Thanksgiving,2006 my brother-in-law Bob and I decided to prove or disprove a cooking myth.  We had heard from many people that the best way to prepare a turkey was to fry it. As in deep fat fry , No one we knew had ever done it or even tasted it fried, but the reputation continued to persist. Everyone we talked to said the same thing.  I have heard that it is the best.

Some of the reasons cited in this myth were that turkeys fried using this process made the most delicious meat. The fat in the turkey meets the fat in the fryer and the turkey does not get greasy. They also cook in a very short time, and they free up the oven for other things that might be needing the oven.

One of the first times I  heard about it came from an older Navy cook. He claimed that several of his buddies were out on shore leave the night before a big holiday meal.  They came back in rather wasted and were late getting the birds ready for the roasing ovens.  One of the sailors thought, we have all of these big frying appliances for French fries and fried chicken, why don’t we just use if for the turkeys. There were some doubters but no one on the eating side knew the difference and no one had to be disciplined.

There are others that claim that his started in the South where they had big gas fired gumbo pots and it was a natural progress to try the same equipment for the festive meals  which required turkey rather than crawdads.

 With all of this in mind, I took off  looking  for a “set up.”

My local WalMart had a center display of a boxed set up of turkey fryers, that you attach to a propane tank . I bought one and two boxes of Crisco peanut oil.

 Reading on the box, it recommended that for the size of the set up, only turkeys under 11 pounds be used.  During Thanksgiving these turkeys are available for a very low cost.  I bought 4 turkeys, thinking that each family would have a nice take home package of leftover meat.  Each turkey that I bought at my nearby Raley’s was 10.6 pounds.  12 to 13 members of the family were scheduled to arrive at “Grandma and Grandpa’s” house in Morgan Hill, California.  Mom, “Grandma” had just undergone a second knee replacement surgery, so we wanted to be close to her.

It was a cold and windy Thanksgiving afternoon when we all assembled to get the show on the road.  That morning I had scoped out my propane gas supply and discovered that my tanks were very low.  I called bob and her said that he would look around his trailer tanks and see if one of them had some gas in them.  He called back and said that indeed between two of them we should have enough. 

 When we arrived Bob assembled the kit on the porch.  It contained a large aluminum pot, a thermometer for the oil, and a gas base platform that attached to a hose and a regulator.  I also bought a fire extinguisher, and a couple of red silicon pot holders rated at 500 degrees.

The turkeys were carefully thawed out over 3 days .  They all fit in a cold bag.  Someone at the grocery store told me that you had to be very careful about how dry the turkey was.  No moisture could be on the surface of the turkey inside or out or you will have a huge bubbling out problem. Get advice!  The other piece of advice it to fry it outdoors over some soil that won’t catch fire.

The process starts with filling up the pot with water and seeing how much peanut oil is need to cover the turkey with 2 inches over.  We did this and visually marked the oil point.  Then everything had to dried within and each of its life so that the moisture would not interfere with the turkey. 

We set up the burner and lit it and we ended up with Bunsen burner like low flame equivalent. Just a weakly flame with very little force. What were we going to do?  Bob had bought an equivalent burner at a flea market.  He paid 5 dollars for it.  It was soon substituted in for the first one.  It worked great!  We had achieved blowtorch status.  Soon (about 25 minutes we were up to our 350 temperature level The turkey was strung up and wiped down by my sister Mikie in the house.  We were ready to ease in the first bird.  The most successful method we discovered in this process was to slowly ease the turkey into the oil.  The second turkey went in too quickly and we were jumping  back as the oil came bubbling  over the top.  With each successive turkey we did not lose oil in the pot, we actually gained it from the turkey juices. The first turkey was done in 27 minutes.  We checked the breast portions with an instant read thermometer (very handy to have and not supplied in the kit). When it reached our optimum temperature (170 degrees ) I pulled it out and Bob caught it (put a pan under it and then unhooked it from the hook. He took it in for carving.  Mikie strung up the next one. There was very  little lost in heat between the first turkey and the succeeding turkeys with the gas fired burner. We did a total of four this way.  The first one was almost completely eaten by the time the fourth one finished. Snackers had tasted it and had approved. 

Total time for cooking 4 turkeys was 2 hours 20 minutes. The advantage to this way of cooking a turkey was its speed, its end product, the best turkey you have eaten, and its style.

Disadvantages were that it takes three people to keep the process going.  This is one backyard or front yard event that you have to monitor very closely. That much oil over that much flame requires constant vigilance. Unlike a barbeque there is hot bubbling oil that could seriously damage flesh if there is an accident.   Also it does not provide gravy. We used commercially made gravy for this event. People who are football fans will lose a large portion of their game enjoyment unless they have the game rigged for outside viewing.

Overall we agreed that we would like to do this again.

While four turkeys seemed excessive on paper, it was about right when figuring the samples that everyone who also had heard about this method wanted to sample it for themselves had a portion of the leftovers. It made the best turkey I have every tried. Even guests that usually pass on turkey loved it.  Part of the advantage was the small size of the turkeys.  Using the smallest turkeys also made them the most tender.