Cooking a turkey over a fire
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Any ideas on how to cook a turkey over a campfire? Nothing that takes too much maintenance. |
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Sounds like a dirtbag thanksgiving to me! |
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get a big dutch oven. You can cook anything with a campfire and a dutch oven. |
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Spatchcock. Dutch oven |
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get you a honnold shagginwagon with the propane & turkey smoker option |
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bbq.about.com/od/barbecuehe…
Or just go to the creek and hand somebody your turkey |
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Open fire cooking for a bird any larger then a quail is a terrible way to go about this. The only way to turn out an actually fully cooked bird without completely charring the outside 2 inches of flesh would be a very slow spit roasting technique. I am assuming you do not have a motor suited for rigging up an automatic spit turner and you will definitely not want to turn by hand for the several hours it will take to cook like this. |
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^sounds legit, and his name is Chef, so you know you can trust him.^ |
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Spent the last 10 thanksgivings at Buttermilks in Bishop Ca. Have a lot of practice. The best advice I can give you is to find a place that can make a turkey for you or make it ahead of time "Manor Market". Than when camping just have to heat up the carved up bird over the fire. All the rest of the fixens are fairly easy to pull off. |
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I've cooked a wild turkey in a fire pit before. It is a pretty basic process. Build a HUGE fire, next to it dig a hole (ours was 5' deep by 4' around), line bottom and the sides with rocks that will not explode, prep bird, shovel hot coals into pit, place bird, fill pit with more coals, cover the pit with dirt. We dug our bird out about 5.5-6hrs later and feasted like only starving climbers can. |
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exploding river rocks sounds interesting for thankgiving day epics |
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The pit mentioned is the best. I wouldn't fully discount the dutch oven though. |
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Nick_Cov wrote:Any ideas on how to cook a turkey over a campfire? Nothing that takes too much maintenance.Under is the word you're looking for here. Dig a pit, build a good sized fire in the pit, when it's down to coals, put large rocks on the coals, place the bird on the rocks (more about prepping the bird below), then more rocks around and smaller rocks on top of the bird. If available a sheet of metal (corrugated roofing works), or dirt if metal not available, then keep a fire going on top for a few hours more. Ideally, you will have a probe thermometer in the bird to know when it's done, but 4-6 hours depending on the bird should work well. the key here is you want enough rocks and coals in the bottom of the pit to provide most of the heat for your oven, the rocks on top, and the fire on top keep it from cooling down, and provide a little additional heat. Prep: a brined bird is best. Don't stuff it, but a few onions/garlic/limes/lemons inside are okay (not tightly packed). Wrap the bird well in heavy duty aluminum foil. In the old days, they would just use wet burlap, but if you want to use burlap, I'd still use the foil. |
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Or, cook turkey at home in an oven and then refreeze. Then all you are doing is heating up said delicious turkey at the campfire. We did that one Thanksgiving down in Mexico while caving. |
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I'll third the pit method. Or, just get a smoker that you can tend all day while resting and drinking beer. |
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walmart.com/ip/30-Quart-Pro…
I've done the deep fryer method at home, outdoors. Very simple and the components are reusable (campground size chili pot!) |
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I've beer can grilled a turkey on a small weber grill. It's a variation on beer can chicken and requires a big can (I used Fosters). Make a lid out of tin foil if it won't fit under the grill lid or you are doing it on a grate. Not sure how you'd do this over a campfire without some sort of grate though... It takes a long time, but delicious. |
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Make it at home, with no stuffing, wrap it up in about 10 layers of foil.... keep it cold in a ice chest. about one hour before you want to eat.... put it next to a burned down fire and toss some coals on it.... roll it over a few times. |
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pathetic story about cooking a turkey: |
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Last Thanksgiving we were out at the Maze Overlook in Canyonlands NP. No open fires or charcoal residue permitted. We bought a couple of drumsticks on there own, a foil turkey roasting pan and charcoal. Got the charcoal going good in the pan, wrapped the drumsticks in foil and roasted them over the coals. Came out good! Not the whole turkey but a suitable substitute. |
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Cut it up in pieces I say and do it like hunks of chicken. Or get coals going and your big old cast iron frying pan out with a load of oil to fry it up, piece by piece. Wrapped in foil, buried in coals, like roasting a pig might work well too. |