What’s In Your Kitchen?
I had dinner Friday night with my 24 year old son and his girlfriend. I gave him a couple of hand me downs from my kitchen, and as usual, he was grateful and responded “I don’t know where I’m going to put this, but thank you.”
I came home, got online and read a negative post on one of the forums criticizing someone else’s cookware. A young woman who had posted a picture of her new pan was crushed when a person felt the need to degrade the maker of her pan and then proceeded to post a picture of their whole set of high end cookware.. I felt so sorry for this young woman that I thought about her all day Saturday.
A Family Trip -The Philadelphia Market
After all the holiday fanfare, I thought it would be great to get everyone involved in a day trip for a culinary expedition. Philadelphia, here we come! First stop, Chinatown, for dim sum. This does require an adventurous spirit towards eating. However, if you have children, I believe it is an invaluable experience. I credit the reason my kids will eat almost anything is they have been exposed since toddlers to “unusual” foods.
After lunch, we traveled across the street to the Chinese markets where we purchased rice, soy sauce, mirin, rice noodles, and everything else we just “had” to have.
After that, the Philadelphia Reading Market, on 12th & Arch Streets, Philadelphia! I wholeheartedly recommend if you are within driving distance of this market, that you plan on visiting (don’t forget to pack your cooler). There is every type of meat, poultry, cheese, pasta, bread, salad, spice and food imaginable.
Additionally, there is a wine vendor, cookbook store, fine linens, and various other vendors. There are many places to eat as well. Basically if you can think of it, they have it there. I live in rural America, so some items that are easily available in the city are impossible to get without the internet or a road trip.
When I only need an item or two, obviously the internet is easier, but when I want to stock up or just see the quality of what I’m purchasing, there is nothing like a road trip to Philly, DC or Baltimore to see the items at hand. I prefer the Philadelphia Market to any other in the tri-state area. The quality is phenomenal and the vendors are especially helpful when you are outside the domain of your experience (I am a novice at wines and they continue to help me “choose” the right wine for my recipes.)
I consider the road trip an excuse to get the whole family involved. I have the kids look up and down the aisles for this or that and my youngest loves looking at all the lobsters and Dungeness crabs in the tanks, My husband fed at appropriate intervals (which I admit might only have a ten minute span with all the vendors) is happy as a clam.
On the drive home, silence… Bellies full, walked out, they sleep…… My husband and I enjoy a quiet talk and our music for a change. I can’t imagine a more perfect day and one I recommend you consider for your family next time you can’t think of anything different to do on Saturday or Sunday. It does require planning both in time and money, but if you can pull it off, it really is a great way to include your family in the whole culinary experience.
Forget The New Year’s Resolutions -Set New Goals For the Kitchen
Instead of making a resolution (to do without something) that won’t last a month, this year I’m pledging something positive. I’m setting goals for myself in the kitchen that I normally wouldn’t tackle.
I love to cook. Baking, however, is another thing entirely. Correction, I love to bake cookies, pies, cakes, muffins, anything not involving yeast.
This year I am raising the bar on the things I’m going to make in the kitchen to include the things that I don’t like to make. I don’t like to make bread because I’m not good at it, Truth is, I’m not good at it because a) I rarely make bread and I haven’t had enough practice; b) I haven’t researched really good recipes for bread like I have the recipes for cooking that I’m interested in; and c) I haven’t made it a priority.
This year, I vow to make bread and rolls that require yeast. I will still make my signature banana nut bread, but I will make Challah, my grandmother’s fluffy rolls, Italian and French bread before the end of 2012. If I feel adventurous, I will undertake pretzels. I will subject my family as guinea pigs and will probably need to live through several failed attempts before I get it right.
But wait, isn’t that how all of us learned to cook? What’s been stopping me? You guessed it – Me. Numerous things I felt were daunting at the beginning have been overcome in the kitchen. I remember when I felt like I would never succeed at soufflés, perfect fried chicken (without burning it or serving it half raw), homemade gravy or deboning a chicken. I wanted to master those things and I did.
So this year, I plan on mastering the art of yeast and kneading. I plan on serving hot rolls with my roasts and warm challah bread for my French toast. Well, that’s my plan at least. I trust that you will help keep me on track when you don’t see any bread on here and it’s June
Giving up a resolution might actually be something all foodies should do. Unite! Raise the bar on yourself this year, Try that recipe you’ve been afraid to attempt. Make pasta from scratch. Make homemade pickles – whatever you’ve wanted to try and didn’t because of lack of confidence, give it a go in 2012. What have you got to loose? It can’t be any worse than giving up on a resolution, right?
