Tako's Deep Fried Turkey

Tako’s Deep Fried Turkey from Tako’s Deep Fried Turkey Clicktoon Game
Ingredients: One 10-12 lb turkey 3.5-4 gallons peanut oil Kosher salt for brining Tako’s Secret Spice Rub or Tako’s Cajun Marinade
Welcome to “Backyard Conflagrations,” otherwise known as deep-frying a turkey, Tako-style. Today we’ll be taking a page out of the Medieval Castle Defense Methods cookbook and boiling a whole turkey in a vat of hot oil. Not much to the big picture (put turkey in oil; fry), but the subtleties of the process do require rapt attention, otherwise you may end up boiling more than just a turkey. Remember, tentacles grow back, but those little digits of yours are single serving, so watch out. To get things started, let’s talk turkey, specifically a 10 to 12 pound turkey since a small bird means less oil and less chance of a visit to the emergency room. If you have more people to feed, make a couple of turkeys. It’s a pain to recycle the oil, so economies of scale say once you start frying, keep frying until you’ve fed your entire family, film crew, or whoever happens to stop by on Thanksgiving. (Tako’s Turkey Tips # 1: if your turkey has one of those little red and white pop-up thermometers, remove it now or forever will it be attached to your turkey. If you like deep-fried plastic, by all means leave it.) When it comes to deep-frying a turkey, peanut oil has long been the choice of those in the know thanks to its bird-friendly flavor. There’s just something about nuts that makes a turkey taste better. If you really, REALLY like the flavor, try Chinese peanut oil, which tends to be a bit stronger than the American stuff. Another good reason to use peanut oil is it’s high smoke point. Smoke what? Perhaps a little deep-fried theory is in order. Smoke on This When fats are heated to a specific temperature, their molecules begin to break down into free fatty acids. This process results in bits of acrid smoke floating on top of a pool of fat, which funks up the fried food flavors, and not in a good way. Free fatty acids are more or less responsible for lowering the smoke point, and once you get a fat smoking, it’s a short trip from there to a bad-tasting turkey and a backyard full of Firemen (not a bad thing if your spending this Thanksgiving alone, but…). Other oil “contaminants” such as emulsifiers, artificial flavorings, and leftover food chunks from past fries also do their part to lower the smoke point. Solution: use an oil with a high smoke point. How high? We’re going to be cooking the bird at 350-360 degrees. (Why? I’ll explain in a moment.) Assuming we’re going to see some deterioration of the oil during the cooking process, we’ll need a little temperature clearance, thus peanut oil, with its heady 410 degrees F smoke point, fits the bill nicely. Other oil options include canola (SP: 435) and safflower (SP: 450), but the peanut oil flavor is superior to both. Avoiding (un)Natural Disasters How much oil do you use? For a single turkey, I use a 10-gallon fry bucket and 3.5 to 4 gallons of peanut oil. The trick is to completely submerge your bird and still have room for error between the oil and the top of the bucket. To check if your fryer fits the bill, place your turkey and fry basket into the fry bucket and fill it with water until it is a couple inches above the bird, yet still several inches from the top of the fryer. If you don’t have several inches of either side of the water line, you need a bigger bucket. If you do, remove the turkey and measure the water. That’s how much oil you need. Now, you’re probably saying to yourself “4 gallons of peanut oil… I wonder if I can get that on the web?” Yes, you can, but the cost to ship it will effectively double the price so I recommend checking local Asian markets, specialty barbeque stores, or even hardware stores, which tend to stock large quantities of peanut oil during the holidays. Another downside to the peanut oil investment is that it’ll likely cost roughly four times that of the turkey itself. (No one said taste was cheap.) This is why it makes sense to fry multiple turkeys each time you fire up the deep fryer. Thus, when mom asks if she can bring along your long lost Uncle Squiggly and Aunt Inkblot you say, “Sure, mom, the more the merrier,” and order another turkey and a nice bottle of port. I suggest keeping the port to yourself, thus making the extra-extended family experience more enjoyable. Turkey Tools of the Trade We at Deep Fried, Live! strongly encourage, nay, we command you to perform this cooking adventure outdoors, on a fire-resistant surface, and with the proper tools. In addition to the turkey and oil, said tools include: (1) a propane burner with a sturdy enough stand to hold (2) a big honkin’ pot, with (3) a lid, (4) a