I cooked for my family this Thanksgiving and I did a trial
run using a whole turkey breast, rather than a whole turkey, to try out this
recipe. I found the original recipe here: Roasted
Turkey with Thyme, Rosemary, Fennel, and Lemon. I modified the recipe to
use my gas grill and made a fennel oil paste to coat the outside of the turkey.
When I used a whole turkey, I doubled the marinade (and used a bigger pot!) to
fully submerse the turkey. The marinade can be omitted, since it uses a couple
bottles of wine, or the turkey can be brined. I decided on the marinade since I
wanted to use up some of the wine I had around the house. After cooking was
complete, my whole turkey took flight when it slid in the pan and dropped to
floor once I got it back into the house (the turkey was still edible, but the
pan vegetables were not). A picture of the mangled bird is included, so be
careful when transporting your cooked bird.
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| Dropped Whole Turkey |
The whole fennel seeds are toasted in a pan before adding
olive oil to make a fennel flavored oil. The fennel oil mixture needs to cool
before placing it into the food processor, together with the other spices to
make a paste. The resulting paste will have large pieces of fennel seeds and
rosemary.
A gas grill with a thermometer is necessary for grill
smoking a whole turkey. Maintaining a constant temperature of 350⁰F (175⁰C) and previous experience with your gas grill
will determine the total cooking time for the turkey. I have found that 12
minutes per pound (450 g.) produces the right results (again, previous
experience determines total cooking time). So for a 6 lb. (2.7 kg.) turkey, the
total time is about 90 minutes. The 90 minute cooking time is greater than the
calculated time (which is 72 min.) because the grill needs time to come back up
to temperature after the turkey is rotated halfway through the cooking time.
The size of your gas grill also matters since that will
determine how many burners can be kept on for indirect cooking, which
influences the ability to maintain a constant temperature. My gas grill is
large enough to keep both end burners on during cooking, so I’m able to center
the roasting pan with the turkey between two lit burners. For smaller gas
grills, only one end can usually be kept lit for indirect cooking once the
roasting pan with the turkey is placed on the grate, which might necessitate an
increased cooking time. Regardless, the roasting pan should be rotated 180⁰ half way through the cooking
time to even out any hot spots in your gas grill.
The turkey should rest for 30 minutes or more before carving,
so don’t carve the turkey immediately after coming out of the grill since all
the juices will not remain in the turkey meat and will just drain onto the
cutting board. Carving is relatively simple: first remove the breast meat from
the bone, and then slice each breast against the grain.
Enjoy!