By Bernard Mooney
I have just read another article (i.e. hit piece) that slams the frying of a whole turkey as tantamount to tossing an incendiary device into your home. It need not be. You can deep fry a turkey quite safely.
I have just read another article (i.e. hit piece) that slams the frying of a whole turkey as tantamount to tossing an incendiary device into your home. It need not be. You can deep fry a turkey quite safely.
On Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, my son and I were tasked to provide two turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner at a family function in San Francisco. We had to feed 25 people. We had traveled to San Francisco a few days before thanksgiving, so we had to start from scratch in terms of supplies and equipment. Fortunately, we were staying in a rented private home that had a spacious driveway. Another member of the family who lives permanently in San Francisco provided the birds themselves.
The rented home had an upgraded kitchen but only one stove. The basic principles of arithmetic pointed us toward baking one turkey in the conventional manner in the stove and the other we would deep fry in the driveway. It really is not a guy thing to bake turkeys for ten or twelve hours continuously. Especially when there was an NFL game and we had five cases of California wine chilling on the deck.
Contrary to all the hype, we discovered that you can simply follow the clearly worded instructions that are actually etched into all commercially sold turkey fryers and remain safe. Specifically, the instructions tell you to use three gallons of oil (canola, vegetable or peanut) heated to a temperature between 350 – 400 degrees. The instructions that came with the fryer clearly stated that the size of the turkey should be 18 pounds or less and that it should be completely defrosted before being placed into the heated oil.
A turkey fryer is basically a chunky Bunsen burner. We bought ours for $59 at a local Home Depot. It took about a half hour to assemble all of the heat deflectors and splash guards that help keep it safe. Ours was a basic propane gas type. We heated three gallons of oil to 375 degrees and lowered a 14 pound defrosted turkey into the oil using the handle and frame provided for that purpose. We left it submerged in the heated oil for 47 minutes ((3 X 14) + 5).
No fire, flame or explosion ensued. The result was a delicious, moist and very tasty bird.
We were able to put the heated oil to a good secondary use as well. We dropped a few batches of thinly sliced fresh potatoes in to create some great kettle cooked chips.
