Thanksgiving in Frankfort, 2015

November 26, 2015

For Thanksgiving, Liz and I headed to Frankfort. I had forgotten that we would also be joined by Uncle David, Aunt Beth, and Lauren… and that we would be deep frying the turkey!

On David’s arrival, he brought with him a gift of Jack Daniel’s (but it was the Sinatra Select). I don’t normally drink Jack, but this stuff was incredibly smooth.

The bar is always well stocked in Frankfort.

Outside, everyone watches as Uncle David fills up the oil. Previously we had filled the pot with water, and put the turkey in (while wrapped in a plastic bag)… in order to determine how much oil was needed.

Mostly what I know about deep frying turkey involves horrible YouTube videos of the process being done incorrectly. And usually there’s a bonfire near the end of these videos. So this was pretty exciting to watch.

Though there was a lot of rain earlier in the day, we got pretty lucky with the weather (it was actually quite pleasant outside). As a precaution, Bob set up his Quik Shade canopy to protect us from the elements (and also roped it to the bench, to prevent it from getting blown away).

That little canopy… it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Lowering the turkey into the hot oil…

Some things I learned today: You want the temperature around 325-350, but be careful to not get the oil too hot. Around 375 is when it can ignite. You want enough oil so that the thing you’re cooking is submerged… but not so much oil that it splashes outside of the pot.

The bad YouTube videos show what happens when too much oil is used, and also when people drop the turkey into the pot. The flames tend to occur when oil is splashed outside the pot (and run down, making contact with the flame underneath).

The key to cooking the turkey is to lower it slowly into the pot. This allows the oil to sear/cook the outside from the bottom up… and thereby protecting the turkey from being totally saturated with oil. Done right, the turkey is not greasy at all… and retains a great deal of moisture.

There was a lot of other stuff done with the turkey that I’m not 100% on (injected with things, a dry rub). But if you want to see a bit of the cooking process, here you go:

Aunt Beth, doing a great job guarding herself (and her drink) from any potential danger.

Julie, checking the temperature.

In addition to the whole turkey, we also had an extra turkey breast to cook.

This was my first ever deep-fried turkey, and I have to say… the cooking time is really amazing. For the whole turkey, we had it in for maybe 40 minutes. And for the breast, around 16.

Inside, carving the turkey and prepping dinner.

Everyone getting a little taste, before the meal begins.

My huge plate of food! It’s a little hard to see, but there’s also a small plate on the top left that was also mine. We had a lot of food.

Thanksgiving dinner in Frankfort.

Afterwards, we all retired to the living room and ended up watching a few episodes of Bob’s Burgers.

A little later in the evening, Katie and Dan swung by with Savannah and Cameron. We got to hang out for a little bit, but ended up having to leave around 8PM or so.

I’m actually “working” tomorrow, which… I’ll explain in the next post. Suffice it to say, with tomorrow being Black Friday… I wanted to try to get home a little early, to get a few hours’ sleep before work.