Winter Trash Can Turkey

When turkeys were $0.40 a pound at Thanksgiving time, I bought two extras for the freezer.  A turkey is nice to have on hand to roast over the weekend, and then enjoy leftovers in turkey and dumplings, turkey and noodles, turkey pot pie... the possibilities are endless.

This year, I wish I would have bought many more turkeys for the freezer.  See this post for why I only had room for two.

We decided to try out a recipe that we did a couple times this summer - but on a 15 degree day instead of a lovely summer day.  We made a trash can turkey!  It was DELICIOUS.  Seriously.  You have to try it.  The flavor is wonderful, the meat is incredibly juicy, and there is even a hint of smokiness to the meat, which I love.  Not to mention that my 15 lb turkey cooked in less than 2 hours and there was no roasting pan to clean up!

Here are a few pictures of our culinary adventure today.  First I laid out some heavy duty foil and poured an 18 lb bag of briquettes onto it.  You light it the same way you would for grilling, and let them cook until they are gray.  While that was cooking, we pounded a 2X2 stake into the ground and covered it with foil.  I laid out other sheets of foil around the stake, to protect the turkey in case it happens to fall down the stake onto the ground (which has not happened to us yet).

In the house, I rubbed the turkey with canola oil, salt, pepper and smoked paprika.  Then, I hung the turkey on the stake. 

Then, we put the galvanized trash can (which has never been used for garbage) on top of the turkey.  The turkey is not touching the inside of the can.

Once the coals were ready, using a shovel, we put 1/2 of the coals on top of the can and 1/2 around the base.

Then, since we had never done this in the cold weather before, we put the trash can lid on top of the coals and folded up the foil around the base, so that any wind wouldn't burn up our coals too quickly.

One hour and 45 minutes later, we used the shovel to take the hot coals off the top of the can, and scraped away the coals at the base.  Then, we lifted the trash can and... viola!  A toasty, perfectly cooked turkey.  The heat from our experiment must have warmed the frozen ground, so the stake started to lean, but this didn't hurt anything.

Then, with oven mits on and foil against the bird, I took the turkey off the stake and plopped it in a pan.  Here it is on our picnic table!  We did go inside to eat it, of course.  It was SO wonderful and amazingly juicy.  Try it sometime!  And don't forget to throw the carcass into your crock pot for some fabulous turkey stock.  Mine is simmering right now...