How to Deep Fry a Turkey | Art of Manliness

welcome back to Turkey week in today's video Karl's gonna show us how to deep-fry a turkey without burning your house down yeah get this forty-three hundred people a year burn their house down deep frying a turkey you don't want to be one of those guys you okay so we're gonna fry a turkey so let's talk a little bit about the turkey you've seen a lot of dangerous things we're going to talk about that when we go out to the hot oil and that sort of thing so frying a turkey doesn't have to be dangerous and really it's an incredible way to cook a turkey you know so we're going to talk about some of the do's and don'ts with frying a turkey today so the first thing we've done we've brined our bird we've rinsed it the one thing else we're talking about when we're frying a turkey you want to get rid of everything plastic on the bird there's little these little things that trust the legs you want to take that these are basically worthless these little thermometers they don't do you can take those put them in the trash and so then a lot of your flavor you want to dry it off really good you don't want any excess oil especially when you're frying that's what causes the grease to splatter and do a little bit some bad stuff and cause a risk for a fire so dry it off really good and even when you're done let it air dry for a few minutes at room temperature so it's not going to hurt the other thing we want to remove some of these pieces of fat and you'll see this piece on the back I mean it's just gonna fry away and be a greasy mess you're not going to eat anyway so we can get rid of these things and next thing we're going to do is we are going to inject some butter a lot of different injections people going right in they're going to leave comments and my injections better it might be that's okay we're just using this and as an example we're going to inject some melted butter into this bird so we'll take our injection needle penetrate it and you want to have several spots so you don't have flavor pockets again into the breast of the bird and this is going to help flavor the inside of the meat and help to really keep it from drying out we've already brined it really good so we don't need to inject it with a lot of spices and stuff like salt that have a heavy salt because it's already got a good salt content but it's kind of hard to inject too much butter everything's always better with a little bit of butter and you'll see the meat puff up and swell up so you know that butter is is getting in there and if you get a little on the outside that's okay too there we go so we're ready to go the next step is we're going to take it out and introduce it to the oil some of the safety tips when you're frying a turkey number one 4,300 fires last year and 27 million in property damages all from frying turkeys so we want to be sure we're very careful one of the things and one of the biggest reasons people have this problem is they put too much oil in they drop their turkey in it overflows ignites with the fire and then they have a whole mess and that's what you see on the internet all the time people blowing up their house frying a turkey and it's a Vesuvian flare-up so one of the things you want to do is we've got our turkey in here on the stand that we're gonna do it and we're gonna fill this up with water and mark the point at which the water covers the turkey then we're going to know how much oil to put in and make sure you use a big enough pot if you go in to any type of store outdoor store cooking store even Walmart they sell turkey fryers that have more than enough space in the turkey to in the pot to cook the turkey so that's important too you don't want to try to do it in too small apart just because you don't want to buy another pot go the extra step spend the extra money you can get a whole kit for 50 bucks in the store so it and that includes the stand and everything so always make sure you do the right things so this is getting this is getting closer and you want to use cool water don't use hot water okay so we got our pan full of water on our hanger that we're gonna put you can see it's totally covering the turkey so a lot of people what they do is they say all right I'm gonna measure it right there that's the oil I'm gonna put in well if you do that you're probably going to get a bubble over and just call we're gonna have a fire and a whole mess you want to at this point take the turkey out empty out the water that's in the cavity move it to your bowl this is the level that you'll want and another good way to measure it you can score the bottom of your deal or you can kind of use your thermometer and that'll measure exactly where we need to be so that's where we need to fill the oil so it's go out and fill the oil heat it up and get ready to cook a turkey okay we're ready to put the oil in another safety tip that it causes a lot of people problems they light their burner before they put the oil in again we measured it out with the thermometer we've also put a little score mark on here so we know exactly from where our water test was put this thermometer yeah this is peanut oil it's usually the best has a very high flashpoint smoke point usually all turkeys are cooked in peanut oil and again these come in five gallon buckets and this bucket has taken us exactly two hour mark so we're ready to go we will now light our fire and heat the oil and when it gets to 325 degrees on our thermometer we're ready to start frying our turkey okay you'll notice we've got this away from our house we've got it out in the middle of the yard not on a wooden deck again in a very safe place that if there's a problem it's going to be more contained again we're staying with the fire as the oil heats up and so this way we're going to be able to safely drop our turkey in here in a little bit when the oil heats up and we'll talk about some more problems that can happen then okay we're ready to light our fire I've got the valve on our propane tank all the way open this is our regulator we'll want to turn it on a lot of the new fryers have a safety switch so that when you turn your valve on if you hold it down light it for ten seconds it will stay lit and open it up all the way as far as it will go and then you can take your pot with your oil and put it on there and I think it's important to note never leave your fire you never know what's going to happen always have somebody with it staying by it and prepare it in case there is an accident okay where is heating up we got about another 50 degrees to go and that will be ready to start frying another thing we want to mention always invest in good heat-resistant fireproof gloves when you're working with frying a turkey it's another safety point that it's going to help you have a good experience as you fry your turkey also when you put it out in your yard or wherever it is you're going to