"Vox Humana" > wrote:
> The model that I saw on TV had a digital control that calculated the
> cooking
> time and temperature. As I recall, the 13 pound turkey the cooked took 44
> minutes - 3 minutes a pound plus 5 minutes.

That's roughly the time I used to cook them. It's very fast compared to
roasting them!

> I would love to have one of
> these units myself, but there are only two of us and most of the time we
> find ourselves away from home on major holidays. The cost of the oil is a
> deal killer for me. I am very thrifty (OK, cheap) and using $30 worth of
> oil once or twice and then dumping it would be traumatic.

These are some of the same reasons I haven't been doing it in the last four
years. I used to do it for a club I was in at a major car show and we'd feed
our members... 60-100 would be there for the show and our picnic. We'd have
two pots of boiling oil going, and cook two birds at once. Four birds total.
(I think that 15-20 bird estimate over the years I gave might be a little
low!) The oil only got used for two birds, but I wasn't paying for it... at
least not directly. At first I'd buy it in gallon jugs, but then I found out
about the huge bottles in cardboard boxes (10 liters?) at places like Sams.
It wasn't too bad a cost getting it like that.

> I am also worried
> about the safety of these things. The ones I have seen more recently at
> Costco and Sam's seem to be more stable. One of my neighbors fires his up
> in the garage! The garage is so full of crap that they can't even park in
> there, so I know that if something goes wrong, the place will be an
> inferno
> in no time. Of course, it doesn't seem safe to use it on a wooden deck
> attached to the house. My yard is pretty much on a slope. The only
> option
> would be in the driveway, which also has a slight slope.

Never underestimate the stupidity of people! ;-) There really are so many
things that can go wrong. One aspect is people tend to be drinking when all
of this is going on. At one of those car shows, I had a guy who wasn't
wearing a shirt (and had a few) decide he wanted to help me. He wanted to
put a turkey into the pot. But he wasn't watching me the times I had done
it. The bird has to be lowered very slowly so the boiling off of the water
in it doesn't overflow the pot. He started lowering the bird in too fast...
and bare chested, the spattering oil was burning him. So he let go of the
bird and jumped back. What a mess... the pot really boiled over then!

I read the Consumers Report warning on these things. One of their worries is
that people won't pay attention to the temperature of the oil, and it will
reach the ignition point. That certainly can happen... I guess it can happen
frying chicken on a stove, but that's will a much smaller quantity of oil.
There's two points where this is a problem... first when heating the oil up
initially with no bird in the pot... very easy to overheat it... and then
while the bird is cooking, as the heat has to be turned down over time to
maintain the temperature because of the declining amount of water being
boiled off.

> After your
> comment about the mess, I agree that using the electric model indoors
> probably isn't a good idea, although I could see using an electric model
> in
> the garage - with the door open, of course. They did use a lid on the TV
> show (the lid is glass and has three steam vents). Maybe the lid contains
> the mess making indoor use practical.

I don't know if a cover would work or not. From all the times I did it, I
can't imagine covering the pot. The oil spray really does get all over, and
it really doesn't clean up on concrete. I guess eventually it goes away from
weathering, but not as fast as with grass. I think if I was doing it on
concrete (or asphalt or wood) I would want to put something down to protect
it.

When doing fried chicken on the stove (cut up, not whole!), I do cover the
pan, during the first several minutes of cooking. It does cut down
considerably on the mess (there's way more spattering at the beginning), and
it doesn't seem to affect the crispyness of the crust. I'm using a 70 year
old Vollrath cast iron chicken fryer I got off eBay... by chance, the huge
aluminum seafood pot I have that I did the turkey frying in was also made by
Vollrath.

Getting back to deep fried turkey, I think a lot of the great result is from
the marinades that are injected rather than from the deep frying. You could
do the marinade injections without having to do the deep frying. You could
just roast the bird. I've never tried it myself, but that bare chested guy
that helped me above did, and he said it comes out very good. Of course,
depending what recipe you use for the marinade, the ingredients for it can
be pretty costly themselves... rivaling the cost of the oil! ;-) I seem to
remember my recipe's ingredients not being that much less than the cheap oil
I got in quantity at Sams. Onion juice and garlic juice don't come cheap!

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