Deep Fried Turkey For The Win!

 ... plus, a helpful, if dangerous, tip.

We had a turkey-off yesterday. I did one in the smoker and one in the deep fryer. The unanimous decision was that the deep-fried turkey was the absolute best. Even the people who don't normally like turkey loved the deep-fried one.

For prep, I dry-brined the deep-fried one to get the skin crispy. That involved drying the bird as best I could with towels and then putting salt and pepper on the skin. I let it sit in the fridge, uncovered overnight. I do that same process with steaks and they come out nicely, too.

The smoked one was brined in an apple juice, sugar and salt fluid to keep it moist as it smoked. It got a rub made of various herbs and brown sugar. I then smoked it at 225 for about 5 hours. It was good, but nowhere near as good as the deep-fried one.

Dangerous Tip: I had timed everything out quite nicely except that I forgot that the fryer takes about 45 minutes to come up to temperature. I took most of the oil, put it in a deep pot and used the stove to get the oil up to about 375. That took very little time. I poured the hot oil back into the fryer and it signaled almost immediately that it was ready to go. Whew! Day, saved. I'd prefer not to do that again as pouring two gallons of hot oil is asking for trouble.

Anywho, that's our results from this Thanksgiving. Deep-frying is the way to go.

The winner!

A decent effort, but a distant second.

Our gas range saved the day.