you bastard. color me jealous. i miss the family turducken. i think we got ours from Hebert's too!

"That is assuming you do defrost the entire bird first."

My wife has told me repeatedly that the bird might explode if you don't defrost it first. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but the thought is pretty scary.

I'm sure not pretty things will happen if you throw a frozen bird in one of the fryers. Intense heat + intense cold == not good usually.

In reply to:

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I'm sure not pretty things will happen if you throw a frozen bird in one of the fryers. Intense heat + intense cold == not good usually.

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I heard a story about someone who once worked at a KFC or similar fast food outlet, who decided when they got bored to toss some ice cubes (from the ice dispenser) into the deep fryer when the fat was all nice and hot to see what would happen.

Apparently, so I was told, nothing happened at first, then after a short (not sure how long) time, the whole fryer began to boil and rumble which got louder and more intense, then the whole fryer load of hot fat erupted and exploded into the ceiling and coated everything around the place with a layer of nice hot fat.

Not sure if it caused a fire, but the fire alarms were triggered, and maybe the sprinklers.

And the whole deep fryer was ruined - something like $40,000 dollars worth of damage all told.

Not sure what happened to the guy who tossed the ice cubes into the fryer - I'd guess he's not working there anymore - if hes lucky, if he's unlucky he probably had years of plastic surgery ahead.

Like I said I only heard this third hand, but adding water/ice to hot fat is generally a recipe for disaster.

They must have put a whole bucket in there. I remember tossing a couple cubes in the fryer when I worked at a resturant in high school with no problems. Now throwing the halloween pumpkins off the roof that was dangerous.

When I was at school, my chemistry teacher used to do a demonstration of why putting water in a pan of hot oil was a bad idea.

He'd take a small pan of boiling oil, and then (with the aid of a long pole), empty a test tube of water into it.

Usually, there'd be a jet of flame tall enough to hit the ceiling. Needless to say, he made his point.

while frying a turkey

Normally I'm all over food threads on the BBS, but I'm still almost completely dumbstruck on this one at the idea of deep-frying a whole turkey.

One of the local papers here has an advert in this week for a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a pheasant, though they don't call it a turducksant but a "turkey ballentine" (OCF and Larousse would call this a "ballotine" or "galantine", and only the last is in OED). Presumably US turduckens and turducksants are boned and rolled, which is what ballotine or galantine implies?

Peter

the "standard" model: a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey

Of course, there were Yorkshire Christmas Pies, but they seem to have become extinct at the end of the nineteenth century. Shame.

Peter

just my 2p (or 2c)
Being from sunny England, the idea of deep frying a turkey or a chicken was OMG all that fat, greasy meat.
Having since moved to Texas and tried it, I can never go back!

"Normally I'm all over food threads on the BBS, but I'm still almost completely dumbstruck on this one at the idea of deep-frying a whole turkey."

Believe me, this is definitely a "don't knock it till you've tried it" kind of thing. Like has been said before in this thread, the frying locks in the juices so what you end up with is juicer meat. You don't (or at least I don't) eat the outside "fried" part, so the only real difference between a traditional turkey and a fried one is the amount of flavor and juiciness. Of course, my wife's family being of Cajun roots means they inject Cajun flavoring before frying, but I'm sure this isn't strictly necessary. I just introduced the concept to some coworkers who thought the idea was strange to say the least, but after trying it they are all true believers now.

Believe me, this is definitely a "don't knock it till you've tried it" kind of thing.

Oh, I don't doubt that it's delicious! I was more dumbstruck at the sheer scale and danger of the undertaking.

You don't (or at least I don't) eat the outside "fried" part

Oooh, isn't that the best bit? I imagine it would end up like turkey-flavoured pork crackling. Mmm...

Peter

I was more dumbstruck at the sheer scale and danger of the undertaking.

If there ain't danger involved, it ain't true Cajun cooking...

[Foxworthy] I've seen my relatives hit boiling pots with a wooden spoon, saying "Geet back in there!" [/Foxworthy]

"Oh, I don't doubt that it's delicious! "

Ah, my misunderstanding then.

In the "For What It's Worth" category, we also have one of those ShowTime Rotisserie cookers, and it does an awesome job of cooking turkeys as well (though much less exciting and dangerous). They come out just about as tasty as the fried ones do, and my wife still uses the flavor injection to make it taste more "Cajun."

I was more dumbstruck at the sheer scale and danger of the undertaking.

