Here's the Golden Rule With A Fried Turkey: Get the best frier you can, that's safe and allows for a high temp thermometer while cooking. If you have those two things, you can't go wrong!
Cook Time: 1 Day
Note: We created our own version of this recipe to suit our tastes and our likes last year. It was delicious. So it's definitely worth sharing.
For Safety perform a FILL TEST:
(Amended thanks to @jordanlund@lemmy.world) Make sure the power is off and always fill your fryer with water first and then lower the turkey in BEFORE you remove it from the store bought packaging to TEST if the water will fully submerge the turkey without overflow. Jordan suggests you mark your fryer to 1/2 of that water line on the outside of your fryer with a sharpie due to "boilage" of the hot oil. Clean out your fryer, make sure it's dry and fill the cooking oil up to that line. This will prevent piping hot oil spillage which causes fires and injury! You can always add more oil to make sure the turkey is fully submerged.
If you want to avoid the fill test all together, purchase an oil-less turkey fryer.
Frying Tip: Always Use Heat Protection Gloves For Placing And Removing The Turkey From The Frier! Nothing Is Worse Than Burns From Grease Splatter
Ingredients For The Marinade
Worcestershire sauce garlic powder onion powder sea salt Meat Injector lemon juice olive oil and water melted butter thyme rubbed sage
Ingredients For The Rub
seasoning salt garlic powder onion powder sea salt smoked paprika chili powder and fresh ground pepper
You literally could just use salt and pepper and it will have enough flavor, but our tweak to the original recipe called for smoked paprika, instead of just regular paprika and for adding sea salt because it's is a healthier alternative to regular table salt. Yes, it's a fried bird and that's unhealthy enough, but you gotta cut corners somewhere, right?
Directions Perform the FILL TEST before you fry your turkey!
- Once thawed, pat your turkey dry and mix the marinade.
- Inject your turkey in multiple places to get all the marinade in the meat.
- Rub the entirety of the turkey so it's fully seasoned throughout
- Use clingwrap to seal the bird and let it marinate for at least 12 hours. So prepping the night before Thanksgiving will work.
- Pre heat your turkey frier to 275 F with frying oil (peanut or canola is preferred for it's high smoke point)
- Remove the cling wrap from the turkey, add any extra seasoning if the cling wrap removed some.
- Lower the turkey (SLOWLY) into the fryer with a hanging hook and safety gloves.
- Insert the thermometer and increase the cooking temp to 325 F.
- Fry the turkey until the thermometer reaches an internal temp of 165 F.
- Once removed let it rest for 20 minutes before carving!
Link To The Original Recipe Is Here: https://ohsodelicioso.com/how-to-fry-the-best-in-the-world-turkey/
Please visit their website and give them a like, comment and share!
Who's fried a turkey before? Do you plan to this Turkey Season?
A SUPER IMPORTANT NOTE ON THE FILL TEST:
"For Safety perform a FILL TEST: make sure the power is off and always fill your fryer with water first and then lower the turkey in BEFORE you remove it from the store bought packaging to TEST if the water will fully submerge the turkey without overflow. Mark that line on the outside of your fryer with a sharpie. Clean out your fryer, make sure it's dry and fill the cooking oil up to that line. This will prevent piping hot oil spillage which causes fires and injury!"
A buddy and I did this, and we figured "We're smart people, we know about the fill test. We got this."
We used more or less the instructions above, can you tell what's missing? 😉
Oil expands when it gets hot. So when you use cold water to mark a fill line, that's too much oil. Start with 1/2 that, get it hot, then add more oil as needed.
Way easier to add more oil than it is bailing out boiling hot oil to keep it from boiling over.
Guess which one of those two we ended up doing. DOH!
In the end, it was all good, everyone was safe and we had a good turkey in like 45 minutes.
You're absolutely right, that could happen! The recipe will be amended to account for it thanks! Guess if we thought to buy an oil-less fryer that would also fix the problem huh? Ahhh, hindsight is always 20/20. Do you plan on making another fried turkey this year?
I honestly don't know the plan this year. An aunt and uncle are hosting so... 🤷♂️
If it were me, I'd be doing it up on the Big Green Egg, but I guess they have a plan?
I'm taking home made bread and a sweet potato dish people fight over. LOL.
This year, I'm adding a secret ingredient:
https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/bourbon-vanilla-bean-paste-076862
Pro-Tip: If you want to level up your dry rub, add a little of this... not much, it's potent AND expensive:
https://beyondgood.com/products/pure-ground-madagascar-vanilla-powder
We'll see how that goes. I also have someone begging for my banana bread, which also has a secret ingredient:
https://shop.krakenrum.com/products/black-spiced
bourbon vanilla bean paste, wow!