What better way to celebrate my birthday and the holiday season than with a turkey dinner for my friends. How about a bacon wrapped turkey? Yeah, I thought you’d want to come.
“This is absurd.”
That’s all I could think as I pulled bacon strip after bacon strip after bacon strip (epic meal time anyone?) outof the pack and wove it around an 18 lb turkey. What the hell was I thinking? A bacon wrapped turkey stuffed with bacon, sausage, apple stuffing. For dessert ,a bacon cheesecake. Yah, I said it. Bacon cheesecake. Sounds gross but it was so good it was stupid. Seriously, you gotta try it one day.
Bacon Wrapped Turkey
18 lb turkey
2.5 packs of bacon
Tooth picks
Bacon Sausage Apple Stuffing
~ This is what I used for an 18 lb turkey. Use less of each ingredient if you have a smaller bird. Ifyour family is anything like mine, the stuffing goes first so making extra isalways a good choice.
4 apples, diced
2 onions, diced
½ head of garlic, minced
1 pack of pork sausages,out of casing
4 strips of bacon, diced
Sage, thyme and oregano
Salt and pepper
1/3 loaf of French bread,torn into small pieces
In a large pot, cook the bacon on medium. When crispy, add the onions, garlic, apples and sausage. Cookuntil the onions are soft and add the herbs. You can add any kind of herbs and spices that you like. When the sausage is cooked and the apples are soft mix itwith the torn bread pieces. Let cool and stuff the turkey. Any extra you cancook covered in a deep baking dish.
Stuff n wrap the bitch.
Stuff the turkey withthe cooled stuffing. Now this is the part that just gets silly. Weave the bacon so that it covers the turkey. Use the tooth picks to secure it to the bird.Place the turkey monstrosity in a large deep roasting pan. I tented mine so that the bacon wouldn’t splatter all over the place. Roast at 325 degrees F forabout 6 hours. Check it about every hour or so to baste the turkey with the drippings (you can remove some drippings as you go as there will be a lot offat in the pan). For the last 2 hours put cut up root vegetables into the pan around the turkey.
Check out http://www.butterball.com/tips-how-tos/tips/calculators-and-conversionsfor calculators on how big of a turkey to get and how long to cook it. I added1 hour to account for the bacon and it turned out perfect.
BaconCheese cake
I followed this recipe from Alton Brown for the cheesecake. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/sour-cream-cheesecake-recipe/index.html
To make candied bacon:
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Coat the bacon with brown sugar and bake at 350 degrees F forabout 20 minutes. Check on it though, my oven is old and may not be soaccurate. When it’s cool chop it up into small bits.
I cooled the cheesecake over nightand the next day sprinkled the candied bacon (I know it sounds so wrong) overthe cheesecake and drizzled with pure maple syrup.
Special thanks to our good friends Christine and Dave for letting me use your oven to pull this off. You guys rock!