Good call. Works great In a pellet grill, too. It almost feels like cheating.
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Shhhhh don’t tell the family!
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Posole is also an excellent leftover turkey recipe. The breast behaves remarkably like pork shoulder.
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The main thing is that because the breast, which you want to hit about 150° F) and thighs (which are collagen-rich and need to be closer to 165°) are put into a position to cook more evenly than if the bird is “sitting” on the wings and thighs, usually below the rim of a dish where they’re not getting proper heat circulation. Since the breasts are thicker, they hit 150° around the same time the thighs hit 165° where in the classic style, the breast would get far too dry before the thighs come up to temp. Of course, many people exacerbate this by actually stuffing the turkey, which is not only a bad idea for the meat, but dangerous as well because the juices that flow into it take even longer to get to a safe temp. Salmonella bread pudding, yuck!
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Alton Brown taught me of the perils of stuffing turkeys long ago. I grew up with stuffed turkeys, with no significant incidences of food poisoning that I can remember, but that’s probably because, in order to get the stuffing up to temp, the breast meat was cooked to sawdust stage. Deep-frying, similar to spatchcocking, seems to let all parts of the bird cook properly. The dark meat reaches a higher temp, because of its smaller size compared to the breast meat. As a dark meat lover, I have no complaints.
As another alternative, may I offer Adam Ragusea’s latest. Way more effort than simple spatchcocking, but I can’t argue with what that demi looks like. I’m drooling over here.
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