking about being thankful! Have a Happy Thanksgiving weekend!