Trashcan Turkey

OK, even though we’re only a week into this blog, I’m going to have to deviate from Woods To Food and do a Food to Woods post. I have no choice, turkey season is a month away, and there are a lot of turkey recipes.

Four years ago I heard about trash can turkeys, and wanted to give one a try. The formula I was given was simple – a 20 pound turkey in a 20 gallon trash can with 20 pounds of charcoal cooks in two hours. Not so much science, as easy to remember round numbers.

So I got a 30 gallon trash can, a 17 pound bag of charcoal (times are hard), and a turkey that may have been somewhat smaller than 20 pounds. The location of our cookout was an island in the middle of the Missouri River, near Columbia. We invited many friends.

The cooking process was pretty straightforward, and you can find many detailed sites about it on the Internet, but basically you drive a stake in the ground (easy enough on a sandbar island) and put a turkey over it. I nailed a litte “T” on top of my stake so the turkey didn’t slip down. Fire up the charcoal in a pile (I used the trashcan lid), and once they are all burning well, put the trashcan upside down over the turkey, circle the base (actually the top of the trashcan) with a few coals, and put the remainder on top. You’ve just created a giant dutch oven.

The turkey is baked, it is sealed away from the charcoal, so don’t expect a smoky or barbeque flavor. But it does make a very good baked turkey.

The Missouri River has been high lately, so the last few years we’ve done the trashcan turkey at Mark Twain Lake in the state park campground. We’ve had three families of four there for the past three years in August, and the turkey provides a big dinner and ample leftovers.

So although trash can turkey isn’t a Woods To Food recipe, several of the recipes do call for cooked turkey, and that’s where my trashcan turkey leftovers come in.