Turkey Cooking Options
About Barbecues & Grilling | November 9, 2009
These days the holiday turkey is quickly becoming the least expensive part of the holiday meal. These days it is more than just food that gets bought up in the days before the big cook, it's cooking equipment too. From roasting pans to turkey fryers this is one of the biggest times of year for outdoor cooking makers too. I believe that the popularity of deep fried turkey is largely to blame for this phenomena. People spending $40USD to $50USD on small turkey fryers have led to companies producing $150USD units specifically for cooking a turkey. Of course these cookers are good for far more than a one time cookout, but the promise of a great turkey for the holidays is the drive behind them. While there are many ways to cook a turkey these represent some of the latest innovations:
North American Outdoors 35-Quart Aluminum Saf-T-Fryer: This turkey fryer unit includes several safety features that take a lot of the risk out of the ever popular deep fried turkey. This unit will run you about $100USD and can be used for everything from frying roasts, poultry or fish to clambakes and anything else cooked in the gallons instead of cups. This unit cooks turkey at about 3 minutes per pound.
Char-Broil's The Big Easy Oil-less Infrared Turkey Fryer: Char-Broil has taken the oil out of the fryer and replaced it with an ingenious infrared cooking system. At around $150USD this unit doesn't waste oil (at up to $40 to fill a typical fryer) and will cook up pretty much any large cut of meat. Cook your turkey at about 10 minutes per pound in this "fryer".
The Orion Cooker: This charcoal powered cooker can produce good barbecue (up to 8 racks of ribs at a time) or a perfect turkey at about 10 minutes per pound. This unit burns a good deal of charcoal but is still cheaper to operate than a typical deep fryer. This is actually a very versatile cooker.
Masterbuilt Butterball Professional Series Indoor Electric Turkey Fryer
: Basically this is a large fryer designed to hold up to a 14 pound turkey in a specially designed (turkey shaped) frying chamber. Like other modern fryers this unit is thermostatically controlled and has a built in timer so you can tell it how long you want to cook. The interior frying chamber is molded to fit a turkey so you don't need to use a lot of extra oil to fry the bird.
Turkey Cooking Options originally appeared on About.com Barbecues & Grilling on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 02:30:27.
