We did not end up cooking the turkey on Saturday as I had anticipated, but instead cooked it on Sunday. The extra day of marinating made it so good! Anyways, on with the turkey frying adventure.
The first thing I did was remove the turkey from the fridge about 2 hours before it was time to cook it. It didn't get to room temperature or anything like that, but it allowed it to warm up a couple of degrees. This slight warming prevents some of the splatter when placing the uncooked bird into the heated oil. After the turkey had been out for 1 hour I loaded the fryer with about 4 gallons of peanut oil and set it to heat the oil to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. It took about another hour to heat the oil. Once the oil had reached 400 degrees I unwrapped the turkey and placed it in the frying basket.
To place the turkey into the oil I used a metal hook which came with the fryer. I didn't just dump the turkey into the oil on one motion because this almost always results in excessive splatter causing oil to leap out of the fryer. If that happens aside from the obvious mess that would have to be cleaned up, there is a very good chance of getting burned by the hot oil. So I lowered the basket about 1 inch into the oil, then lifted it for a moment to allow the skin to get seared. Then I lowered it again, a few more inches and the lifted it again. By doing this 4 or 5 times the skin becomes warmed and seared, helping to reduce the oil splatter. There is always going to be some splatter, so as I lowered the turkey into the oil the final time I had the lid for the frying ready in my left hand. As soon as I had lowered the turkey into the oil I quickly placed the lid over top to contain almost all of the splattering oil.
Next I set the timer on the fryer by telling it how big the turkey was. In this case it came to 13.75 pounds, so I punched it in and let it fry. It took about 1 hour to fry the turkey in this case. I've used this fryer several times now and trust the timer to be pretty accurate as long as I entered the weight of the bird correctly. I still went back after 30 minutes to check on it to make sure everything was looking good. It looked good and smelled fantastic!
Another 30 minutes passed and the alarm went off to notify my the frying was completed and the bird was cooked all the way through. I picked up the hook and lifted the basket carefully out of the oil, hooking it on to the edge of the fryer as it was designed to do. Even though I trust the timer on this thing, I still wanted to be sure the turkey was cook thoroughly and ready for consumption, so I grabbed our trusty meat thermometer and double checked the internal temperature of one of the breasts. 160 degrees, perfect!
I left the turkey to cool for about 30 minutes because handling it immediately after it came out of the oil would have been very difficult due to the high temperature. After 30 minutes I removed the turkey from the basket onto a platter in preparation to carve it.
First I removed the leg, and then the thigh, and finally the wing. And then I started slicing the breast directly from the turkey rather than removing it first. I just find it easier to do it this way.
And that was it! We sat down and enjoyed a fantastic and delicious turkey dinner! The marinade was visible in the meat and it was so very flavorful. I can honestly say I really enjoyed our dinner. The turkey was so moist and tasty.
Thanks for reading, come back soon for my next random post, whatever it may be.
No comments:
Post a Comment