by Henry Alva, Flickr Creative Commons
It would be one thing if you wanted to cut up a Butterball and batter it, but whose idea was it to just drop the whole dang turkey in a vat of boiling oil? What’s the point?
Fried turkey aficionados will tell you that deep frying produces a bird that’s moist and delicious without being greasy. I will tell you that I’ve tasted deep fried turkey alongside oven-baked turkey and the only difference I could discern was the extra hundred or so dollars spent on oil and a turkey-frying contraption.
The upside of deep fried turkey is that it frees up oven space for the requisite sweet potato casserole, dressing (not stuffing: Southerners don’t bother with actually stuffing the poultry), rolls, and green bean casserole. The downside is, well, it’s difficult to enjoy dinner when your house is burning down.
Even I, a card-carrying member of the Safety? Schmafety! Society, must confess to feeling uneasy seeing folks frying turkeys in the garage around a bunch of flammable materials. Cars, for instance. Yeah, folks know you’re supposed to fry turkeys outside, far from kids, pets, and other wildlife. But that’s also far from the kitchen. Besides which, it might be raining.
Despite all the exploding turkey stories you hear, misguided fry masters are STILL dropping half-thawed poultry into boiling oil. I don’t imagine they do it more than once, but to paraphrase P.T. Barnum, there’s a nitwit born every minute. Here’s hoping you aren’t married to one. I was going to say “here’s hoping you aren’t related to one,” but realized the odds for that are very, very slim.
Do you enjoy deep-fried turkey more than the regular variety? What am I missing?
stuff southern people like 
You keep me laughing again! This year since we had so many people for Thanksgiving, I bought one pre-cooked smoked turkey (!) and considered heating it up on the little charcoal grill so I could have both turkeys out on the table at once. Instead we did a kind of oven-turkey-shuffle and served one, then the other. It worked fine, with no hazardous gallons of oil to try to dispose of after.
i think you made a wise choice. i’m all about the pre-cooked smoked turkey. my sister and i were assigned to bring a turkey breast at christmas. of course, jenna would not stop complaining about having to bring something she didn’t even like. we had a really hard time locating a pre-cooked turkey breast (seeing as we were shopping on christmas eve). all we could find was frozen solid “turkey breast roast.” huh? then i had the great idea to check the deli. yes! they had smoked turkey breasts for something like ten bucks a pound. how much does that one weigh, i asked. about five pounds…um, no thanks. then we spotted a honey-baked ham display that featured smoked turkey breast. it was pretty awesome! even my turkey-hating sister liked it.