My family deep fries our turkey

When my Dad gets excited about something, he gets really excited. So when a friend of his mentioned the radical idea of deep frying the Thanksgiving turkey, dad was promptly out the door to buy all the stuff needed to get the not-very-healthy-but-very-delicious job done.

That year, when Thanksgiving finally rolled around, dad eagerly wheeled out the shiny, new deep fryer onto the concrete pad behind our house — to some disapproving fanfare. My family fought about how to cook the turkey, with my grandparents arguing that deep frying wasn’t “traditional.” My father ultimately won however, and the turkey was skewered and lowered into the bubbling vat of hot oil.

The best thing about deep frying a turkey is that it doesn’t take very long. Cooking a turkey in the traditional roasting way, typically takes about four-and-a-half to five hours for a particularly large bird. Deep frying, on the other hand, only takes about one. My dad plopped the turkey in just as the guests were starting to arrive and it was not long before we had nicely cooked turkey to enjoy.

The other great thing about deep frying a turkey is that it seals in the moisture. Maybe my extended family’s just bad with turkeys, but year after year they come out dry. When we deep fried however, the bird was well-done and incredibly juicy. That was the year I found out I actually liked turkey. Of course, covering any food completely in oil is bound to make it delicious but I thought the process would make the turkey drier, not less so. I was wrong. If you do it right, deep frying can leave a turkey far more moist than roasting ever could.

Any doubts my family had about deep frying a turkey were laid to rest the moment we tried what came out of the fryer. The delicious, golden-brown meat was enough to convince my skeptical grandparents and I’m sure it would easily convince you too. Lately though, something else has peaked my dad’s ever-excitable attention, as he’s been talking about trying “beer can turkey” — basically you shove a full can of beer inside the bird and the beer provides both moisture and flavouring to the meat. There’s no doubt that if he can convince my grandparents again, beer can turkey will become the latest turkey trick to find its way into our Thanksgiving traditions.