Smoking the holiday turkey on the grill is great theater — with delicious results

Tired of the same old bird for the holidays? Give your turkey an extreme makeover by taking the cooking – and the party – outside.

“A turkey smoke-roasted on the grill tastes better, thanks to the smoke flavor,” says Steve Raichlen, author of The Barbecue Bible and How to Grill and host of the PBS series “Primal Grill.” “It frees up your oven for other dishes. It gives you an excuse to spend the afternoon outdoors, gathered around the grill drinking beer or wine with your buddies.”

And get ready for the “oohs” and “aaahs” when you present a turkey smoked to perfection: “a gorgeous, plump, mahogany colored bird – the skin crackling crisp, the meat tender and juicy, the whole shebang perfumed with wood smoke,” says Raichlen.

“Guests are totally amazed because they would never guess that a whole turkey can be cooked outdoors,” says Dave DeWitt, editor of Fiery-Foods.com. It also nicely avoids the large amounts of oil used in frying turkeys.

Among the options for cooking a turkey outdoors are grilling, rotisserie and smoking in a ceramic smoker. DeWitt favors the rotisserie method “because it’s so versatile, you don’t need to worry about flipping the meat over, like you would with grilling, the heat is even and you don’t have to tend to it very much.”

DeWitt is not keen on cutting up the bird to cook on the grill, which he says takes away the beauty of a whole bird in the center of the table and may lead to burning the bird if you step away for too long to watch the game.

Raichlen favors cooking a whole turkey in a ceramic smoker or on the charcoal grill, which he says “is best for the reason that it’s easy to smoke on a charcoal grill and very difficult to smoke on a gas grill.” (See Raichlen’s recipe, below).