Turkey in a Bucket

My wife told me years ago about this process of cooking a turkey called 'turkey in a bucket'. You take an ungalvanized, bucket which are not easy to find, and you use that to cook the turkey. Make sure you ‘burn out the bucket’ before you use it for the first time. Just put it in a bonfire for about an hour and a half.

Here's how it works. You take a Hickory Stick and pound that into the ground. You surround the Hickory Stick with tin foil. Then you take a 14 to 15 lb turkey and sit it on the stick, so basically impale the turkey with the stick. It must be a fresh turkey. Then you light one lb of charcoal for every pound of turkey. You let the charcoal get nice and hot then you put the ungalvanized bucket over the turkey and you pack the hot charcoals up against the side of the bucket and you cover the top of the bucket with charcoal. Set a timer for an hour and 45 minutes and relax.

When your timer goes off, sweep the charcoal off the top of the bucket and from around the outside of the bucket. Then you will need vice grips or pliers to take the hot ungalvanized bucket off from over the turkey. Then get some oven mitts wrapped in tin foil and take the turkey off the stick. It will be some of the juiciest turkey you've ever had in your life. We've done it four or five times already. I can vouch for how great the turkey turns out. The skin is nice and crunchy and the meat is moist. And the best part is it doesn’t take as long as it would in an oven to cook it, and you don’t have to mess with a fryer or hot oil. Check out the pictures below.