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This Is What Happens When You Deep Fry a Frozen Turkey
Too late for many east-coast Americans, but perhaps in time to stop a blaze or two in California, an anonymous reader writes with this video of "a controlled demonstration of why it is a bad idea to fry a frozen turkey." My brother this morning assembled (despite poor directions and questionable parts fit) a deep fryer for a Thanksgiving turkey; we're optimistic, and the turkey seems to be fully thawed at least.
Every video of the turkey being put in results in an overflow of displaced oil which catches fire.
The water will 'boil' due the very high oil temp.. but most of these videos seem to fail at 'use the proper amount of oil'.
Stuffing a non-frozen turkey in a frier that fast will lead to bad things, remember dip it in slowly so any excess water in the turkey boils off without turning the entire thing in to a conflagration.
Oh yea, never fry in your garage, on a wooden porch, or close to anything that will catch on fire.
On that note, I have two turkeys on my counter ready to be injected with butter and a nice rub put on them before I fry them. Fully defrosted, no need for a hospital visit.
This one by State Farm is better... and it shows the ice in the oil trick!
Deep frying a whole turkey makes it come out extremely juicy -- it doesn't have that "fried" flavor or taste. Cooking in the oven gets you a bit dryer turkey. What happens is the hot oil sears the skin, trapping the juices inside. Usually you inject them with a butter based solution, seasoned with various spices, and that gets embedded into the turkey meat. Oh, and when you inject the bird, first figure out which way you are going to position it in the pot, and make sure the injection holes are at the top (try to reuse the same injection site, and with different angles / depths), so that the juice doesn't run out into the oil when cooking.
And yes, the first time I had seen this done was in Arkansas. But like I said above, it doesn't come out greasy or anything like that.
1. You're missing out.
2. You don't have deep fryers in jolly ol'?
3. Deep frying is basic cookery.
4. The turkey comes out juicy and not dried out.
5. It akes 30-45 minutes.
6. Crispy turkey skin.
7. It's safe if you read the instructions and warnings and *pay them heed.*
You can take your American bashing and shove it.
--
BMO
My very first job, I worked at an A&W, and they put me to work at the deep fryer. The procedure there (OSHA would not approve) was to take a big bag of fries out of the freezer, cook some of them, put the fries back in the freezer, and repeat for a few iterations. They freeze-thaw cycles would cause the fries to get covered with ice crystals.
One particularly frantic dinner rush, I was scrambling to get fries out, and I jammed a whole bunch of ice-covered fries in the deep fryer. Of course, the crystals flashed to steam, and splashed my arm with napalm-hot frying oil. I still have the scars.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
The guys who came up with the idea to fry a whole turkey were rednecks. And every good redneck story begins when someone says "Here, hold my beer while I..."