The Saga of Cooking software
After years of binders, recipes boxes, file folders and various other methods of keeping all the recipes I’ve clipped from magazines organized, I broke down and purchased recipe software from Cook’n.
I read all the reviews, I pondered the cost. I thought long and hard about whether I would devote the time to actually loading all those recipes (since time is something I don’t seem to have enough of – why you ask did I start a blog? Crazy I guess). I waited for the CD to come. It arrived in a brown box – a secret from my family who already thought I was insane with the whole “cooking thing”. I installed it and then the real trouble began. I became obsessed with entering recipes every spare moment I had.
You can create a menu for the week and the software will create your grocery list from the recipes you’ve chosen. I had the only typed grocery list at the local market. Now my family could make fun of me in earnest. Even my butcher, Earl, thinks I’m tweaked. I spent Sunday nights pouring over all the possibilities to create the next 5 days meals. 2 nights beef, 2 nights ethnic, 1 night chicken? The possibilities were endless and for several weeks I had enormous grocery bills from creating my gourmet menus. Finally, I returned back to earth.
After that stage, I entered the collect more cookbooks stage, as if I didn’t already have enough recipes to enter. Somehow I envisioned I would have the largest compilation of recipes ever. Bananas Foster, got it. Coconut custard pie, Turducken, check and check. The honest truth is that all of these are already available on the internet. I was completely hooked.
There are numerous reasons that owning the software is a blessing. I finally took all my old family recipes from their yellowed recipe cards and have them in one place. Not to mention all the magazine clippings from 1991 from Southern Living. I can search for a recipe by an ingredient. If I have left over turkey – I search turkey in the software and every recipe comes up to choose from. Have pork loin in the freezer I need to use and no great ideas? Cook’n. it’s motivated me to keep that meat moving. It also has allowed me to enter recipes from cookbooks that I had been saving for just one or two recipes. Then I was able to paperbackswap them (there’s an additional article here on this site) and get more cookbooks, which led to more obsessive behavior.
I can search internet recipes and enter them directly or I can print out a cookbook for my niece of my mother’s and grandmother’s recipes for a gift. For those of you watching sodium or fat, it has nutritional values associated with most recipes. It was easy enough for me to figure out how to use (which was the real bonus after having a previous company’s software which had such a long learning curve I gave up on using it.)
Apparently they have started an app for your smart phone, but I’m not that techno savvy yet. I just wanted to have all my recipes together, organized and not in several places with no way to identify where my Christmas cookie recipes were.
If I had to focus on one item it does for me – it’s the grocery list. Having a full time job, husband, kids and the life that most of us are living today, I can pull a menu together – hit the grocery list button – check off what I already have in the house – and print. It shows the quantities needed as well as the item. It makes my grocery shopping a breeze compared to the old days.
All in all, Cook’n was a very good investment in my house of both money and time. It is foodie software. I bought Cook’n for my friend and she used it for about 2 weeks and reported back to me saying that “it’s too much work to enter the recipes.” She ended up buying numerous e-cookbooks off of the Cook’n website and she enjoys her software that way. She hasn’t added any new recipes in over a year, but claims that the Cook’n cookbooks are more than enough. I guess not everyone caught the bug like me. But if you’ve got the itch for organization and new recipes….. this is foodie genius.
Cookbook Enthusiasts – A Great Way to Swap Cookbooks – Paperbackswap.com
I came to a great place several years ago that allowed swapping of paperbacks, hardbacks and Audio books, not to mention textbooks. I joined this group because my niece who is an avid reader recommended the site to me because you can “recycle” your previously read books for credits and redeem your credits for a book you haven’t read. What a great concept. Unlike the library, you can choose to keep your books or pass them on. I started getting my daughter her “tween books” at this site because I had no interest in keeping them.
After about 6 months it dawned on me that this would be a great way to get cookbooks for only the price of a used paperback and postage. So I scrounged up the cookbooks whose recipes were already loaded in my cooking software and posted them onto the website. I had 6 requests on night one. I had credits to use! And so my addiction to Paperbackswap.com began.
