How To Deep Fry A Turkey Without Bodily Injury Resulting

If you’ve decided this is the year to learn how to deep fry a turkey, you’re in good company — it seems each year, more and more Americans eschew a boring, safe oven-cooked turkey in favor of the riskier and reward-ier decision to try a deep-fried turkey.

How to deep fry a turkey seems like a self-explanatory pursuit, and this is America — right after apple pie and country music, we love to deep fry stuff. It’s even a tradition at our storied state fairs.

Many of us have wondered how to deep fry a turkey and whether the exercise is worthwhile, and fans assure us that deep-fried turkey is indeed a tasty and novel approach to handle Thanksgiving’s most unwieldy dish.

But given the mechanisms — a huge, slippery dead bit of poultry and gallons of boiling oil, it’s important to know how to deep fry a turkey safely before you attempt the endeavor. A deep-fried turkey cooks far faster than the oven-based pansy method, but it also requires a bit more hands-on attention.

Gizmodo looked at how to deep fry a turkey in-depth, covering the more nuanced bits about how to cook the bird without injury or death as a result. First and foremost, the site explains that to deep fry a turkey, one must first ensure the beast is fully thawed before lowering it into its final, searing oil bath.

(Ignore this crucial how to deep fry a turkey advice, and you risk a splatter-fest of horrifically painful proportions.)

The site continues, explaining:

“When the oil holds steady at 350, we’re finally ready to start cooking. Don your safety gear, set the turkey in its fry basket and prepare to lower the crucible into the hot oil bath. The safest way to do this is to run a bit of light gauge wire between the drumsticks, connect a fryer hook to a suitably long pole, and use that to put the bird in its pot. Set it in the oil this slowly. The oil will immediately begin roiling heavily when it comes in contact with the meat. If it boils over into the burner, it will combust. You don’t want that to happen.”

Do you know how to deep fry a turkey, and will you be attempting it for the first time this Thanksgiving?