How to Fry a Turkey and Impress Your Friends at the Same Time

When you’ve invited friends to the house to eat your fried turkey, you need to be sure that the turkey is good and that you impress your friends while they watch you cook it. (They will watch you cook it, since Man Law dictates all men be within 20 feet of any meat being cooked outside.)

Here’s my 10-step guide to frying a turkey and impressing your friends at the same time.

Step 1: Calculate how much oil to use.
This is an often overlooked, yet very important first step. “Oh, I’ll just guess” is the worst solution for determining how much oil to use. The easiest way to calculate the amount of oil needed is the displacement method. Put the turkey in the pot and fill with cold water until the turkey is submerged. Then pull the turkey out and mark the water line. That’s how much oil you’ll need. Your friends who hadn’t thought of the results of splattering oil will be impressed with your foresight and your use of science.

Step 2: Beat the turkey like it just insulted your mother.
You need to beat the turkey a to help tenderize it. Basically, treat it like a bag of ice. Take it out to the driveway and drop it a few times. (Tie it up in plastic bags first.) This will help tenderize the meat. It’ll also make your friends assume you’re a turkey frying expert.

Step 3: Inject the marinade.
Pull the turkey from its packaging, remove the “extras” that come in the cavity, and then rinse it with cold water. Then you want to inject some type of a marinade. Homemade ones are usually really good but a lot of work. Something in a jar from your local grocery store will work fine. Go for anything with the word “creole” or “Cajun” in the name. (They usually come with a syringe for injecting the marinade.)

Inject the marinade pretty evenly across the bird. I usually fill the syringe, stick it in the bird, and squirt little bits in different angles as I pull it back out. Once you’ve injected the bird, put it in the refrigerator to sit for 1-2 hours.

Step 4: Heat the oil.
You’ve got to get the oil up to cooking temperature before dunking your turkey in it. Bring the temperature to 350 degrees. This is critical because if the oil is too hot, you’ll burn the turkey’s skin. If it’s not hot enough, your turkey will take forever to cook and will be all greasy. Also, remember to do this in the driveway and not on a wooden deck. Driveways don’t burn.

Step 5: Dry the turkey.
Using paper towels, dry every part of the turkey you can get to. You don’t want any cold moisture on the outside of the turkey because when cold water hits the 350-degree peanut oil, it splashes everywhere. Not good, especially if you want to avoid being mocked by your friends.

Step 6: Dunk the turkey.
Lower the turkey into the oil and monitor the temperature. Keep it as close to 350 degrees as you can, cooking it for 4 minutes per pound. Don’t leave the turkey unattended. While waiting for the turkey to finish cooking, recall stories from previous turkey frying experiences. If this is your first time, just make something up about how good it was.

Step 7: Say “no” to salmonella.
After your 4-minute-per-pound wait, lift the turkey out of the oil, and insert a thermometer in the breast to make sure the meat is cooked all the way through. To make sure you’ve killed all bacteria, make sure the meat is cooked to at least 165 degrees.

Step 8: Be patient and let it cool down.
At this point, the dumbest thing you can do (next to not saying “no” to salmonella) is to try to impress your friends with your turkey carving skills on a turkey that just came out of 350-degree oil. Allow a few minutes for the bird to cool before you carve it. Burned fingers are no fun. Plus, your friends will laugh at you.

Step 9: Show off your turkey carving skills.
“How to carve a turkey” could be a separate post. Developing your own technique will take some time, but this is an important part of the process. Your friends will be watching, and you need to look like you know what you’re doing. Start with the breast. Offer some to taste, but threaten them with your electric carving knife if they get too zealous about the taste testing. Then move to the legs and wings. Then get the thigh meat. By now they’ll all be ready to eat.

Then look at the carcass and (no matter how much meat is left) say, “Yeah, that’ll do for now. We’ll get the rest later.” You don’t necessarily have to go back and get more meat off of the turkey, but you want your friends to think that the bare carcass they see really has a lot more meat on it. They just can’t see the meat because they’re not an expert at this like you are.

Step 10: No doggie bags.
Fried turkey is amazing when it has just been cooked. The next day, however, it’s not nearly as good. You don’t want to send home doggie bags with your friends because you want them remembering your turkey as it was when it came out of the oil, not how it was when it came out of a Ziploc bag 3 days later.

To prevent doggie bags, you may have to eat until you hurt a little bit. You may have to force extra helpings onto your friends’ plates. You may have to lie about taking the leftovers to the widow that lives around the corner. Whatever you have to do, do it. Don’t let that turkey leave your home uneaten.

Conclusion
There you have it. Cook a great turkey and impress your friends at the same time. I hope you enjoy your turkey (and your newly found popularity among your friends).

Did I miss something? Got a recipe that’s sure to impress friends? Share it in the comments below.

Tagged as: fried turkey, impress friends