The rules: You load 10 books into their system – they give you 2 credits to start. As your books are requested – you ship them (and when they are received) you get a credit. You then can use credits to redeem on any book they have on the site (you can also wish for books that aren’t listed currently). You can turn books around after you have read them or keep them. The sender pays postage on the book they are shipping. It’s that easy.
So, now I have stacks (literally) of cookbooks surrounding me in my office that I am supposed to (in my spare time) be entering into my cooking software. I have received the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, Mario Batali, Tyler Florence, Jamie Oliver, old southern cookbooks (excellent fried chicken recipe) and ethnic cookbooks from Morocco, Asia and Greece, just to name a few.
I have traded for books that, quite frankly, I wasn’t willing to shell out $30 for, but I would take a gamble and try with paperbackswap. If I didn’t like it, I reentered it into their system and said goodbye to a less than stellar cookbook. I have traded out great cookbooks and the not so great. I have also found a great resource for some of the really old cookbooks that I love. All the old paperbacks in my home (not necessarily cooking related) have been traded for cookbooks. The only problem now – where am I going to put all these cookbooks?
A Kitchen Plan – Ways to Save Money and Time
January is here and most of us overspent on the holidays in so many ways we probably don’t even want to check the balances in our accounts. After spending some time with my 24 year old son who had to stretch his budget for the holiday season, I got to thinking of both ways to save your time and money, not just during this season, but all year long.
Some of these ideas I’m sure you already know, but I’m always interested in the small little tip that I didn’t even think about, so I added what I thought my son could benefit from. I would love to hear any other ideas you have.
1. Plan your meals for the week. I will post separately how buying recipe software has saved me thousands with a family my size, but in a household of two it will help also. The number one way planning your meals helps is by making a concrete grocery list and sticking (as close as possible – I’m not counting in the occasional Reese’s peanut butter cup or gossip magazine) to your budget. It also assists you in gauging how much all those recipes are going to cost you. This is helpful during holiday times or birthday dinners when you are having company over to get a good running guess of how much money serving that standing rib dinner is actually going to set you back. The cooking software is an added bonus in helping with this task. Also planning meals that focus on vegetables rather than the meat is a way to save money as well. Stir fry, frittatas, Panini’s, as well as meals that use rice, potatoes, tortillas or other items that stretch the budget have been used for centuries to stretch a budget.
2. While I’m a fan of some major brands, don’t forget the store brands. Many items really are fine as store brands including milk, eggs, flour, sugar, some canned or frozen vegetables (you’ll need to try these to see if you like them), Save the splurge items for things you really won’t bend on – like Hellman’s Mayonnaise or Heinz Ketchup for example. The store brands seem to save you anywhere from 20 – 40%. I know the bakers out there will tell me there is a difference in all the flours, and there is, but for the millions that don’t bake often, the difference in cost will not be felt in a recipe that calls for 2 tablespoons flour.
3. Make sure you check the size and price difference. Example – a 16 oz can vs. the 32 oz can price difference. A lot of times it is cost prohibitive to buy the small can. You can always do something else with that large can of tomatoes (part of that weekly meal plan) to use them which will only save you more money. Don’t overbuy based on a store special, i.e., buy 10 get 1 free, if it’s something you don’t use often. It doesn’t do you any good to have 11 avocados if you don’t plan on making guacamole for a party – they are going to spoil before you use them.
4. Shop the bottom shelves. Most super markets are paid to place items at eye level and the cheaper products are on the bottom shelf. This is especially true of items like juice, cookies and chips. If you are shopping snack foods – make sure to keep an eye on the bottom shelves of your local market.
5. Know the items you use the most in your household and stock up when they are on sale or use one of the bulk store warehouses. This makes a big difference on paper products, laundry detergent and shampoo. For household groceries, if you eat a lot of chicken in your house, make sure to take advantage of your local market’s sale on chicken breasts (for example) and use some for a recipe this week and freeze the rest. Don’t forget to mark what date you are putting on that chicken (addressed in item #7).
6. Eat with the season, right now, use acorn and butternut squash, not asparagus. Utilize #7 to have that asparagus during the off season, but buying asparagus fresh out of season means your not only paying more – it’s likely to not be as “good” either. Buy at the local farmer’s markets. I support my local economy and I buy fresh. It’s always better than my local grocery store and usually cheaper as well. This is especially great if you can or freeze because they usually discount in bulk.
