I've heard it all. It's too much effort. It's too expensive. I'm likely to set myself or house on fire. It's all just meaningless gobble once you've had a chance to dine on a deep fried turkey.
Serious Eats Food Lab contends that cognitive dissonance has led to an inflated vision of fried turkey. I suggest that you could fricassee my shoe in hot oil and I'd eat it for Thanksgiving.
There's a lot of science that goes into the Food Lab piece in order to demonstrate that a fried turkey breast is drier. It's impressive and likely accurate. However, this is one arena where food science doesn't belong.
Thanskgiving isn't about numbers or reason. It's about emotion. You don't think about the calories consumed or viscosity of your cranberry sauce. You think about sleeping on the couch with a plate resting on your stomach and whether you've got room for pie or beer or both.
Deep frying a turkey means that I get to stand on the pavement of the driveway with my dad making cracks about burning down the garage or trying to figure out exactly how we're going to move a lava hot 20-pound turkey. The odds are a lot better that I'll remember the turkey transfer then whether the 2010 turkey was dry or not.
A turkey is never about the end result, in large part, because turkey is rarely the star of the meal. The story of Thanksgiving is usually in the journey of the turkey or the mishaps that occur while cooking it. Most of us only get one shot a year at cooking a 15-pound bird. We might as well have some fun doing it.
[Image via Flickr: dnigh]
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