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Fauquier Boy Scouts learn primitive cooking method for delicious turkey
Dan Nellis, an assistant Scout Master with Fauquier-based Troop 600, taught campers how to make turkey in a hole. Labor intensive and time consuming, the process nets not only strong community bonds, but just about the best turkey you’ve ever tasted, Nellis said, adding that he learned the technique in the 1970s.
Nellis was so enamored of the process that he introduced it to his coworkers at Hemlock Overlook Center for Experiential Education in Fairfax County. “We started doing it in 1989 as a staff activity at Thanksgiving. We had our 20th annual event last year,” Nellis said.
And while the tasty turkey is worth the work and the wait, Nellis said the procedure is best done in large groups so that everyone can share in the workload. “It requires so much work that most people wouldn’t want to do it with their family. I like to explain the process as a community building exercise,” he said.
Nellis introduced the boys in Troop 600, including his sons, Brad, 14, and Ruslan, 11, to the idea last fall.
Here’s how it works: first you dig a hole, or holes, depending on the number of turkeys involved. These are big holes that ultimately serve as ovens. About three feet deep and three feet wide, the holes serve as a collecting point for coals that fall from a fire situated on long, heavy logs above the pit. The fire burns for hours, dropping embers into the hole and rising the temperature there, Nellis explained.
When the hole is hot enough ? a temperature that varies depending on the weight of the birds that are being cooked ? about half of the coals are removed and the foil-wrapped, seasoned turkeys are inserted in the embers. The turkeys are then covered with the aforementioned removed coals and then with dirt to keep the heat in, Nellis said, adding that it takes about a half an hour per one pound of turkey to cook the meat.
After the requisite time has passed, you dig out your dinner.
“You can dig like crazy until you see the clothes hanger and then you know to be careful,” Nellis said, explaining that a straightened coat hanger is wrapped around the turkey to keep the foil in place. Its hook end is left sticking up from the bird in the pit to mark the spot.
Unwrapping the bird is the fun part. “For the first two or three layers, the foil is really gritty and dirty. By the fourth and fifth layer, you start being able to smell how good it smells,” Nellis said.
He added, however, that the bird does not look like the lovely Thanksgiving turkey many of us imagine. “It looks like a turkey-sized brown blob, but the real test is in the taste.
“Of the 150 or close to 200 birds I’ve cooked this way, only a couple did not come out so tender that the carcass almost collapses. You can take your tongs and pull the meat off the bones. You can’t carve it because it really just falls apart,” he said. “Countless people have said it’s the best turkey they’ve ever had.”
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