7. Use the freezer. Freeze your leftovers. Most food, not all, can be frozen and used later. Stockpile seasonal ingredients like fruits and freeze them for a time when, for example, peaches are not in season, and then you can make a peach pie that takes like its August. There are those who stockpile bread when it is on sale and freeze it. I personally don’t care for thawed bread, but it’s a great idea for saving money. I think it’s also a great money saving idea to stock up on many items that freeze well – homemade chicken, beef and shrimp stock, your spaghetti sauce, chili, just to name a few. This also offers a great Wednesday night option when you didn’t plan a meal and want to escape the price of take out. You can also use this to take lunch to work rather than buy lunch out.
8. Plan a leftover night or freezer pull out night. Use only items that are leftover in the fridge or freezer and use them up before they go bad. Turn that leftover chicken into soup or maybe a Panini. This saves a ton of money in the long run.
9. Save all the items you use in the kitchen. I keep many marked huge Ziploc bags in my freezer constantly. The first is the bread crumbs bag. I buzz (with food processor) all the ends of my bread loaves, rolls, etc., to become bread crumbs (which I can season as I like) and freeze them. They take only minutes to thaw out and I never have to buy store bought bread crumbs (with the exception of Panko). The second bag is all the vegetables I am not going to use before they go bad (the last stalk of carrot or celery, cut and place in Ziploc bag) for later use as soup. The third bag is for homemade stock. I save the ends of carrots, onions, garlic, potatoes, whatever and keep this bag for the stockpot for stock. The fourth bag is for bones, etc., also good for stock.
10. Make your own stock, it saves you a ton of money over store bought and it’s healthier. It is also the base for every good chicken or beef soup. Which you can turn into a great vehicle to use up leftover meats. You can vary it just by changing the spices used which also helps you to use up spices that might be near their expiration date.
11. Using up spices before they expire. This was a real challenge for me. I am a spice hoarder. Which requires me to rotate often and use spices when I really don’t want to use Garam Masala for 4 nights in a row. The first idea is if you are using a great deal of dried spices in your home, buy online at larger quantities as it is significantly cheaper and usually the quality is better. When you are getting too close to expiration date, make up a spice blend and use on steaks or chicken.
12. For those of us bent on fresh herbs, get a couple of pots and invest in a small area for home grown herbs. This will save you money all the time and it’s easy (I do not have a green thumb and even I can do it). Only grow the herbs you use all the time, example, basil, parsley, oregano, because once it takes off, you won’t use that lemongrass quite like you think you will. (My family could tell you about having to consume more rosemary then they wanted to one year after I planted 10 plants). If you really wanted to get fancy – there are numerous books on the subject of drying your own herbs. I decided to skip that part. If you have the room, growing a garden in season is a great idea, but is an investment of time and money. Make sure you are going to follow through for several months and plan how to use all the items you plant so that it doesn’t become a waste of money in the end or the great giveaway to all your friends.
13. Plan your splurges. I don’t think living on a shopping budget means never getting to have a lobster or mangos or whatever item is your idea of deliciousness. It means that if I’m going to have a lobster (for my husband’s birthday for example) – I take that into consideration when planning that week’s meals. Maybe we need to have meatloaf or chicken soup with sandwiches another night for dinner. Plan wisely and you can have it all.
14. Don’t let your lack of know how stop you. With the advent of the internet, a recipe and directions for whatever you would like to have are readily available. If your passion is paella, learn how to make it via a reliable internet source, and make it at home rather than going to the expensive Spanish restaurant. Try to get other people in your house involved. It’s fun to experiment and it makes the evening a real entertainment source as well. This also reminds me to buy your ethnic foods at ethnic stores (if possible) – rice is literally half the price at the Asian market over my local grocery store and the quality of the rice is far superior. I utilize any ethnic market I can find. Latin, Asian, Middle Eastern. If I pass one, I stop in and see what I need that will store well, including spices.
15. Get creative – use those leftover vanilla beans to put in a jar with sugar to make your own homemade vanilla sugar. Make your own flavored oils. Add some garlic to your olive oil bottle and make your own garlic oil. If you use pretty jars, these also make great gifts to other foodies. If you are really creative, learn to make your own jam – this saves tons of money and helps stock your pantry for many recipes and just really good peanut butter and jam sandwiches. I am going to learn to pickle this year. (Stay tuned next fall for my family complaining about having pickles at every meal).
