Despite the threat of burning the house down on Thanksgiving, frying has become a very popular method for cooking the holiday turkey. Fans of deep-fried turkey rave about its moist, succulent texture, as well as its conveniently short cooking time. I love that frying turkey frees up an oven for more side dishes. Also frying turkey parts is a great option for small gatherings, and doesn’t require a big turkey fryer.

However, traditionalists may view roasting turkey as a sacred holiday ritual. In any case, if the turkey is properly prepped, it’s still delicious roasted. And one other advantage to roasting is that you’ll get better gravy by using the pan juices produced during roasting.

The question of whether to fry or not to fry may be largely determined by how risk-averse you are. The dangers of turkey frying are all too real. Before you fry your turkey, you should watch this video to know what you might be in for:

Frying Turkey

Alton Brown has an episode on frying turkey that shows you how to fry turkey safely. You can see the episode on YouTube (part 1, part 2, part 3). I like Alton’s emphasis on safety in this episode, but his contraption for lowering the turkey seems really over-the-top, and not much safer than getting a friend to help you lower the turkey with a broom handle (like the firemen do in video embedded above), but the episode is still a good watch. For something like turkey frying, it’s better to watch how it’s done rather than just read about it.

Here are some more links to essential safety tips for frying turkey:
http://www.ul.com/consumers/turkeys.html
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml04/04041.html

You can search our site to find lots of deep-fried turkey recipes with ideas for marinades and rubs.

Roasting Recipes

The variations on roasting turkey are seemingly endless, but before you pick some unique combination of flavors, I think it’s important that you get the basic cooking method right first.

It seems that many recipes err on the side of safety (ie. overcooking) when determining the proper temperatures for roasting turkey. Most recipes call for roasting at 325 degrees, but taste tests show that you get better results in both meat and skin texture if you roast most of the time at a higher temperature (400-425 degrees). Many recipes also advise you to cook until the thigh’s temperature reads 180 degrees, but if you do, the breast will likely be completely dried out. Cooking the thigh to 165-170 degrees will result in a fully-cooked turkey that is still moist.

This old article from the San Francisco Chronicle has a great roundup of all the different cooking variables and the results. Here’s even more details on this turkey experiment.

If you get the brining/salting and temperatures right, you’re 95% of the way there. So you’ve got a really solid foundation to play around with your own herbs, spices, and flavorings if you choose.

Here’s a roundup of some of great recipes on basic roast turkey from around the web:

• The Simplest Roast Turkey (Gourmet Magazine)
• Classic Roast Turkey (Cooking For Engineers)
• Mom’s Roast Turkey (Simply Recipes)
• Roast Salted Turkey (LA Times)

And, of course, you can search for hundreds of roast turkey recipes here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.