To get the fryer to do what they did, you basically have to read the instructions that came with the unit very very carefully. Then, take everything those instructions told you to do and do the complete opposite. You actually have to work at screwing it up as much as they did. Frying turkey is no more dangerous than cooking other kinds of food (except for maybe rattlesnake - catching them is the tricky part ).

> I'm leaving work early, right now, to go pick up our turducken...

Well, Peta has a bone to pick with you then (so to speak):

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/4615352.htm

If there ain't danger involved, it ain't true Cajun cooking...

Ive never heard more true of a statement, and just so those who arent from around anyplace cajun, if you are offered some true cajun gumbo, dont do one of two things:

eat it or ask whats in it.

pick one or the other, dont do both.

Tim's Cajun Kitchen in Hunstville has some good seafood gumbo and gator. The gator heads surrounding the trim of the dining area are kind of intimidating though

You haven't had a tru Edinburgh night out until you've had a smoked sausage supper with salt and sauce (*), deep fried Mars bar for dessert and a litre of Irn-Bru to wash it all down with.

(*) For those who have never been to Edinburgh, there is no sauce which can compare with Edinburgh Chippy Sauce. A wonderful brown sauce unlike anything I've tasted anywhere else around the world. I've even been called upon to take bottles of the stuff over to relatives in Australia and Europe. Mmmmm - feels like lunchtime:-)

Well, suffice to say the turducken was mighty fine, although the true winner of our Thanksgiving was Paul Prudhomme's chicken & andouille sausage gumbo. We followed his recipe pretty closely, including using his "Meat Magic" seasoning (really, it' s just salt and chili powder, but anyway...). We only diverged at the end, adding some more cayenne to heat it up, and some more salt, to tweak the taste. Marvelous.

It's all about the roux. You get that right, and you're golden.

Since we're on the subject of cajun food, try these if you dare.

Pecan Pralines:

3 cups white sugar
1.5 cups light brown sugar
1 can evaporated milk
a pinch of salt
5 Tbs of unsalted butter
2 Tbs of vanilla
2 cups of pecan chips (or 3 cups of halves)

First, melt the butter in a small glass in the microwave set at low power. I usually add the vanilla to the butter here so I can dump it in when it's time.

OK, add the sugar, brown sugar, milk, and salt into a 2-3 quart pot. Boil this until you reach the soft ball stage. (I'll explain later) Once you reach the soft ball stage, add the pecans, vanilla, and melted butter and remove from heat. Mix well, but don't take too long. Drop this by the spoonful onto wax paper layed out on the counter. Let cool, peel, and enjoy.

Soft ball stage: If you have a candy thermometer, soft ball is at 240-242 Farenheit. I hate thermometers, So I use the glass of water method. When you think you're getting close, drip 1 drop of the praline mixture into a glass of water. If it makes a ball and does not fall apart, you're pretty much there. If it collapses, keep on going. This is the hardest part about making pralines. If you quit boiling too soon, they never solidify, too long, and the're hard, which is not usually desireable for real pralines. They'll taste fine, just be too hard.
Too-soft pralines (runny) are a great topping for ice cream, btw!

Paul Prudhomme's chicken & andouille sausage gumbo

Mmm, I've made that from his cookbook a couple of times. Cooking the roux that hot is pretty scary though -- I'd never do it in a skillet, only in the bottom of a big, deep stockpot-type pan.

Peter

I heard a story about someone who once worked at a KFC ... who decided ... to toss some ice cubes into the deep fryer ... then the whole fryer load of hot fat erupted and exploded into the ceiling...

I have thought about this for a while, and I think I know what happened.

The ice would be heavier than the hot oil, and it would sink to the bottom, where it would melt into water. The water, being even heavier than the ice, would all run to the lowest part of the fryer where it would remain, until it absorbed some 540 calories of heat per gram of water, at which point it would all flash over more or less instantaneously into steam (possibly even super-heated steam, given the increase in pressure caused by the weight of the oil above it). That steam would assume a volume many times greater than that of the water from whence it came, and a pressure many times greater than ambient and would displace the oil very quickly as it escaped to a lower pressure environment.

Does this sound right?

tanstaafl.

deep fried Mars bar

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2558221.stm

England fights back in the international frying-the-implausible contest...

Peter

Does this sound right?

That sounds perfect. We need to try it. I think my friend still has enough post-turkey peanut oil, and we have plenty of propane. We could rig a block and tackle and lower a full or half-size block of ice from the 7-11 in there -- kind of like a Super Zerk for the Post-Stoned Age.

If anybody knows what a Zerk is, it's OK if you don't admit it.

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

Hehe, I was like, wait-a-minute!