16. Have pets? Notice all the fancy new pet foods contain all natural ingredients? It’s cheaper to buy tuna on sale than it is cat food. Mix your cat tuna with some left over veggies mashed for a healthy, cheaper food or buy the butcher’s leftover meat scraps and add rice for a cheaper and healthier dog food.
17. Start a buying club in your area – I love this idea and I am currently trying to get this off the ground where I live – get together with 3 other foodies to purchase items together in bulk. You can buy case lots, sides of beef, half a pig, etc., and split it equally. Food wholesalers will also sell to you at discount if you have a minimum order. If you’re on the East Coast like me, Food Wholesalers is a source for purchasing wholesale items in bulk. If you live in the mid-west or west coast, do a search for wholesalers in your area. It only takes a lead person, some organization and the desire to budget and buy quality products. Otherwise, if you’re like me you end up owning almost 9 pounds of Parmigiano Reggiano.
18. Don’t waste, rinse out your tomato cans and canned soups with a little water or milk to get everything out. Use dried cheeses up by grating and using as a topping before they go bad. Soften your hard brown sugar by putting a slice of bread into the bag (I recommend using one of those inexpensive brown sugar blocks in your Ziploc bag – that was money well spent); Reuse bags – all bags. Ziploc bags, bagel bags, shopping bags. I don’t reuse them if they require washing, but I do when they only held bread. Reheat stale chips and use as taco salad. Make your own buttermilk or half and half rather than paying full bang at the grocery store. It’s cheaper to buy the cream and add it to milk to make half and half than buy the half and half. The buttermilk is 1 cup milk with 1 tablespoon cream of tarter or lemon juice added. If you’re a real baker, there is a slight taste difference, but not enough for the average at home recipe and there is a significant cost savings.
I know there are those that are going to tell me about unplugging your appliances when you are not using them (I don’t do this, but it is a real savings I’m told), keeping your refrigerator at the right temperature, not opening the door more than necessary, don’t leave your tap water running for extended periods – fill the tub and don’t keep running it to wash dishes. There are more ways to save money (and a thousand websites that can give you more than I can think of) but these are a good start. I would love to hear your ideas and thoughts about creative (and reasonable) ways to save money in the kitchen.
Making turducken at home?
Turducken is a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey with alternating layers of stuffing between. When carved you will get a slice with chicken, duck, turkey and stuffing.
Having had turducken previously, I checked my favorite company out of Louisiana to purchase a turducken for my mother last year. She thought the price was steep at $69.95 plus $50 dollars to ship (14 lbs – over night). There had to be a way to make this culinary phenomenon at home.
The list of ingredients:
- 3 cups prepared stuffing at room temperature (whatever stuffing is your families favorite)
- 2 cups cornbread stuffing at room temperature
- 1/2 cup cranberry sauce
- 1 10 – 12 pound turkey (which you will need to debone)
- 1 4- 5 pound duck (which you will have to debone)
- 1 3-4 pound chicken (which you will have to debone)
- 6 Tablespoons butter, room temperature
- 8 fresh sage leaves, chopped fine
- 2 Tablespoons fresh thyme leaves, chopped fine
- 6 tablespoons butter, room temperature
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Mix about 1 cup of stuffing with about 1/2 cup of your cornbread stuffing with the 1/2 cup of cranberry sauce. You should now have 3 separate bowls of stuffing.
Mix 6 tablespoons room temperature butter with the chopped thyme and sage.
Debone turkey, duck and chicken – this will take a LONG time.
Pull skin from turkey and make a pocket and put butter mixture evenly under the skin.
Run your hand under the skin to separate and make a pocket, but do not separate skin completely from the meat. Distribute the butter herb mixture evenly under the skin.
Rub the turkey skin with room temperature butter. Be generous with the salt and pepper and this point. Lay turkey skin side down and add salt and pepper.
Add plain bread stuffing evenly over turkey; place duck on top of stuffing skin side down; salt and pepper the cavity and add the stuffing with cranberry to the top of it. Add chicken skin side down and salt and pepper again. Add cornbread stuffing on top. Skewer the chicken closed and bring the sides of the duck up to cover the chicken. Skewer the back of the duck. Repeat with the turkey. Carefully turn over the turducken so it is breast side up. Remove all skewers except the last one holding the turkey. Place in roasting pan. Roast 3 – 4 hours (basting every 45 minutes or so). During last hour of cooking, I recommend adding aluminum foil to the top of the turducken to make sure it doesn’t overbrown. Check temperature on turducken to make sure that the stuffing is at 165 degrees.
