Thursday, October 7, 2010

Turkey (Part I)

Every year since I was a little boy my mother has baked a turkey for Thanksgiving.  She has her technique down and everything, and simply refuses to let go of her tradition.  Well, this year I informed her that I was going to be frying a turkey.  She obviously put up some resistance, but we came to a compromise.  There are going to be two turkeys this year, one baked and one fried.

I first encountered fried turkey when I was dating a girl in high school, and her mother had moved out to the country and married a good old country boy.  My first Thanksgiving I didn't spend with my family I spent with hers out in the country.  Most of the spread was passable at best, but the turkey was the best I'd ever had (sorry mom).  I thought, surely a fried turkey was going to be greasy and crunchy and terrible, but holy crap...  it was juicy and a little crisp.  I had no idea turkey could taste like that!!  And while the relationship with girl I was dating fizzled like most teenage romances do, the memory of that turkey has stayed with me all my life.  Nearly every year since then I've tried to talk my folks into doing a fried trukey.  And every year they say absolutely not.  Well, this year is going to be different.  I'm gonna fry a damn turkey and YOU CAN'T STOP ME!!! (inside joke)

But now on the other hand, I have also had some very bad fried turkey.  Turkey that looks like this:
Sorry, this is not what fried turkey is supposed to look like.  Yes, I've eaten turkey like this.  It's not good.  It's dry and charred and pretty much awful.  Why is this turkey completely charred?  Because you bought a damn 20 lb bird you yocal!  By the time the inside of the turkey is done, the outside is completely burned to pieces.  13-14 lbs is the so-called Goldilocks zone (not too hot, not too cold).  

Now, frying a turkey can be extremely dangerous.  Every year you hear about a hundred yocals (that's the word of the day) who end up in the ER because their damn turkeys exploded, or his deep fryer did this:
Really, all you need to keep this from happening is some common sense and a fry thermometer.  Oil is a combustible liquid, and it vaporizes at a very high temperature (400-450 degrees).  Once an oil reaches it's smoking point, or flash point, in addition to tasting really bad, all it needs is a spark for combustion.  There is no reason to ever get your oil hotter than the smoke point, and in fact there's every reason NOT to.  Now, as for exploding turkeys, the only reason a turkey would explode is if it were still frozen.  You see, water vaporizes at a much lower temperature than cooking oil.  So when ice (very condense water molecules) hit hot oil, the water instantly vaporizes and EXPANDS.  This expansion is more like an explosion really, and when the ice explodes, the oil goes with it.  As soon as the oil hits the burner below the pot, BAM!  This happens:
In the weeks to come I'm going to be sharing with you my loyal readers a safe and effective way to fry a turkey without killing yourself.  I'm going to document everything from purchasing a deep fryer, to choosing and preparing your turkey, to disposing of your used oil.  Maybe you'll learn something!

-CJ

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