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Transporting a Cooked Turkey?

JMSetzler

JMSetzler

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I'm getting the chance to cook the family's Thanksgiving Turkey this year. The problem is that I need to cook it and have it ready to eat at 12:30pm. I'm going to have to cook it at my house and then haul it 20 miles to my parent's house for lunch. Timing is critical.

How long can I hold a cooked turkey before serving it? Can I foil it and hold it in a cooler like I would a Boston Butt?
 
I would have it ready at the time you need to leave. The 20 minute ride in the cooler will give it time to rest. If you have any bricks laying around, wrap them in foil, heat them in the oven or smoker and put the bricks in the cooler with the turkey. This will give you some extra heat if you don't eat as soon as you get there.
 
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Just as the Butt will stay warm (hot) in holding, so will the turkey.

I have never used the wrapped brick trick like Pyle's BBQ stated, but sounds like something that would extend the heat for travel.

Good luck and let us know how it works out for you..
 
Pyle's BBQ said:
I would have it ready at the time you need to leave. The 20 minute ride in the cooler will give it time to rest. If you have any bricks laying around, wrap them in foil and put the bricks in the cooler with the turkey. This will give you some extra heat if you don't eat as soon as you get there.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't a cool brick act as a heat sink and draw heat from the turkey? You may want to use a warm brick.
 
Let me complicate this further...I've got to drive about 2 hours to where my family lives. Wrapped in foil in a dry cooler still OK you think?
 
Allow for the fact that it will continue to cook in the cooler. Might be best to pull the turkey from the cooker at about 5-10 degrees lower to allow for this.
 
How about holding it in a deep foil pan covered in foil and wrapped in a blanket set in a cooler. It should still be hot up to 4 hours that way.
 
Preheat the cooler with very hot water (dump the water when the cooler is hot). I'd wrap the turkey in foil (loose tent) and keep it on a rack...or something else...so it's above the bottom of the cooler. Have your parent's oven preheated and put the bird in there when you arrive...if only for a bit. You'll be fine......
 
I've smoked a chicken, out of the UDS, into a pan, covered w/ foil wrapped in 2 towels.
Transportation 1/2 hour. waited on other parts of dinner for 15 minutes.
Unwrapped, cut up, placed on platter>table.
Hot chicken.
I think this should work w/turkey.
 
I've done that several times smoke it at the house wrap and cooler till I get to destination. Then slice and server always turns out fantastic!!
 
Take this for what it's worth but my Mom swears to it...

She says when she was growing up (you know the walking uphill both ways to school barefooted in the snow days) that my Grandma would cook the turkey, then my Grandpa would take it out of the oven and put a layer of foil on it. Once he had the foil down tight he would put 8 or 10 layers of newspaper around it, wrap all of that in a quilt and put it in the trunk. They all piled in the car and drove 4 hrs to my Great Grandmas. She swears to this day no Thanksgiving turkey comes close to as good as those were.

So I'm thinking, preheat an ice chest with hot water, wrap in foil and layer a slug of newspaper and you should be good for hours.
 
I'm cooking 2 turkeys for our annual Thanksgiving Pitch In next Wed at work and I live about 30 miles away.

I'm just planning on having them come off the heat just in time to put in pans, place pans in Cambro and get to work.

I'm using a Cambro because I have one. If you don't have a Cambro, use a cooler.

Either way, I'd preheat with HOT arse water ahead of time. The cooler and/or cambro will be nice and warm when the turkey goes in and the ride will only serve as a rest period.

I plan to carve at work. I just think carving ahead of time is asking for cold, dry turkey.
 
Cooked Turkey, cooler, 40 minute drive = no problem

I use to use foiled bricks that I heat in the oven to 250. I have since picked up a couple 2 1/2" thick hunks of aluminum that just fit the bottom of my cooler.
I wrap the bird with foil and put on a rack and in a pan. I put bath towels around to take up space.
Everything works out great. Have done tri tips, turkeys, chickens etc this way.

I found the aluminum at a local recycling yard.
 
4ever3 said:
Take this for what it's worth but my Mom swears to it...

She says when she was growing up (you know the walking uphill both ways to school barefooted in the snow days) that my Grandma would cook the turkey, then my Grandpa would take it out of the oven and put a layer of foil on it. Once he had the foil down tight he would put 8 or 10 layers of newspaper around it, wrap all of that in a quilt and put it in the trunk. They all piled in the car and drove 4 hrs to my Great Grandmas. She swears to this day no Thanksgiving turkey comes close to as good as those were.

So I'm thinking, preheat an ice chest with hot water, wrap in foil and layer a slug of newspaper and you should be good for hours.
Click to expand...

Newspaper is a great insulator. When my uncle renovated the kitchen in his house where my mother was born, he found newspapers in the walls from the 1930s. That was the insulation.

I believe your mother learned a thing or two walking all that way uphill. :biggrin1:
 
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