Experimenting with food...

I'm not much of a cook. I could be, I think. But I'm simply too lazy. I think the actual cooking part is fun - and if that were all that was involved, I think I would try to come up with something from time to time. But unfortunately, there are two much less sexy components to cooking - preparation and cleanup.

So although I don't cook all that often, I've somehow been attracted to various cooking shows (

Iron Chef

,

Hell's Kitchen

, etc.). About a month ago, I was glued to the TV watching

HGTV

(can't believe I'm admitting that) and more specifically some kind of Thanksgiving cook off reality show (really can't believe I'm admitting that). Anyway, the thing that stuck with me most was someone frying a turkey. I think I had heard of it before, but really didn't understand that frying actually meant boiling in oil. Since watching the show, I've wanted to fry my own bird.

I got my chance to experiment a bit last week when our family had a gift exchange. We had the typical Thanksgiving/Christmas food (ham, prime rib, mashed potatoes, baked yams, etc.) and I volunteered to take care of the turkey. I ordered my very own

fryer

and spent an whole bunch of time reading the manual and recipes that I found online. I even thought about doing a trial run the week before, but I really didn't want to eat fried turkey two weeks in a row, so I decided to just go for it without the trial.

Here's the turkey submerged in boiling hot oil:

The good news is that I didn't burn down the house. Actually, that's definitely the best news of all. Unfortunately, the turkey was a bit more burned (and dry) than I would have liked. I followed the directions perfectly, but I think that a couple of things through me off. First, I was told that I should count 3 to 3.5 minutes per pound. And second, I was told to add another 5 minutes for the bird. For the 14 pound turkey, this meant a cooking time of 54 minutes. Next time, I'm going with 3 minutes per pound flat - we'll see how that comes out!

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