Photogrpah by Kevin A. Roberts
This Thanksgiving, amateur cooks across the land will bake turkeys, and many of those turkeys will, tragically, not come out moist. Indeed, much of the meat will be dry, and the guests, in a thankful and gracious mode, will never tell their hosts that chewing the slices of breast meat is a quiet struggle necessitating much gravy and possibly alcohol.
One answer is a controversial process that yields a tender, juicy, and outstanding bird, but risks the complete destruction of hearth and home. Of course, we’re talking about frying the turkey whole.
Cliff Collins, who with his wife, Earline, drives and vends from the Barnyard Kitcjen (not a typo) barbecue food truck, has been frying turkeys for friends for years now, and as a devotee of the art and science, he can tell you how to avoid self-immolation and other bugaboos.
“I shoot the turkey up with seasonings the night before,” says Collins. “The next day, I heat the grease in the fryer up to a certain temperature, empty it halfway into another pot, slide the turkey into the fryer, and then pour the other half of the grease back on top to avoid splashing. It’s when people drop a whole turkey into a fryer full of hot grease that it splashes and overflows and they set themselves on fire.”
Wise words.
Collins, who fries 25 to 35 turkeys each Thanksgiving, enjoys pulling the leg or wing off a fried turkey and eating it with a cold beer. “At Thanksgiving, me and the fellas sit around watching the football game,” he says, “and we just pull and cut pieces off the bird.”
In the days that follow, he enjoys fried-turkey salad and sandwiches.