put it that is safe and away from the house and on a really a non flammable surface try to find as level of a ground as you could possibly find that way your oil is going to be even and when you fill it to your mark and you put your turkey in everything's gonna be great so it's almost time to put the bird in stay tuned okay another safety tip we're getting ready to turn our turkey and our oils at 325 we're getting ready to submerge it the next thing you want to do the first problem if there is any flare-up or boil over with your oil if you get a little too much in it if you turn your fire off and then relight it afterwards after you get it submerged it eliminates a lot of that risk so that's what we're going to do we're going to turn our fire off now we're going to put our turkey in and get ready to start frying okay another point of safety tip they give you these hooks to clip on to drop it in and certainly if you got good gloves you could drop it in by hand but there's an even safer way to do it and we just got a metal bar we're going to clip it onto our turkey again our turkey is good and dry and we are going to lower it very slowly into the hot oil with the fire off and if there's any problem as you get ready you can always lift it back out and go but you're going to want to put it in we know it's submerged and now we can relight our fire this particular model has a safety hinge that will allow you to keep the fire from getting out of control and it also has a timer system on it that will allow you to time your turkey when you're frying a turkey figure about three and a half minutes per pound so this turkey which is the twelve to fourteen pound bird it's going to take about forty to forty three minutes so we'll come back in that time and go from there okay when you first put your turkey in your oils gonna drop probably twenty-five degrees don't let that worry you've got your fire on maximum and just remember when you're cooking a turkey in a frying method it gets really really dark so you're going to pull it out and you'll see it's probably darker than any turkey you've ever done in the oven on the smoker on the grill wherever so don't be alarmed by that the meat inside that turkey is going to be perfectly cooked and that charred skin really helps protect it through the frying process also you notice we're cooking this uncovered there's no need to put the lid on just make sure you're not in a rainstorm no water's getting in it and it's free from debris putting the lid on it's just going to make it hotter and cause more chance for a boil over so it's fine like this we're gonna check it here in a few minutes and the turkey will be done [Applause] okay we're bird is spit in for about 45 minutes it's done we've checked the temperature so we're gonna take it out but you don't just jerk it out and put it down first thing you do is you turn your gas off that way there's no possibility of a fire from a drip or anything like that so we've got our hook we're knocking we've got our fireproof gloves the first thing we'll do look at that gold and brown just let it hang there and let it drain for a second let any of that excess oil come off we've got our pan here ready it's got some paper towels in it to absorb any of the grease again it may take a few seconds or up to a minute but it's worth draining off it's important to note that a lot of people ask us what do we do with this oil when we're done well there's a couple things you don't want to just dump it in your yard or take it or take it out and dump it on somebody's leaf pile or compost pile you want to let it cool down thoroughly it can be reused again if you strain it clean it and get it and you could store it back in its original container after it's cooled off or if you want to dispose of it use it only once then straight then wait till it fully cools put it back in its original container and then check to see locally what's the best way to dispose of it in your community some trash people will take it other places have organizations that will further dispose of it from there so it's drained it's ready we're going to go over we're not going to take it off its hook right now but we are going to let it rest again 20 30 minute rest let the juices kind of redistribute and we'll go in they'll be ready to carve in just a few minutes that turkey sure was good let's review some of the safety tips and why you can fried turkey safely and not be one of the 4300 that burns their house down every year and be part of statistics so first off never try to fry a bird that's frozen that's just gonna introduce a lot of water to your oil cause boil over and again the potential for fryer you're gonna want to make sure your bird is dry and then you can again measure with the water like we showed you and then also then you're going to know exactly where to put your oil so it's going to prevent the flare-ups that way season your bird with any injection that you wanted to do remember we use some melted butter you can do a lot of these flavored injections that are out there and again always take extra precautions we use the pole when we dropped it in to the water we went very slow we made sure our oil was heated up to the right temperature which is 325 degrees and we let it cook with the lid off always staying near the fire our fire our stand happens to have a safety safety mechanism on it so that every 15 minutes it forces you to either relight your fire if you leave it or to watch it and reset the timer so that's always a good safety tip if you can always keep a fire extinguisher by if you want move it away from your house fine level ground to put it on if you do all these things let your bird rest be careful taking it out fireproof gloves if you do this frying your turkey is a great way and a great great event for a lot of your guests to see and you'll have a great Thanksgiving all right well thanks Carl for showing us how to safely deep fry a turkey if you'd like the instructions on how to do that click on the link below you'll be taken to a PDF file that you can download and print off and use you

Channel: Art of Manliness

Views: 2,123,291

Rating: 4.6009264 out of 5

Keywords: Art of Manliness, Mens Interest, Mens Style, How To

Id: U8wZ7_0J3-Y

Length: 15min 22sec (922 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/760woodstock]

Tastes way better fried, tried it once and could never go back.

[u/Badgerfest]

Why in the name of three types of quick drying cement would anyone ever want to deep fry a turkey?

[u/[deleted]]

That made me so excited for Thanksgiving. We aren't even frying our turkey and I'm still excited.

[u/gorgomgz]

Dry it off with a paper towel... a few steps... put it in a pan full of water.

[u/dmatheusf]

My only concern with this video is that there was never a fire extinguisher nearby. Maybe I've seen a lot of Alton Brown's videos, but I guess you can never be too careful.