the virtues and merits and utter joy of frying a turkey
We’re six days out from the best holiday of the year, so get ready for an onslaught of Thanksgiving content over the next week. All I’m thinking about right now is pie and stuffing and creamed spinach and whether I can find enough tarragon at the grocery store to make this sauce I’ve become fixated on. Oh, and fried turkey. I’m thinking a lot about fried turkey.
As soon as I was old enough to help out in the kitchen on Thanksgiving, I became acutely aware of one conflict simmering beneath the surface of the day: the turkey. Every year, my mother would buy some busty ogre of a bird, and there would be a moment when we’d wonder if it would fit in our pan, then another when we’d worry it might be too tall for our oven. Eventually, the bird would go in — crisis averted — and we’d spend the next four hours fussing.
Would it be done too soon? Would we accidentally leave it in so long it dried out? Was the thermometer probe working? Would there be enough time post-turkey to cook sweet potato casserole and rolls and stuffing and brussels sprouts in the vacated oven?
Some years, the bird was done early. Some years, it was dry. The probe did usually work. And fortunately, the side dishes always turned out. That’s mostly what I ate, anyways.
Roast turkey is bad. Not I-can’t-eat-this bad — just not nearly fit to be the centerpiece of a holiday built around feasting. And that was the unspoken conflict all those years: My mom and my aunts and even I knew we were serving an inferior protein, but no one wanted to come out and say it. Instead, we experimented with brines and rubs and different kinds of stuffing. It was lipstick on an avian pig.
For a few years, we ordered Turduckens, shipped straight up the Mississippi from Louisiana to St. Louis. My mom bought this strange little electric turkey roaster, which we came to call the Turducken cooker, and that first year, the Turducken was a marvel — but I think I was most entranced by the boudin stuffing. The next year, the Turducken people sent us a bird sans boudin, and yet we still kept ordering, kept getting the wrong stuffing, until finally someone in the family pointed out that this soggy-skinned bird-in-bird-in-bird was kind of an abomination.
And then, finally, we figured it out. The Turducken had simply been the wrong Louisiana import, and in 2015, we exported ourselves. For the first time, my brother hosted the holiday at his house in New Orleans, and a few weeks before, he announced he would be frying our turkey.
My mom fretted: What if something went wrong? What if something exploded? She debated roasting a backup bird, but with only a single oven at my brother’s house, that felt like a waste of time and space. Instead, we all said a prayer, and my brother plopped a bird into a crawfish pot full of bubbling oil, and a half-hour or so later, we had a magnificent, golden-brown triumph of a turkey.
We’ve never looked back. The next year, we ordered a full complement of turkey-frying accessories to my parents’ house, and our extended family showed up with their eyebrows collectively raised. The year after that, they showed up clamoring for fried turkey. The year after that, my brother was outside all day, frying turkeys for half my dad’s coworkers, who showed up throughout the afternoon to collect their prizes.
Fried turkey is juicy inside and crispy at the edges — not so obviously fried as fried chicken, but very obviously better than any other turkey you’ve ever tried. Fried turkey saves oven space, and the fryer itself is like an outdoor space heater, a perfect place to gather and drink a beer and chat with the designated fry cook. (Just don’t drink too many beers, and keep the surrounding area clear of small children!) Oh, also: Frying a turkey is also a great way to make a brand-new significant other who’s only ever lived on the East Coast think your Midwestern family is a bunch of wackadoodles.
Try it, I beg you. Fry a turkey. Fry many turkeys! All you need is a flat patch of grass (or pavement in a pinch), a big pot, a fresh bird and a few other accessories. Convinced? Mulling it over? Let the rest of this newsletter be your roadmap to turkey nirvana.
All your fried turkey questions, answered:
To get into the nitty-gritty, I called my brother, John Niesen, who is the mastermind behind our frying operation. Here’s the gist of what he had to say:
Who started this trend? It’s not totally clear when, but Louisiana is absolutely responsible, thanks in large part to the preponderance of massive, stainless steel pots used for crawfish boils. Those pots, it turns out, are perfect for frying turkeys, and by the 1970s, Louisianans, at least, were frying Thanksgiving birds.
What do I need to buy if I want to try this? A turkey frying setup is a bit of an investment, but it’s not a crazy one, and it’s definitely cheaper than installing a double oven. The key, though, is buying quality stuff — or, as John put it, “The most important thing is to buy the right shit.”
John added: “What you actually do to fry the turkey is relatively simple, but people always get the wrong stuff, and this causes most of the issues. The first thing that people fall into the trap of doing is buying a thing called a turkey fryer, which is definitely what you don’t want to do.”
Turkey fryers are too small, and they break. Now that we’ve cleared that up, here’s a list of everything you’ll need, with a few notes and links to help you pick the right shit:
a fully defrosted (more on that later), 12-ish-pound turkey (or several)
4-5 gallons of peanut oil
a propane burner with the highest PSI you can find: John notes that the high-PSI ones tend to be square, not circular
a 30-quart, stainless steel stock pot: You can also buy your stock pot in a kit, which will include many of the accessories listed below. They key, here, according to John, is to buy a quality, stainless steel pot. If you buy a cheaper aluminum one, it’ll get “gunked up after one use, and you’ll never want to use it again.”
a two-piece poultry fry lifter: You stick on piece in the bird’s cavity and use the other piece, which looks a bit like a coat hanger, to lower the bird into the pot and later pull it out.
a liquid propane gas tank
optional (but recommended): a spice rub, like Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning
even more optional: a flavor injector and the injection marinade of your choice
Okay, I’ve got everything. Now what? The beauty of frying a turkey is that it’s fast; at 3 to 4 minutes per pound, these guys are done in 35 to 45 minutes. And there’s not too much prep work, either. But let’s break it down:
In the days leading up to Thanksgiving:
Figure out your turkey situation. Aim for a 12-pound bird; any bigger, and you’re in danger of it not fitting in the pot or not getting totally cooked through. (If you’re hosting a big group, fry several turkeys!) The best move is to buy a fresh one (or ones), because frozen turkeys and fryers are a lethal combination. If you do have to get a frozen one, you’re going to want to move it from the freezer to the fridge three days before frying. And if you get a fresh one, double check; sometimes even a fresh turkey will have been transported in a freezer truck and could wind up a little bit chilled.
