I was chatting with my sister about Thanksgiving, and she told me, with some dread in her voice, that her brother-in-law is intending to fry a turkey this year.
I understand the dread. Her BIL's idea of cooking is making a peanut butter sandwich, and he usually makes a mess doing that. He's probably going to burn the house down. (Coincidentally enough, I just saw a tv news story about people doing just that, complete with dramatic film footage of charred rubble that was a deck.)
I first heard of frying turkey a few (ok, I just counted, it's been 12) years ago when I was living in the Deep South. My ex and I had gone to Dillards to buy a huge pot for making beer, and the clerk said "Y'all fixin' to fry a turkey?"
We exchanged confused glances...is there anything Southerns won't fry?
Then we smiled what we hoped were polite smiles and tried to pay for our stockpot and get out of there. Before we could, though, the helpful clerk made us a copy of her own deep-fried turkey recipe. She swore we'd love it.
Gotta admit I never tried it. Something about trying to lower a turkey into a vat of boiling oil using a wire coat hanger didn't appeal to my sense of safety, and that was before I became a safety professional. For that matter, deep-frying one of the healthier meats seemed a little wrong too, and that was before I was health conscious.
When I moved home I filed fried turkey away (along with boiled peanuts, mullet, and swamp cabbage) as foods I never expected to see again. But then like NASCAR the turkey frying phenomenon went national. (Apparently Martha Stewart is to blame...for the turkey, that is, not NASCAR.)
Now Target is selling turkey frying kits and the Underwriters Laboratories is considering them so dangerous they refused to certify a single one.
And I know of at least one guy who can't boil water that's going to be trying his hand at turkey frying, so if you're in the Baltimore area on Thursday you might want to look out for the fire trucks.
Posted by Nic at November 25, 2003 01:09 PM | TrackBack