After removing turducken from oven, let it rest for at least 30 minutes.
Yes it was tasty. The work was unbelievable! The hardest part for me was worrying about cross-contamination. I must have cleaned every knife, cutting board and the countertops so many times I was exhausted before I even began stuffing the 3 birds together. Food safety is a big thing with me and this recipe is a nightmare in a home kitchen. Between 3 different types of fowl and worrying about cross contamination with the stuffing, I had just about used every cutting board and knife I owned to complete this meal. Not to mention the over 45 hand washings! After I completed this meal I had to do a complete scrub of the entire kitchen.
In addition, I started this prep at 5 am and didn’t serve the turducken until almost 1 pm. I admit I didn’t rush, but deboning and cleaning 3 fowl is not an easy task if you don’t do it often. Not to mention making 2 complete stuffing recipes from scratch. This did not include any of the time after the meal for my obsessive cleanup or the amount of dishes and pots, pans, knifes and cutting boards you will need to wash. It was a crazy amount of cleaning.
Unless you can purchase your turkey, chicken and duck already deboned (assuming you live in NYC or another metropolitan city), this recipe is an incredible amount of work. The stuffing is the easy part.
So this year when my 81 year old mother asked for turducken, I looked at the $69.95 plus $50 shipping as a gift. $120 includes all the ingredients, all the sanitation and all I need is a roasting pan and some butter? I’m in! Good luck to them in Louisiana making this thing since I think the 3 sets of stuffing and birds would probably cost $70 at the grocery store to purchase. I figure the $50 to ship is the cost to not have to spend a day deboning and cleaning, not to mention the cost of all the cleaning supplies and hand soap.
I ordered a turducken from LA Crawfish and slapped it in a roasting pan and set the table. I was able to sit with everyone during the family get together rather than being a crazy woman. When it was done – savory goodness with only normal dishes to clean. What a joy!
While some might look at the prices for this unusual culinary treat as high, until you have actually spent an entire day schlepping with a turducken, I wouldn’t say the price is unreasonable. It’s an expensive dinner – not unlike having lobster.
All in all, it’s a definite cooking experience. One I’m glad to have had and one I’m not likely to repeat again. I will just let LA Crawfish do the work!
To fry or not to fry?
That is the question. This thanksgiving thousands of American families will make the choice to roast or fry a Turkey.
I have gone through the arduous task of frying a turkey at home. You have to keep in mind several preparatory tasks.
1. Call insurance company and up home owner’s policy by the actual amount you need to replace not only your home but the entire contents of your home as well.
2. Buy flame retardant clothing AND a fire extinguisher (yes there is a strong chance that there will be a fire.)
3. Call Exxon and see if they have enough oil for this job.
4. Purchase turkey fryer (this is the part where you justify a totally one use pot by stating to your significant other “it’s not that much money, we can also use it to cook crabs and/or lobsters during the summer.)
5. Take trip to your local hardware store where you purchase tons of materials (at great expense) to construct some sort of “safe” lifting apparatus which will NOT prevent burns.
6. After filling pot with oil, you will realize that you should of measured the turkey in some water first because when you submerge your turkey the oil overflows causing the fire mentioned in #2 above.
7. Pull totally overcooked or half raw turkey from oil (after fire department has left) to guests who are ravenous because your dinner is 2 hours later than originally planned.
8. Take entire family out for local Chinese buffet because it is the only restaurant open locally.
I have too much invested in this one use pan to give up on it. I will give frying turkey another try. This time better planning is in order.
1. Buy turkey cooker – hopefully you purchase one with a lifting device included
*26-quart: for frying a 12- to 14-pound turkey
*34-quart: for frying a 14- to 20-pound turkey
*40-quart: for turkeys larger than 20 pounds
2. Get propane tank filled (try finding someplace open on Thanksgiving that sells Propane – good luck – enjoy your Chinese Buffet restaurant if you didn’t plan for this in advance.
3. Purchase turkey. I recommend a bird no larger than 3/4 the circumference of the pot or less than 16 pounds. It needs to either be a fresh bird or already defrosted and washed and dried thoroughly. I mean really dry. It also should not have anything left inside or pop up timers left in. In addition, I recommend tying the legs, wings and neck flap to ensure even cooking and this allows for safe removal of the bird from the oil. (Emergency room visits do not add to the holiday spirit).
