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Turkey Fry of 2007

Didn't go home (New Orleans) for family time for Christmas this year. My trip has been "postponed" to a couple weeks later (to be near the Superdome when LSU plays for the BCS NC). My family, all hardcore LSU fans, understand. Instead we decided to fry a turkey on Christmas Eve. My company gives every employee (all 40,000!) a turkey for Christmas. I usually just donate mine (some bowl with it the weekend later), but I took it for some reason this time. I got the wild hair to attempt to fry my turkey in the middle of Theatre Square (downtown Louisville) on Christmas Eve. There was some daunting seconds during the drop, but other than that it went smoothly. We also had trouble getting the oil up over 300 degrees (we guess it was the fact that it was 30 degrees outside!) We added some extra time in hopes it would come out well... and very surprisingly, it was superb. Either we had beginners' luck or there's quite a margin of error of wiggle room when the ultimate outcome is judged against the traditionally baked version. The risk is definitely worth the reward - and it's quite a spectacle if you build a turkey fry derrick like we did. The entire credit for our success on our virgin endeavor goes to Alton Brown's episode on Good Eats (Food Network), which we found available on YouTube. There were multiple possibilities for disaster which we never never would have thought. What brought us home was our commitment by refusing to skimp on his easy, cheap, and safe instruction.
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Two fellow employees on their way out the company's door
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Two fellow employees on their way out the company's door

KentuckyLouisvillebarBBCBluegrass Brewing Companydowntown4th StreetholidayTheater SquareChristmashappy hourCarrie SmithScott Kustes

  • Two fellow employees on their way out the company's door
  • Emma Lou III
  • BBC all in the Christmas spirit.
  • Lucky Strike xmas eve eve party
  • Bowling Clinic
  • Durkin looking like a bad-ass after receiving a pummeling in bowling
  • OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
  • Late xmas eve eve after bowling and drinks
  • Untitled photo
  • This is Only a Test, Part I.<br /> Doing a dry run to test the derrick
  • This is Only a Test, Part II.<br /> Final preparations for the real deal
  • This is Not a Drill, Part I.<br /> The derrick has been placed in position ("the production environment") and we load the turkey into the derrick over the 250 degree pot of oil
  • This is Not a Drill, Part II.<br /> The initial drop of the turkey into the 250 degree pot of oil
  • Not a Drill, Part III.<br /> The last fraction of the turkey drop must take place very slowly. There's two things working against you near the end of the drop: (1) the oil begans to react violently to the part that's already under, and (2) the oil level rises to the top of the pot because of the turkey displacement.
  • Not a Drill, Part IV.<br /> To make sure we had exactly the right amount of oil required, we put the turkey in the pot and added measured amounts of water until it reached the desired cooking level. In our case, it was 4.5 gallons. We only bought 4 gallons of peanut oil... we "borrowed" the rest - of unknown type - from the restaurant's kitchen and mixed them.
  • Not a Drill, Part V.<br /> Finally the turkey is completely submerged and secured. Some scary moments at times, but the majority of the danger was out of the way.
  • Doing its thing. Unfortunately we had a bit of an unexpected issue and had to make a judgement call. You drop at 250 degrees and then crank it up rapidly to 350. Our burner just didn't have the muster to overcome the 30 degree weather. By the time we were supposed to be done cooking, the temperature finally nudged near 300 degrees. We did some calculus, reworked the logarithmic termodynamics involved, and decided we'd let it cook for an additional 65% of its original cook time.
  • We were scheduled to fry three turkeys, but there could be only one. Thanks to the inability of getting the temperature up to level within a reasonable amount time, most people had to go take care of their other Christmas Eve obligations (or just never showed up at all; you know who you are!) There wouldn't be enough people still around to finish off the first one much less dig into a couple more,
  • Capping off a long xmas eve
  • Murphy trying to get into the turkey leftovers
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