The night before Thanksgiving, if you have any doubt at all about your turkey being even a little bit frozen, run it under cool water for a while. Use all your powers of deduction to ensure your turkey is fully, inconvertibly thawed.
If you’re going to inject your turkey, do it the night before, once you’ve determined that the turkey is absolutely, positively not frozen. (That said, I don’t find this step to be super necessary.) Then put it back in the fridge.
On Thanksgiving:
The first thing you need to do is calculate how much oil you need in your pot. To do so, take your turkey out of the fridge and put it in a large trash bag. Place the bag in your pot, and pour water around it, making sure not to get any water in the actual trash bag. You want to wind up with water that reaches just above the top of the turkey, so the turkey would (sans trash bag) be just submerged. Now take the trash bag out, make note (with a post-it or a piece of tape) of the water line, and dump all the water out. Wipe out the inside of your pot so it’s completely dry, and then fill it with oil up to your marker.
Pat your turkey dry. Do this diligently. Then rub it with the spice rub of your choice; these rubs help the bird really crisp up, in my experience.
Set up your burner according to the instructions provided. Make sure it’s on a flat surface, preferably grass. If you have a hilly yard, you can also set the burner up on your driveway, but put a layer of cardboard down below it so that the oil doesn’t mess up your pavement.
Make sure your thermometer is properly attached to your pot and ready to read the temperature of the oil.
Set your pot on top of the burner, and turn on the gas. (Note: There are three ways to control the flame: the knob on the propane tank, the knob on the burner and an airflow valve on the burner. You want to use a relatively high flame to heat the oil, but definitely keep it in check, and once you get going, it’s usually easiest to use the burner knob to modulate the heat.)
Watch the temperature. You want the oil to be at about 350 degrees before you put the turkey in. Depending on the weather, that might take a half hour or even longer.
When the oil is nearly hot enough, place the turkey on its little stand. Make sure you have on long sleeves and your barbecue gloves. Use the little coat hanger device to slowly lower the turkey into the oil. Do not lean forward over the oil as you lower the turkey in. The moisture in the turkey will cause the oil to steam pretty intensely.
Your oil temperature will drop after you’ve added the turkey. That’s okay! Let it climb back up in the 300- to 325-degree range. That’s where it should stay throughout the process, and you need to be especially mindful to not let the oil get hotter than 325 degrees. Control the temperature using the knob on the burner.
Cook the turkey for three to four minutes per pound. So, for a 12-pound turkey, that’s 36 to 48 minutes. At 36 minutes, start to use visual cues; if your turkey is a nice golden brown, it’s ready. If it still looks a little insipid, keep it frying for a little while longer. Usually, the color deepens just a little bit right after it’s out of the oil.
When the turkey is ready to come out, put your gloves back on. Use the little coat hanger hook to pull the turkey out of the oil, letting the oil drip off over the pot. Then slide it off the lifter and into an aluminum container. Wait at least 20 minutes before carving.
If you’re doing multiple turkeys, repeat the process. One batch of oil should be good for three turkeys, though you might need to top the pot off a bit for the third — just keep an eye on the oil level as you cook.
How do I do this without causing an explosion or a grease fire or winding up with severe burns? Done right, turkey frying is not dangerous! Just don’t get sloppy. Making sure your turkey is completely defrosted and dried off is the key to success and safety.
A frozen turkey explodes because every iota of water vapor is pushed out of the bird as soon as it hits hot oil; and if your turkey is a block of ice, well, you can imagine what happens.
Also, be mindful of the oil level, and don’t get sloppy with your turkey-in-a-trash-bag method. You really, really don’t want to overfill your pot with oil, and measuring it so it only just submerges the turkey is crucial.
Other common mistakes are related to the placement of the fryer: Don’t do it in your garage; you don’t want to set your house on fire if something goes wrong. (It should go without saying that you can’t do this indoors, either, and that your setup should be 20 or so feet away from any structure.) Don’t do it on. your deck; the hot oil and burner can light the wood on fire. Don’t do it on grass that’s covered in dry leaves, because — you guessed it — fire!
Also, always wear your gloves, and definitely remember not to lean over the pot when lowering the turkey in. Always leave the fry pot attended, and never touch it without gloves. Make sure to keep little kids and pets inside while the turkey is frying.
Okay, great, I survived. The turkey was phenomenal. How do I clean up the mess? Cleanup is actually pretty easy. You’re going to want to let your pot of oil cool for a long time — potentially overnight, if you’re frying in the afternoon. Once it’s cool and no longer a total hazard, use the funnel to carefully pour it back into the container (or containers) it came in. Then look up local rules for disposing the discarded oil. Scrub out your pot and store it for next year — or host a crawfish boil in the spring.
What else should I know? Fried turkeys shrink up a bit, so you might want to make a bit more turkey per person than you usually would. Also, a fried turkey doesn’t yield any drippings for gravy, so you’re going to have to use stock or buy gravy or improvise in some other way.
Loved this👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻I think I can do it😱