Turkey Day 2008 is finally here, and that means one thing: FOOD! Ok, so it means a lot more than just food, but that was the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving Pregame the day before Turkey Day.
Josh and I have been planning to cook some deep fried turkeys for a few weeks now. Josh took the day off work and so it began!
Things technically kicked off Tuesday night / Wednesday morning. Jared’s mom was nice enough to cook us a pecan pie. This is the first homemade pecan pie I have had (that I recall) and I must say, it was phenomenal! A big thanks goes out to Jared and his mom for the delicious pie.
After doing some last-minute shopping for fresh turkeys and some fire extinguishers, we decided to call it a night at 4:30 am. But we were up bright and early (1:45 pm-ish) on Wednesday to get things started.
A deep fried turkey, much like any other turkey, deserves a good dose of seasoning. Josh picked up three different flavors of injectable turkey marinade for us to try. After it’s all said and done, we will have made five turkeys, so we needed plenty of seasoning.
Here is the deep fryer of choice. Josh selected this one over a propane fryer for safety reasons. This unit operates indoors and is extremely safe compared to traditional fryer setups.
We decided to first cook a turkey breast, which doesn’t have drumsticks, wings, etc. We figured this would be a good test subject. It is shown above after injecting and seasoning rub.
The oil took about an hour to heat, and once it reached 400 degrees, our bird was ready for action.
Strangely enough, the instruction manual directed us to cook the turkey breast, roughly 8 pounds, for much longer than a regular (and larger) bird would cook. We couldn’t figure out the logic behind this, but went ahead and followed the directions like any good chef would.
In the meantime, we tossed this blackberry cobbler in the oven for dessert. With vanilla ice cream in the freezer, this was sure to make a great finish to our meal, which also consisted of some Stove Top stuffing. I never realized how quick and simple that stuff is to make.
After cooking for nearly an hour, the bird was done! Yes, it looks a little crispy, but hopefully the meat would still be good.
My first helping of deep fried turkey for the year!
While the turkey was good, it didn’t live up to its full potential. We made two mistakes on our first try.
We overcooked the turkey. Our next turkey will be cooked per online instructions - 3 minutes per pound plus an additional 5 minutes. Our second mistake was not injecting enough seasoning into the turkey. We only used one plunger full of marinade which clearly wasn’t enough. Good thing we have several more turkeys to fry!
Even though the turkey wasn’t perfect, that didn’t stop Josh, his dad and myself from finishing off the turkey breast!
Mmm, dessert looks good to me!
We ate our dinner and dessert while watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles, a Thanksgiving movie classic. If you haven’t seen this film, do yourself a favor and go pick it up today. It’s beyond hilarious.
And that pretty much wraps up our Thanksgiving Pregame. It’s time for me to hit the bed and get ready for tomorrow - the main course! Check back for another complete update soon!
