Last Sunday I’ve already celebrated this year’s Thanksgiving. Even though being an untypical festivity for Germany, I started a couple of years ago to organize a Thanksgiving dinner to celebrate with friends a special day where we will meet for good food and great wine and to share what we are thankful for. Needless to say that I will prepare the whole dinner myself. I think that requires good organization skills, speaking of only four stoves and to have the dinner ready in time for 12-15 people and coping with unforeseen events (unforseen this year was e.g. that I spilled boiling water on my face which knocked me out for some time – but don’t worry, it wasn’t so bad and I recovered).  The dinner usually consists of US Thanksgiving classics and this year’s dinner included a starter soup, the Turkey, six side dishes, two sauces and a pie – and I am going to share all recipes with you in the following posts.

Today it is not really a recipe that I am going to share, but it’s the star of the evening: The TURKEY

I have prepared the bird in our oven for some years, which I didn’t like due to the mess that had to be cleaned up afterwards and the smell it left for the following Christmas Cookie season. So last year a friend offered me to help and took the challenge of doing it BBQ style with his charcoal grill. It works: Last and this year it turned out to be the best turkey ever. Because my oven made the meat dry and with the BBQ the meat turns out to be so juicy and tender. Believe me, you never want to eat anything else again except BBQ Turkey!

The trick is to put a plate with water on the lower part and to place the bird on another upper part plate with vegetables (carrots, celery and onions), herbs (thyme and rosemary) and a chicken broth. These ingredients will be used for the Gravy later. A few times we will spread the butter with spices (chili, cumin, paprika/pepper etc.) on the turkey. It takes around 3-3 1/2 hours for a 16 pound turkey – actually same time as in the oven.

If you are living in Munich and would like to know where to get a turkey – I order it at Frischeparadies   http://frischeparadies.de/frischeparadies-maerkte/muenchen.html

…and just in case you were wondering: This year I had to move the festivities forward due to colliding appointments.