thermometer that reads up to 450 degrees and can reach the oil from the top of the pot (a candy thermometer works nicely), and (5) a fry basket or some contraption to keep the turkey from sitting on the bottom of the pot during the fry. (6) Extra cardboard or newspapers under the rig helps in the cleanup process. If you’re new to the fry game, there are kits available online and at specialty barbeque stores that come with everything needed to deep-fry your holiday. Flavor and Fry-Sci-Fi Everybody ready? Okay, remove the neck and giblets and wash the inside and outside of the bird with cold water and pat dry. Historically, flavoring deep-fried turkey involves pumping it full of marinade via a Cajun marinade injector and letting it soak overnight (see “Injecting a Cajun Marinade” for details). This works great, but around the holidays I prefer the natural flavor of turkey, so I simply brine my bird for about 4 hours using a salt water mixture (1 cup of kosher salt per gallon of water) and a big bucket. I also like to add a simple dry rub consisting of allspice, paprika, dried lemon zest kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, and sugar to jump-start the turkey’s flavor. Make sure to get the rub under the skin so it flavors the meat and the skin, and not the oil. Whichever flavoring method you choose, DO NOT stuff your bird. Getting the oil inside the cavity helps it cook evenly, and deep-fried stuffing looks, smells, and tastes like extremely burnt toast. Regardless of the flavoring steps, make sure your bird is completely dry before dropping it in the oil. And don’t drop it in until the oil temperature reaches 375 degrees. Why 375 when we said we are going to cook at 350? When a cold bird is dropped into a vat of hot oil the temperature equalizes, resulting in a significant drop. It’s very important that the oil not drop below 325. Here’s why: turkey meat has a lot of liquid in it. When a turkey is deep-fried this liquid rapidly turns to steam and forces its way out of the meat in the form of a bunch of bubbles. This rush of steam keeps the oil from getting into the meat and making it greasy. If the temperature drops below 325, the steam won’t be cranking fast enough and the oil will start to seep into the meat. By maintaining a relatively constant 350 degrees, your bird will taste like turkey and not an oil spill. And what happens if all the liquid evaporates? You’ve overcooked your bird; start another one. In and Out of the Fryer The best method I’ve found for getting a turkey safely into a vat of hot oil is as follows: place the bird, neck down, into the fry basket and slide the basket onto a broom handle; then, with one person on either end of the broom handle, SLOWLY lower the basket into the oil. There’s going to be a lot of bubbling immediately, but going slowly reduces the risk of the previously mentioned conflagrations. Once the turkey is frying, replace the lid and adjust the burner until the temperature stabilizes around 350-360 degrees. The temperature may fluctuate during cooking, so it’s best to keep an eye on the thermometer. It’ll take about 3 to 3.5 minutes per pound to cook the bird. When it’s done, a meat thermometer plunged into the breast should read about 170, into the thigh about 180. Checking early is good since the bird can become overdone quickly, but don’t check it often; riddling your bird with thermometer holes only allows the oil to creep in more easily. When the bird is done, use the broom handle method to pull the bird out of the oil, allowing it to drain for a minute or two before setting it down. Once it’s drained and cooled enough not to burn your tentacles on contact, it’s ready for carving. I do suggest carving in the kitchen, since black and shriveled doesn’t really compliment little cousin Amanda’s Thanksgiving centerpiece. The taste, however, more than makes up for any points lost on presentation. Enjoy. Aside from Protecting the Castle… So, what to do with a huge vat of hot oil? If it’ll crank back up to 375 without it smoking, toss in another turkey and do the process all over again. Keep frying turkeys until the oil starts to smoke at the lower temperatures, then it’s time to quit. When finished with the oil, let it cool and return it into the original container(s). Assuming all the frying life has been burned out of it, inquire with the local landfill about upcoming “hazardous waste days.” It’s typically no problem to drop off four gallons of oil at the hazardous waste disposal, but the trash men tend to get grumpy if they find it on the curbside. And don’t go dumping it down the sink. We all know where it flows to from there, and frankly my friends don’t like their backyards reeking of oily Thanksgiving leftovers. They’re kind of funny that way.