Before tossing the bird on the grill, I rinsed it off to make sure I removed any extra salt that was still linguring. Next I tied up the legs and wings closer to the breast meat. This prevents the legs and wings from over cooking and burning. In addition, I sprinkled plenty of pepper on both sides of the bird.When grilling a turkey, you want to basically cook it a little longer than you would in an oven. My bird was 12lbs, which is pretty much maximum weight for grilling a bird on a Weber and the average time it would need in an oven would be about 3.25 hours at 350 degrees. On the Weber it was done in about 4 hours. To take the guess work out of grilling the turkey I inserted one of those digital thermometers. You want to make the thermometer probe is in the thickest part of the bird. You will know the turkey is fully cooked when the temperature reads at least 175 degrees or so.
If you manage your vents properly you should be able to cook a turkey this size with only two sleeves of coals. After about 2 hours I rotated the bird 180 degrees and added the second sleeve of coals. Throughout most of the cooking time I kept the temperature at around 350 degrees. You can also see from the picture above that I placed a drip pan below the bird to collect the drippings with which I later created a gravy with.
With some sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, sausage stuffing, green beans, corn bread, and cranberry sauce...all homemade...it was a hell of a feast.For other posts about grilled turkeys click here
Get some of those huge 2 gallon zip top bags and place the turkey inside. Add the brine to the bag along with enough water to cover the entire bird. My 12 lb turkey just barely fit into this bag. To make sure I don't have a fridge disaster, I then put the bag into a plastic bowl. Then I placed the whole setup into a garbage bag before placing it into the fridge. 
After the market I stopped off at Jake's for a few beers before heading on to West Chester University to watch the Golden Rams clean up the Shippensburg's Raiders 25-7. It was the first time the BBQB had been to a WCU football game and he was very impressed.
With a nice hot dog to go along with the game, my day was complete.
Vallodolid is a beautiful old colonial city situated smack dab in the middle of the jungle. When I arrived I found a hotel, checked out a couple of the churches, snapped a few pictures and then wet off in search of food. Whenever I travel like this I always bring along the relevant Lonely Planet book. It has everything you need to get around, find accomodations, and eat. Lonely Planet had me go to the outdoor food court of sorts and as always did not let me down.
Using the 3.5 words of Spanish that I know I was able to dial up these tastey meals. I don't remember exactly what they called these pork dishes but they were incredibly flavorful and came with nice sides of refried beans, rice and avocado slices. That, a spicy hot chili sauce and a stack of corn tortillas made for one of the best meals I had in Mexico.
The next step is to assemble the fixins. I like chopped red onion, cilantro (or parsely), chopped tomato and of course gaucomole. Here's my basics for making guacomole:
Once butterflied, the chicken is ready for the dry rub. The dry rub I use for chicken like is similar to my 
Unlike most chicken dishes that I cook on my grill, you will want to do this one over direct heat. You will also need a caste iron frying pan, a few bricks, and some aluminum foil. The idea is that the weight of the bricks presses the chicken down against the heat. The net affect is that the chicken cooks quickly, remains moist, and ends up with a nice crisp but does not burn. All in all, a big this size (6-7 lbs) takes about 25 minutes on each side. Be a little careful of flare ups because of the chicken dripping on to the coals. You want to keep the heat up but the flames down.
I carved up the bird and served it with some stir fried broccoli rabe with a nice mushroom sauce poured on top. When stir frying broccoli rabe be sure to add some sugar to reduce the bitterness. As for the mushroom sauce, simply melt some butter and some diced mushrooms in a pan, add cream, a bit of corn starch and voila.
Once I received the dogs he directed me over to their fixin's bar where I proceeded to dress my dogs with mustard and mounds of relish and raw onions. At this point I was getting pretty excited. Then I took my first bite...holy sh*t those were some good hot dogs. I'm not sure if they were natural casing or not (Jimmy John's please feel free to let me know if they were) but they had a fantastic snap to them when I bit in. Granted these were only hot dogs but they were really really great ones. I plan on checking out their restaurant soon.
Once I landed I rented a car and immediately headed south towards Tulum. The trip took less than 2 hours and the roads were excellent. The only hotel reservation I made ahead of time was for a cool little cabana on the beach (Hotel Zahra $30). It was already dark by the time I arrived in Tulum so once I got my cabana my first goal was to find some food. Well, actually the first thing I did was work down a chilada. A chilada is beer with plenty of fresh squeezed lime juice in a salt rimmed glass.
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