When it comes to cooking a Thanksgiving turkey, everyone has their preference. Some choose to roast it in the oven, while the brave dunk it in a deep fryer. Personally, I will always smoke the bird. I use the ($630), because it does all the hard work for me.
I鈥檓 no foodie or ambitious chef. I鈥檓 just after a perfectly cooked, moist and tender turkey. I do the prep of brining, stuffing, and dry-rubbing; twist a knob on the Lil鈥 Tex Elite to set the temperature at 250 degrees; and start a timer on my phone. Call it cheating, I don鈥檛 care. I love cooking over an open flame and have even dabbled in smoking meats. But none of those methods produced anything even close to as tasty as what my Traeger delivers鈥攁nd with no real thought on my end. The hardest decision I need to make is which flavor of pellets to feed into the grill. (I鈥檓 leaning toward cherrywood this year.) The faithful Lil鈥 Tex Elite even automatically dispenses them into the fire to keep a nice steady cooking temperature.
Nothing鈥檚 wrong with using the oven in your kitchen, but I like to keep that space free for making stuffing, casseroles, and pies. And like all my favorite gear, the Traeger gets me outside. This year, we鈥檙e doing Thanksgiving at my Aunt Nancy鈥檚 house, so I鈥檓 going to load up the Lil鈥 Tex Elite, a turkey, my Nemo Stargazer chair, and a cooler full of Caldera鈥檚 Lawnmower Lager so I can post up in the backyard. I don鈥檛 care for jockeying with family members for the limited stove and oven space inside.
The Traeger鈥檚 steady low smoke, coupled with the brining, locks in the bird鈥檚 juices. (Even the day-after turkey sandwiches are amazingly tender.) And slow cooking renders the fat between the skin and meat in a way I haven鈥檛 been able to duplicate in an oven or on a grill. But my favorite part about my Traegered birds is their deliciously crispy, salty skin.
I鈥檝e heard deep-frying turkeys can yield good results, but the process and frankly terrify me. I also don鈥檛 particularly want the gear to deep-fry a 20-pound animal taking up space in my garage the other 364 days of the year. My Traeger Lil鈥 Tex Elite offers year-round grilling utility鈥攁nd I have no problem taking the credit for all of its hard work.