Healthy Grilling Today

Healthy Grilling - Recipes

Welcome to Healthy (and tasty) Grilling.

Featured Recipe of the Week: Tony's Turkey
Roast Turkey on the Grill - Two Ways Video

We are always running out of oven or burner space when entertaining a crowd at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Happy New Year, Hanukah, Easter and Super Bowl Sunday. Meanwhile our gas grill sits forlornly on the deck, our most useful and user friendly cooking appliance is in hibernation when we need it the most because it seems to be the wrong season for grilling. WRONG. These are occasions when even a kitchen equipped with a double oven is a challenge for meal timing and cooking space. Your grill to the rescue.

My friend Tony Delio is not only a master outboard motor mechanic, an expert bow and arrow deer slayer, a horse racing enthusiast and an opera buff. He is a most creative grilling chef. He generously taught me how to roast turkey on the grill with no special equipment.

Ingredients
10-12 lb turkey
2 or 3 slices of bacon
Generous amounts of fresh rosemary, thyme and fresh squeezed lemon juice
Pepper and paprika
Olive oil
Aromatic wood chips, soaked for at least an hour
Aluminum disposable pan, about the length and width of the turkey
Aluminum foil to wrap the wood chunks

Directions
Dry the turkey inside and out. Generously coat skin with olive oil and lemon juice. Inside the cavity put a couple of bacon slices, crushed lemons and plenty of herbs. Sprinkle the outside of the bird with equal amounts of pepper and paprika, enough to see the turkey is covered with the spices

Wrap soaked wood chips in foil with holes in it. Fill pan with water and place it under the grates beneath where the turkey will roast and set the foil wrapped wood chips on the burners. Heat the grill to get the water steaming and the wood chips smoking.

Turn heat down to 200-220F and maintain this temperature throughout the roasting

Place the turkey on the grill above the water bath. Close cover and roast about five hours.

Replace wood as necessary and refill water bath as it evaporates. Use a thermometer. When breast is about 165F and dark meat reaches about 175-185F your turkey is done. Allow turkey to rest for half an hour before slicing. This low and slow cooking, along with the fragrant wood smoke, produces a turkey both tasty and succulent. You'll never roast turkey any other way again.