Question: How do you cook at 24lb turkey in under two hours?

Answer: Do it the American way.....deep fry it!!!!

Christmas 2007 at the Spinks household (Washington DC detachment) found a full house preparing for the main meal at lunch. Baby Alexander was completely unaware of the fuss going on around him preparing for this special occasion but something tells me next Christmas will be a different story!!!

Both sets of parents had journeyed across the Pacific to spend time with us following the birth of Alexander and were staying on until after Christmas. Adam's parents stayed until mid-January.

When deciding what to cook for Christmas lunch, seeing that we were in America there was only one possibly choice....turkey. With a six of us sitting down to the meal we had to make sure there would be enough to go around so Adam went off an purchased what could only be described as the biggest turkey any of us had ever seen.

Weighing in at a massive 24lb there was no way we wouldn't have enough turkey meat for lunch and seven or eight meals over the following days. The only question now, how to cook it? The answer, deep fry it!!!

Only in America could they invent a way to deep fry a turkey. Now while this sounds disgusting and unhealthy, don't knock it until you try it. Because of the temperature of the oil, it doesn't go all greasy like other deep fried food but rather just roasts it. The result a beautifully cooked and moist turkey.

So how does all this happen? Well watch and learn.

Preparation

First the turkey must be completed thawed and dried. Many a fire has started as a result of a partially frozen or wet turkey being placed in a vat of extremely hot oil. To ensure it stays moist and to add flavor, some type of flavoring is injected into the bird. We went with Italian herb infused olive oil. It's quite a process to inject olive oil in a bird that size.

 

Cooking

The formula to calculating the cooking time is 3.5min per 1lb of bird. For us that worked out to be 84min cooking time but we rounded down to 80min. The oil has to be kept between 325° F and 350° F during cooking so the idea is to heat the oil up to nearly 400° F before you put the bird in. Before lowering the bird into the oil, it's wise to turn off the gas burner. The oil on occasion has been known to spill over and oil and naked flame don't mix to well. Once it's in the oil fire it back up and just adjust the flame intensity to keep the temperature at the desired mark. That said we never left it unattended. Apparently every year at least one house somewhere in the country will burn down due to a fire relating to deep frying a turkey.

Even with all the dangers associated with this American past time, we're definitely taking one of these back to Australia with us.

All ready to go in	Lowering in the bird		Slowly does it
	The skeptics watch on from a safe distance	Tony, Phil (our neighbor and instructor on the art of deep frying) and Rob keeping an eye on things	Bubbling away
I think it's ready to come out

 

The Finished Product

   

 

All I can say is that a picture is worth a thousand words. The turkey turned our perfectly (much to the surprise of some skeptics I think) and everyone enjoyed our Christmas lunch.

 

	That is about a third of the meat from the turkey on the plate	I wish that this turkey tastes good!!!
	Merry Christmas to everyone