Turbacon

So what started off as a kind of joke amongst friends, turned into an epically delicious dinner: Turbacon.  That is basically a turkey wrapped in bacon.

Here is the original "inspiration"

popular image that has been making the rounds on the interwebz

 But then I got to thinking, why not go big?  This was the first time I've ever attempted cooking a turkey, and I figured I should go ahead and pull out all the stops.

So I bought a frozen turkey on this past Tuesday and left in the fridge to thaw for my Gospel community's big agape dinner that occurred today (Sunday).

I wanted to brine it for longer but when I pulled it out of the fridge yesterday it was still partially frozen, so at that point it got a nice cold water soak in sink for a few hours.

So while it was thawing, I got to work on weaving together some bacon for maximum bacon coverage of the bird.  My go to brand of bacon is Wright.  It's hands down my favorite bacon, and typically I'm a sucker for the Applewood, but I thought for being paired with turkey, the Hickory would be a better choice.  Basically I laid out about 18 or so strips of bacon to form a rectangle with a L:W ratio of 2:1.  Folding over every other strip and laying down more bacon, and pushing together to get a nice tight weave resulted in this:

two square feet of mouth-joy

I worked my bacon weave together on a nice big slab of freezer paper, then once done weaving it, sealed it by laying a piece of that cling wrap super seal stuff, rolled it up and put it back into the fridge.  I was now ready to put together a brine for the bird.

After much internet searching, I landed on what is probably the simplest of brine recipes for my turkey (because I like to follow the Ron Swanson school of thought when it comes to meat).  Dissolve 2/3 c salt and 2/3c sugar into 6c hot water, once dissolved add an additional 6c ice cold water.

I do not have a vessel large enough to submerge a turkey into, but I did however pick up a handy box of oven bags, so I put my turkey in one of those said oven bags, poured my brine into the cavity of the turkey, then worked with the bag until about two-thrids of the turkey was actually sitting the brine solution, breast side down.  I was running out of time, and figured the breast was what really needed the brine in the first place, so didn't bother with flipping the bag or anything like that.  I let this sit in the fridge overnight, soaking away.

Cooking day, had now arrived.  I preheated  the oven to 325 degrees.  Removed turkey from brine and gave it the lightest of pat downs with some paper towels.  Transferred turkey to new oven bag.  Stuffed it loosely with stuffing (stuffing that also featured the hickory smoked bacon).  Grabbed the roll of woven bacon from the fridge, unrolled and then pretty much just flopped it over top the turkey.  If I was a little more hardcore, I would have also spiraled some additional strips of bacon around the legs, but I'm no Martha Stewart. I figured the two square feet of half inch bacon covering 90% of the turkey would suffice.  Sealed up oven bag.  Cut slits in the bag as per the instructions on the box of the oven bags, wriggled a meat thermometer in and put it in the oven for 3.5 hours.  Maybe I should mention at some point I cooked a 13.5lb turkey, but I was looking to get the meat up to 180 degrees/the center of the stuffing to 165.

After 3.5 hours, I trimmed most of the oven bag away to let the turkey roast the last hour without as much concentrated moisture.  Here's what that looked like after I trimmed away the majority of the bag:

the seam where the two squares meet are pulling apart a bit, but bacon coverage is still very good 

As mentioned, the turkey roasted for another hour give or a take a few minutes.  Really I was just waiting to get a good temperature reading in several spots to know that everything had been cooked through.

Pulled it out of the oven and tented some tin foil over it mostly because it needed to be transported, but also because all meats need a resting a period between being pulled from their heat source and carving, and I didn't want it to cool down too much.

And here is what it looked like right before it was carved up for the serving platter:

your mouth is watering, isn't it?

Overall, I'd say this was a pretty darn successful first attempt at making a turkey (I did apparently neglect to remove a bag containing the offal of the turkey from the neck cavity, but that's a common rookie mistake right?).  The meat came out very moist and had some nice smokey undertones to it.  I am also now no longer intimidated by the prospect of cooking a turkey.  Multitasking a whole Thanksgiving meal is still probably out my reach, but at least I know I can pull out this show stopper.