Deep Fried Turkey - weren't even any leftovers! :-(

[sundaymorningstaple]

Deep Fried Christmas Turkey 2013


http://s188.photobucket.com/user/ra_115 ... 3.mp4.html

[JR8]

Wow, fantastic!

p.s. Though I maintain that it's perhaps the most terrifying cooking procedure I have ever seen!

[the lynx]

Deep Fried Christmas Turkey 2013


http://s188.photobucket.com/user/ra_115 ... 3.mp4.html

My company had Christmas eve lunch buffet and our "turkeys" were actually large chickens!

:feltsocheated:

[sundaymorningstaple]

Now THAT would definitely be a bummer!

[JR8]

My company had Christmas eve lunch buffet and our "turkeys" were actually large chickens!
:feltsocheated:

I can understand the headline 'WTH!?' but...
I think the concept of a 'Butterball' type Xmas roast turkey is pretty overated. Too often it's dry and flavourless.
Turkey can be good, 'bronze' turkeys are better for a regular roasting and can be delicious, but as one might expect they cost significantly more...

Also the Xmas turkey is not a universal given (aka Project McTurkeyfication is still underway ). Would you be disappointed to be served the traditional goose in Scandinavia, or beef in Italy?

On our previous posting before returning here, turkey was not the local tradition. Or put another way the offerings were very dire and very expensive. So we (too!) did a roast chicken. We got a corn-fed, free-range, 'organic' one (essentially the most expensive we could find, having an assumption that $ = quality), about as big as we could find. Not huge, since they aren't pumped with drugs, maybe 3kg, but OMTG! was it delicious and super tasty! Quite possibly the tastiest chicken I've ever had, and so far removed from what we consider and every day accept as 'chicken'.

SMS's turkey recipe is extraordinary, and I'm sure the results are equally so. But 99% (or should that be 99.999%?) of us are unlikely to be umm, equipped or of the disposition to prepare such a dish.

So for me:
- If it's SGn open house for every relative I've never heard of + plus their helper and other randomers I'll do a 'McTurkey'.
- If it's a dinner-party type thing, friends + family, I'll do a bronze turkey if I can get one
- If it were say just me + wife + 1-2 friends, low-key, I might try and see if I could get a quality 'boned and rolled' turkey joint. Far less wow on the table, but waaaay less work in the prep too!
- If I couldn't get a half-way decent turkey, I'd have no qualms subbing it with a top-end chicken. It breaks with 'tradition' (er, American tradition), but is so much tastier.

[sundaymorningstaple]

When home on the farm, it's Turkey (wild, if lucky) for Thanksgiving in November, but at Christmas it's normally Canadian goose (wild) as they are in season at the moment. Albeit, for most Americans, it's turkey 2x/ year. I could actually eat turkey once a month if I could get them reasonably priced here. The turkey we had yesterday would retail for around $60~$65 in CS or NTUC however, I found, through my son's girlfriend's parents a way to get directly from the importer so the two birds (6 kg frozen with giblets,etc) I cooked yesterday were only $26 each. But that is still rediculous. I can get the same birds in a major US supermarket for the equivalent of ~$8.00 SGD. That is cost effective and turkey is much more healthy to eat than a chicken.

[x9200]

Is this correct what I can read from the movie that it only takes half an hour to fully fry a 5-6kg turkey?

[sundaymorningstaple]

Is this correct what I can read from the movie that it only takes half an hour to fully fry a 5-6kg turkey?

Yep. That's the reason I took the times from the three individual film clips before joining them in moviemaker. The first bird weighed only 4.5kg and takes 25 minutes while the second weighed in at 5kg (dressed & thawed) so takes 29 to 30 minutes only. After removing them from the vat, I wrap them in foil and let it rest for 30 minutes before carving. I started the first bird at 1 pm and finished the second at 2:30pm (30 minutes to prep the second bird before frying).

Cannot find a juicier turkey anywhere, guaranteed.

And not the least bit oily either.

[sundaymorningstaple]

Our other moderator, SE also uses this method to cook his turkeys as well. I know several other yanks over here who also deep fry.

[x9200]

Yep, I remember SE posting some nice photos of it from his backyard.

We were very tempted to do it this Christmas (we don't have turkeys for dinner traditionally) but we already had too much food. Hoping to try it during CNY.
Possible to buy such vat locally?

[sundaymorningstaple]

Not likely. I've looked. You can certainly buy aluminium or stainless steel pots big enough but most are way to wide to be practical. If you noticed, that pot is very narrow and it still used 17 litres of oil to cook the bird. a wider pot, in order to be able to completely submerge the bird, would use a heck of a lot more oil. However, should you want to deep fry a bird say on Christmas day, I think something could be arranged. I didn't two birds this year. The first was for my son's girlfriend's parents, which they then bundled off with it wrapped in foil and newspaper in an insulated bag which should have been just about perfect (needs to rest for 30 minutes anyway - just in time to get home with it).

Before my rig got here from the US, I used to borrow SE's rig. You also need a heavy duty burner as well (the one in my picture is a Japanese Rannai.)
http://www.rinnai.lk/index.php?view=dom ... prod_id=11

If you are thinking about CNY I can loan you my rig. But, if you are thinking CNY, you need to go buy a turkey today or tomorrow before they are all gone, else you will have to get one from the butcher and that will set you back a few bob, but no bigger than 6.5 kg.

[x9200]

Thanks SMS. We don't have that much space in our freezer to have it stuffed with a big turkey for longer time so I guess we will wait and see how it goes.