I almost fouled up the BIRD- Turkey Half Cocked!

This post falls under the category of telling on ones self! Yesterday I was a little too cocky taking the bird to the grill and made a few mistakes, a not so quick recovery and heard plenty of ribbing from the clan.

First I forgot to check the gas tank and of course it ran dry sometime during the first hour. Swapping it out would not be that big a deal if my igniter still worked, it doesn’t so I have to remove a half of the grate, one of the flavorizer bars to manually light my gas grill. Not that big a deal except when the grill is hot, and I managed to re-light the grill only losing a few hairs on my hand.

We turned the bird upright after an hour and it was looking good. Two more hours and several bastings had me cocky again and testing the thigh temp- off it came for a 40 minute rest. We were very pleased by the juices and my bright idea of mashing up the veggies we had under the bird to add to the gravy. Add a little OXO and man the gravy was on the money.

Time to carve and I was ready, I even boned up re-watching helpful videos. I began by removing the legs. The first came away nicely only to reveal a too red inner core- RUT RO! The bird was NOT done. Now what? I had already begun dismembering and decided to keep going. Remove the legs and wings and cut out the breast meat and re-start the grill- for the 3rd time…

I put the GrillGrates on the grill and had to let everything warm back up before this ‘finishing touch’. I finally put the bird parts back on the grill for another 20 minutes. Needless to say I was now worried I had over cooked and dried it out. If I did, the family was easy on me. We enjoyed our meal an hour past schedule which does help elongate cocktail hour and improves hunger. Today’s left overs were fabulous and I figured it was appropriate to tell on myself. The GrillGrates did a super job on my half cocked ( err half cooked) bird!