"Vox Humana" > wrote:
> I would recommend that you get an electric one for safety's sake. Every
> year people burn their house down with these things. The electric one
> would
> be safer than the propane, although they hold less.

I've heard of electric fryers, but do they really have the power to do the
job? I looked at one of the models on QVC and its instruction manual, and
it's rated at 1,650 watts. I'm pretty sure that converts to something under
6,000 Btu. Propane models are perhaps in the 100,000 Btu range and over. I
know there's a huge amount of inefficiency in using a gas burner, but still.
The instruction manual says it would take about an hour to heat the oil up
to temperature.

I've fried a few turkeys in my day, probably between 15 and 20 of them. I
used a big propane burner of unknown power, and a 36 quart seafood steamer
pot. The pot has a big basket inside which I used to hold the turkey. This
was before deep frying turkeys became popular and they started selling these
kits for the purpose. I also used large veterinary syringes I got at the
feed store to do the injecting.

Bringing the oil up to temperature takes quite a while even with a big
propane burner, but not an hour. When it's up to temperature and time to put
the bird in, there's still a big heat input required to maintain the
temperature. Even my big propane burner couldn't maintain the initial
temperature, it drops very signficantly when the bird goes it. What you are
basically doing during the frying is boiling off a lot of water, which takes
a lot of heat input. Slowly as the water boils off, the amount of heat that
needs to be put in to maintain the temperature diminishes. So slowly I would
adjust the gas to the burner down. I guess having a thermostatic control
would be a help, but I still can't see a puny electric element doing the
job. The turkeys I was cooking were in the the 12-14 pound range. I was
using about 3-1/2 gallons of oil, which is a lot. Turkey fryers designed for
the purpose have a tall narrower pot to minimize the amount of oil required.
My seafood pot was not optimal (in terms of oil needed) due to it's larger
diameter.

Speaking of burning your house down... do this deep frying outdoors well
away from the house. You'll have a tremendous mess even under the best of
circumstances with the oil spray that is going to come off the pot while the
turkey is frying. You'll get an oil slick on the grass, but eventually it
will go away. I find one the safety warnings in the QVC electric fryer kind
of humorous:

11. Do NOT use outdoors, appliance is for indoor use only.

Personally, I just can't imagine frying turkeys indoors, but maybe that's
just me! ;-)

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