... 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.
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| The winner! |
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| A decent effort, but a distant second. |
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| Our gas range saved the day. |
Bonus Star Trek Analogy
KT: We've left the fryer off. It's completely cold. It will take 30 minutes to heat the oil.
Daughter-in-law kittehs: The other dishes are almost done. The grandchildren are getting hungry. We'll be ready to eat in 50 minutes. The turkey has to go into the fryer now.
Wife kitteh: KT!
KT: I can't change the laws of physics. I've got to have 30 minutes!
2 comments:
My son is the smoking expert, on charcoal. He's done it every year he's been out in Idaho. You need to splay it out, not leave it whole. The first year, when we were out there, he didn't account for altitude, or temperature plateauing. But it came out wonderfully. I think it's my favorite.
What kind of wood did you use for the smoke?
We deep fried many times on campouts, so we have the big propane burner. That doesn't take too long to heat up the oil. It's downside is the large amount of oil needed, and isn't reusable unless you can filter it well, and reuse within a week or so.
We also like a trashcan turkey (lots of videos of how to on Youtube), basically making an oven using charcoal. This turns out to be the best method on a Campout, it is easy to make another oven when you need 2, 3, or more turkeys.
Frying is the way to go. It’s messy and risky, but awesome. The downside is the oil is expensive and you need to reuse it quickly (lots of potatoes and fish fries) so we stopped doing it…
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