4. Purchase good quality bulk peanut oil (yes I said peanut oil – if you have a nut allergy, my second recommendation would be good vegetable oil.)
5. Purchase Long-stemmed, clip-on deep-fry thermometer: This should be at least 12 inches long. Sometimes these are included in a turkey fryer kit.
6. Totally optional but if you want a flavor Injector: This is a syringe used for injecting flavored marinade into the turkey meat. You don’t have to inject a turkey to fry it, but it adds flavor. You could also add an optional rub for the bird as well.
7. Purchase Heavy-duty leather work gloves: A must, since equipment gets skin-blistering hot, and grease may splatter on your hands. Cotton gloves and kitchen hot mitts don’t work!
8. Purchase accurate Instant-read meat thermometer.
9. Look around the house for a couple of old towels and several trash bags..
10. Make sure (if at all possible) you do this chore outside. DO NOT do this on your deck or if there is a problem prepare to meet your local firemen again. (Hospitality rules require that if the fire department has to visit your house more than once you owe them dinner which will definitely tack on to the tab at the Chinese restaurant.)
11. Set turkey inside pot and fill with water until turkey is submerged. Remove turkey. Mark line with tape on the outside of the pot at the top of where water remains. Dump water and dry pot. Fill with oil to fill line.
12. I like to brine my turkey and then apply a dry rub. Another option is to inject a flavor marinade (many are available at every mega-mart grocery store in the country.) Whichever is your personal preference is great, but MAKE SURE TURKEY IS DRY BEFORE SUBMERGING IN OIL – WATER CAUSES OIL TO SPLATTER! Which subsequently can result in that aforementioned fire department/ambulance crew again!
13. Heat oil (use oil thermometer in pot) to 350 – 360 degrees. This usually takes approximately 30 minutes to come to temperature. I recommend using the following lifter if your pot did not come with one: turkey lifter
I also recommend lifting with a strong man if available (lure him with the promise of turkey) and SLOWLY drop in the turkey (I recommend cutting the propane off temporarily in this step in case the oil splatters to avoid a fire). The oil temperature will drop at this point, but it will return to 350 degrees after a few minutes.
Cooking times vary based on the length of time for the oil to return to temp again, but the average rule of thumb is minimally 3 – 4 minutes per pound, but the only real way to test is an accurate instant read thermometer. Unfortunately, once the skin is brown it is impossible to know. I know some of you will say the old poke the turkey with a fork routine and see if the juices run clear, but unless you are planning on poking this thing every 6 1/2 minutes – this will lead to missing the mark. Basically if you are cooking a 10 pound bird, approximately 30 minutes at 350 degrees for doneness (this is only a guide) .
14. Since I allow for carryover cooking, I normally pull the bird (or actually I have strong man pull the bird) at 152 – 155 degrees on the instant read. I shut off the burner and SLOWLY pull the bird out. I let the bird rest a minimum of 20 minutes but up to an hour. The turkey should read at least 160 degrees in the breast meat after 20 minutes.
15. Take turkey to platter, carve and enjoy. Despite what you might think if you’ve never tried fried turkey, the meat will not be dry. The turkey will be crispy, juicy and delicious!
16. Don’t forget the oil in the pot stays hot for a LONG time. Don’t forget about kids or pets outside after you have removed the bird. After the oil cools, you can recycle it if you care to take the trouble to filter it for another turkey/chicken fry (since we are talking about gallons of oil here).
All in all, It’s definitely worth the effort. My family enjoyed the turkey immensely. Our first attempt felt like a lot more work than the second and third. As with anything, once you have the basic steps down, it is really quite easy. The downside would definitely be the cleanup. After the exhaustion sets in Thanksgiving afternoon, having to face recycling oil and cleaning an oily pan as big as this one isn’t exactly one of life’s greater moments. And, truth be told, I’m a traditionalist at heart. While I love fried turkey and will cook one again, I think I’ll leave this delicious meal for a day other than Thanksgiving. Some people believe this to be the ultimate Thanksgiving meal and if it works for your family, then fry on!
Bottom line, if you’re tied of the same old, same old – and you are looking to mix it up this Thanksgiving, I recommend you try a fried turkey.
