Sounds like new technology, but many folks, including myself love to go with the tried and true Cajun deep fryer.
THE WORST thing, however, are folks who are rookie dee-fryers and end up burning their house down because they didn't bother to learn from an experiencied turkey chef on how to do it.
As a public serve announcement:
Take your frozen turkey and place it in the cooker the day before and fill with water enough so you can use a grease pencil to mark the level the oil will be at when the turkey is removed...then only fill the oil to that level! The biggest mistake anyone can make is putting in too much oil, heating it to 375F and then lower the turkey into the oil---over flowing the cooker and setting the area on fire.
Also--for oven turkey chefs...invest the $5 it takes to get a turkey injector---it looks like a big hypodermic needle that allows you inject butter infused with a little liquid smoke into the turkey just prior to putting it in the oven and at regular intervals with the juices that you would ususally use to baste the turkey during the cooking time.
Three Key Tips to having the PERFECT-Juicy Turkey Every Time:
1) Make sure your turkey is fully defrosted. Waiting until the night before you buy your frozen turkey is the biggest rookie mistake.
2) NEVER EVER go by the little red pop out thermometer as the judge as to when your turkey is done. A $5 meat thermometer is paramount to the perfect turkey. About an hour before your turkey is supposed to be done (by the time-table by weight/temperature/cook time on the turkey package) start checking the temp in the largest part of the drumstick (push in thermometer from the top--not the side to prevent excess dripping leakage) as well as the top of the breast. Once the reading hits 178F to 180f--your turkey is DONE--regardless of what the instructions say or when the red button does or doesn't pop. Poultry has totally different rules than any other meat. Continuing to cook it further after thatn ensures that your turkey will end up DRY.
3) Get the turkey injector and inject the melted butter prior to cooking as well as injecting juices at the times you go back to baste. The more often you inject juices, the more juicy your turkey will be (about every half hour). Bobby Flay insists that piercing the meat encourages juices to leak out making the meat dry, however if you only inject each drumstick fom the same single home from the top--and each breast side from the same hole in the top reduces that loss. Also, some turkey chefs insist on wrapping the entire turkey in three laters of cheese-cloth for cooking insist that it keeps basted and injected juices in place better for a juicy turkey--and they are right.
However you cook it...please be SAFE!
ROX
