WATCH: How not to make a turkey fireball this Thanksgiving
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IDAHO FALLS — Thanksgiving is easily the most dangerous day of the year for cooking fires, and turkey frying is one of the most dangerous ways to cook a turkey.
EastIdahoNews.com teamed up with the Idaho Falls Fire Department to find out what happens when turkey frying goes wrong. We also learned how to fry a turkey safely.
No. 1 is to make sure the turkey is thawed and dry.
“If I put a turkey in a fryer frozen or with any type of water on it, it’s going to start bubbling and really start to splash out, and potentially that oil is going to hit that flame and cause a pretty massive fire,” IFFD Training Chief Jon Perry said.
He said it’s essential to completely thaw and dry the turkey inside and out before dunking in the fryer.
Another potential danger when frying a turkey is overfilling the fryer. Perry gave a tip on how to find the right amount of oil to use based on the size of the turkey.
“Put the turkey in (the fryer), fill it with water to about an inch or two above the turkey,” he explained. “Take the turkey back out and then that water’s going to drop down to the level you would want to fill the oil.”
He suggested marking the level with tape, then emptying the water, making sure to completely dry the fryer, then filling it up with oil to where the water level was marked.
An overfilled fryer will take an incredibly long time to heat up, as we found out with our turkey-frying experiment.
Another important thing to remember is to make sure to fry your turkey away from any kind of flammable material.
“People feel like it’s safe to get on a wooden porch or even in the garage,” Perry said. “If things go wrong, there’s going to be a lot of fire in your structure and very quickly. So we would ask people … they should really take the fryer at least 10 feet out from any type of structure.”
For more turkey frying tips and safety suggestions, check out the National Fire Prevention Association’s website.