Tips for Frying a Turkey

A fried turkey is a wonderful thing. It is moist. It is flavorful, and it’s not hard to do. There are some things that only experience can teach you, and toward this end, I have some advice to offer.

First, brine the bird. A brined bird is a juicy bird. Google Alton Brown’s Turkey brine and use it. It has some ‘interesting’ ingredients. What the hell is Candied Ginger anyway? Make the brine just like he says, and sink the bird in it overnight.  Have a cocktail and sing a song.

Second, check you liquor situation. Though we generally start the day with a couple of rounds of Bloodymarys, I have found that a nice glass of wine is a wonderful thing to enjoy while the turkey is frying. We buy only the best of the box wines. I recommend the Merlot. Also, be sure you have ice and an abundance of a good bourbon, Knob Creek preferably,  because after cooking this dinner, you’ll be ready for a couple of strong cocktails.

Thirdly, it takes a while to get the oil hot, so I go out three or four hours before I plan on cooking, and heat the oil up to 340 degress, then shut the heat off and let it cool. The main reason for this is to give me a good idea of how long it takes to get the oil hot. You want to cook the bird at 340 degrees, so if the oil has cooled to 200 degrees, and it took 90 minutes to go from 70 degrees to 340 degrees, all you have to do is find a 5th grader to figure out how long it will take to heat from 200 degrees back up to 340 degrees, and then most of us can figure out when we need to begin reheating the oil.  I usually ensure that I have a table placed near, but not too close to my turkey fryer.  This is a handy spot to set drinks, or to place your fire extinguisher.  Always have a fire extinguisher.  You may think you will never need it, but put it there anyway.  Better safe than sorry.

Fourth, it should go without saying that you should not fry the bird on a wooden deck, or indoors. The reason for this is simple. Since you’ve been drinking Bloodymary’s all day, and you read the label of the turkey without your glasses, you believed you were cooking a 12lb turkey, not a 15lb turkey. This is important because you filled the pot up with oil to the line for a 10 to 14 lb turkey. That is a very important line. If you sink a 15 lb turkey into a pot fill to the 10 to 14lb line with boiling oil, the bird will displace  just enough oil so that when it breaks into a violent boil, just a little smidgen of the oil will splash over the side of the pot.  Not a big worry, you think?  Watch as it dribbles it’s way down the side of the pot to the open flame below.  Eventually, this will ignite a fairly impressive fire, which interestingly enough, causes the oil to boil even more violently splashing more oil out….and you can see where this is going.

Fifth, when extinguishing an oil and propane fire, the first thing you should do is turn off the propane at the tank. In theory, this will cause the fire beneath the pot of flaming oil to go out. You just have to trust me on this point because at this time half the patio is on fire. Your eyes are going to go to the big fire.  There appears to be a volcano spewing napalm on your patio and the propane flames are the smallest flame in the whole conflagration. You can’t see them because your eyes are on the big fire. It’s important to get that little fire out first, because if you don’t it will keep spewing gas and you have the possibility reigniting the big fire when you put it out, or worse yet, experiencing a rather startling explosion.

Sixth, be very careful when using the fire extinguisher. I recommend setting your wine glass down so that you don’t spill it when you pull the ring thing out so you can use the extinguisher. Keep in mind that you’ll want to aim the extinguisher at the base of the flames.

Now you see why the bourbon is so important. I told you you’d want a cocktail.

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