Remember…
A bit of classic humor from good friend of this blog Lee Shelton who first created this pic in 2009 🙂
(In case anyone’s wondering, I will sadly not be deep frying a Thanksgiving turkey this year. Maybe for Christmas though…)...
Longtime readers of this blog know well my fondness for deep-fried turkey. It’s an art that I’ve been doing since Thanksgiving 2002 and I take it very seriously. For me there is no finer way to cook a bird as magnificent as the American turkey than to fry it in a cauldron of hot peanut or cottonseed oil (your preference) for forty minutes or so. It makes the meat VERY juicy and tender. And there’s the machismo thing going there: Turkey frying really is quite a manly task to perform. It’s so potentially dangerous. Precautions must absolutely be taken to ensure safety for all involved. I’m as professional as one is apt to be without doing this for a full-time living but keeping everyone safe is something I don’t mess around with. Unfortunately there are always the troublemakers that turn up every Thanksgiving who have to show us now ...
Kristen’s brother Scott Bradford was a witness to the turkey deep-frying on Thanksgiving two days ago. While maintaining a safe distance (and maybe more than that) he shot some terrific video of the action. Scott edited it together and now for your viewing pleasure y’all can watch the searing heat and tormentuous oil in all its glory!!
Scott also posted the video on his own blog, and he testifies to the exquisite and juicy taste that in a turkey can only be achieved by frying it....
Another Thanksgiving has come… and with it, once again, another round of Yours Truly doin’ up some deep-fried turkey!
This year’s Thanksgiving was special, in a number of ways. For one, I’m spending it with Kristen and her family. For another, this marks my tenth anniversary of deep-frying turkey! So for those reasons and more, I wanted this one to be extra special.
Here’s the turkey chosen to be sacrificed to the flames and the oil. I found one weighing-in at just under 15 pounds: the perfect mass to feed a gang of six! What you see here is the turkey on the spit ready to be fried, after spending thirty-three hours of being marinaded and rubbed down with Cajun seasoning.
In this next photo the oil is almost hot enough to lower the turkey in. The cooking temperature is 350 Fahrenheit. I heat it up to 375 though to ...
When I first posted about this Thanksgiving’s deep-fried turkey earlier this evening, I forgot to mention that for this past holiday’s music to fry to, I chose to use Steve Jablonsky’s soundtrack for Gears of War 3. Should have made a note of that earlier ‘cuz hey, that kind of thing is important to my personal ritual of deep-frying turkey. Kristen and my friends that I was frying for all thought that it was a terrific score and perfect for the occasion 🙂
Well, a short while ago Kristen surprised me with this video that she put together of me preparing the turkey in the kitchen and then putting it into the oil… which turned out to be the most dangerous bird that I have yet to fry!! No seriously: a tiny bit of hot oil jumped up and hit me in the face. It startled me for a ...
As I have done (most) Thanksgivings since 2002, I deep-fried some turkey! Just now getting the pics up ‘cuz my girlfriend Kristen stayed here for the holiday: our first Thanksgiving together! And she was the one taking the pics and I hadda wait until she got back home to pull them to her computer and send them to me. So for those who had wondered if I fried turkey this year: ohhhhh yeah!!
In fact, I fried two birds this Thanksgiving. The first for another family that are good friends of mine, and the second was ours. Kristen was there to photo document most of the entire process.
Here I am with that crazy look that I get whenever my mouth starts salivating for fried turkey. It was probably a good thing that Kristen spent this Thanksgiving with me: she got to see how I really am when it comes ...
Janet “Big Sister” Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security (okay let’s be fair, it was George W. Bush’s “brilliant” idea first) has decided that turkey fryers are a dire threat to national security. “Make sure the turkey is completely thawed before placing in a fryer”, the DHS is warning in a new video.
Hey, Janet Napolitano: I’m a hella lot safer with my turkey deep-fryer than anyone is with your X-ray body scanners! You know: the X-ran body scanners that YOU REFUSE TO PUT YOURSELF THROUGH.
Who do these people think they are?...
One week from today I’m gonna be up to my elbows in marinade, Cajun seasoning and all kinds of other good stuff as I prepare three… count ’em, three… turkeys for a hot fryin’ bath in cottonseed oil. Yes it’s that time of the year again, when Yours Truly goes bonkers for the deep-fried turkey! As has been done in years before, expect photos chronicling the art, and perhaps even a video or two.
However I cannot emphasize it nearly enough: deep-frying turkey is potentially a very dangerous activity. I haven’t been burned (yet) but there have been a few close calls, despite taking every precaution that I know of. To me it’s worth the risk because deep-frying honestly does produce the most tender and succulent meat that you’ll ever get from any method of cooking a turkey, and I suppose that there’s always going to be a possibility ...
Ohhhh yeah, I deep-fried the turkey! Three of them, in fact! All on Christmas Eve. Two 12-pound full-sized birds for friends and a turkey breast for my own family gathering.
Here’s the first bird that I did…
The second turkey…
And the turkey breast: smaller but no less succulent!
And hey, look who showed up! None other than Tebow Wasmund, the popular pup (who was recently seen as Sandy the dog in a production of Annie) and his mistress Peggy! Tebow is well known around here as he is often courting admirers at iCoffee in nearby Summerfield. It’s a great lil’ coffee house and well worth visiting!
I guess you just can’t keep a good dog away from the scent of fried turkey 😛
And ’twas a good thing that I got all that frying done on Christmas Eve ‘cuz the next day, we got ...
Awright, first person who can tell me what obscure mondo-bizarro film that is from, can buy themselves a candy bar and pretend I got it for them.
I’m… not quite ready to return to this blog at the usual frenetic frequency that all two of my loyal readers have come to appreciate. According to my figures there had been an average of five new posts a day for quite some time now. But if you look at the front page that I’m seeing right now, there’ve only been twenty-five posts since mid-August!
Clearly, something has been amiss with Your Friend and Humble Narrator.
I’m not retiring The Knight Shift (well, not planning to anyway: some claim that this blog has caused more mischief than WikiLeaks… and look at where that site has gone lately!). But there is certainly – and there has already been – some significant “shifting around” of ...