Guanciale II – The Return

We're out of the last of the pancetta! Disaster! Lunacy! Conspiracy! Ok it's not so bad. But I demand more salty cured pork. Time to make some Guanciale. So on Sunday I picked up two pig cheeks from Seabreeze Farm, which I figure will tide me over until I order another full belly from them.

These rang in at just over a pound each, which will make quite enough Guanciale for a couple months. I never really cooked with Pancetta, until I had pounds and pounds of it around, and now I can't live with out it. It is the beginning to so many tasty things, so many easy and quick pasta dishes, so many soup and bean things that just need a bit of salty porky. And Guanciale is just more interesting Pancetta.

So step one is to trim them. First I take the skin off. Some leave it on. I think that it basically turns into football leather, makes it hard to slice thin, and keeps the spices and cure from really properly getting into that side of the meat. But to each their own. It does give a bit more texture when it's cooked up.

I use a scary sharp filet knife to remove the skin, just pull the skin up and slice parallel to the meat. I'm going to use the skin for something, I just haven't figured out what. I'm thinking I'll fry them up for a crispy topping to a salad, like I did with the pigs' ears a while back. Maybe braise them a bit first.

Next you need to take the glands out of the cheek. I'm not sure exactly what these do, I presume they're salivary glands, but I'm not a biologist. For all I know they produce the venom that the pig uses to catch its prey. (Alpacas, in case you were wondering.) But the glands need to go. Here's a graphic and gross photo. The Internet Guanciale Recipe World has many descriptions of them, but no pictures. "They look like little bubbles." WTF. So yeah, they're these sortof grey-green-tan marble things. Cut them out as best you can.

Yeah. Totally gross.

Next comes the cure. Last time I sortof skipped over, well, amounts. So in the interests of fairness here's what I used this time:

For two cheeks, about a pound each:

• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  
• 2 T cracked black pepper
  
• ½ t nutmeg
  
• 1 T Juniper berries, smashed with the bottom of a frypan
  
• 2 bay leaves, crumbled
  
• A pinch of dried basil and savory
  
• 3 sprigs of thyme, stripped
  
• 1/8 cup of Dry Cure. The basic dry cure from Ruhlman's Charcuterie, a mixture of dextrose, kosher salt, and sodium nitrite. I'm not entirely sure this will be enough, but ¼ cup is enough for 4-5lbs of pork belly. I think in the future I will just dredge the cheeks in it first, then put the spices on.
  

Mix all the spices and the cure and coat the cheeks. Into a big ziplock. They'll spend a week or so in the fridge, being flipped ("overhauled") every day. Then I'll remove all the spices, give em a coat of kosher salt for good measure and hang them to dry for three weeks in the basement. It's about 10 degrees cooler this time of year, so I don't anticipate any problems, though I did get a second-hand humidifier that I will employ if necessary. So now we play the waiting game, follow up post in a month.

UPDATE 12/22/09

UPDATE 1/10/10

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Wooly Pig Belly Confit

Looking out the window there is every appearance that it’s a beautiful day. The sun is shining, there is not a cloud in the endless bright blue sky. The Olympics are white-capped in the far distance. It’s one of those rare Winter days in the Northwest where it’s not raining. Heresy, I know! You feel like you really, really need to be outside. And then you look at the thermometer and see that no, it still hasn’t risen above freezing. Winter in Seattle. If it's not raining, it's ass cold.

So instead I’m in a nice warm coffee shop. You really forget how much better things like coffee and dark beers are when it’s cold outside. Which is why we spend so much time in coffee shops and pubs I suppose.

This post was several months in the making, and I decide to wait until I could tell it start to finish, rather than limp along in installments. It begins with my September attempt at Confit of Wooly Pig. If you will remember, I was fresh out of decent quality fat to confit it in, and rather than use sketchy factory hydrogenated lard I opted to use olive oil. And it worked fairly well, and the pork was quite tasty although the olive oil was a bit overly flavorful. Well, Mr. Wooly Pigs himself, Heath, read the post, and was slightly aghast at the olive oil solution. Credit where credit is due, the man is an absolute evangelist for his pigs and offered to give me some real proper pig fat to try. So I happily took him up on his kind offer, and also purchased a hefty chunk of Wooly Pig Belly from him.

The idea was to recreate the smash hit of last FryDay 2008: Pork Belly Confit, but using Wooly Pig belly this year and confiting it in Wooly Pig lard.

Step One: “To Make Soap, First We Render Fat”

Or, to make confit I guess. The first rule of Confit Club is you do not talk about Confit Club. But I digress. Early in October Heath gave me about 2lbs of Wooly Pig fat. As mentioned in the last Wooly Pig post, these guys are bred to be serious lard hogs and do not disappoint. I took my cleaver and hacked up the fat into roughly 1/2” chunks. My grinder is out of action right now, I would have preferred to have chilled these to just above freezing and run them through the large die. Oh well.

The fat went in a pot with a couple tablespoons of water. The idea is to get the fat to slowly render out without browning or burning anything. The water helps get the initial amount of fat rendered before evaporating off. Onto the stove until just simmering. Then the pot went into the oven, without a lid, for four hours at 250. Every hour or so I gave it a stir. Then ran everything through a strainer. Voila. Chilled, solidified and ready to go: some of the best lard in the world.

For some reason I think this picture is beautiful. It's kind of mesmerizing. Mmmm lard.

Step Two: Prepping the Belly

Step Two: Prepping the Belly

Wooly Pig belly is unlike any other pork belly I’ve used. It was thick, and almost entirely fat. I actually laughed a bit when I got it on the cutting board, I had no idea how it would hold up in the confit.

I carefully trimmed out the few rib bones, and then sliced it into sticks slightly larger than lardons. Maybe 2-3” by ½” by ½”.

The base recipe is Jim Drohman's Pork Belly Confit from Charcuterie. Drohman runs Le Pichet right here in Seattle but I've never been. Need to get out there!

Anyhow the belly strips went into a dish and were left to marinate overnight in:

• 1 t black pepper
• pinch of cinnamon
• pinch of cloves
• pinch of allspice
• 1 small bay leaf, crumbled
• 2 sprigs of thyme
• 1 T kosher salt
• pinch of pink salt (sodium nitrite)
• Dry White Wine to cover (I used Pinot Gris)
  

Step Three: Confit

After two days I carefully dried and layered the belly pieces in the bottom of a pan. I heated the lard just until it melted, then poured it over making sure that all the pieces were covered. Heated on the stove till simmering, then it went in the oven at 250 for about two hours. I let it cool in the fat on the stove, then layered the pieces in a Tupperware container and poured the fat over the top, again making sure everything was covered. Lid on, into the fridge. See you in two months.

Seriously, it will be fine. Confiting was how many people preserved food before refrigeration.

Step Four: Fry Day

Every year, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we celebrate (and then bemoan) Fry Day. It developed as a way to reuse the oil leftover from frying the Thanksgiving turkey and has since turned into a gut-stomping festival of oddly inspired fried things.

For example, on a belly-related note, my mother made Chicken Fried Bacon this year.

It was sick and wrong. It was crunchy and maple-y. It was salty and delicious. Somewhere some poor bastard eats this with horrifying regularity. And probably protests against Healthcare Reform too.

So on Fry Day the belly confit went into the oven at 150 until the fat had melted again. This makes it much easier to remove from its protective fat, a lesson learned hard after the prior year’s confit. Carefully arranged on a spider, then lowered into 350 degree oil. Deep fry until crispy and puffy and golden brown and delicious. Goes well with a good mustard.

And of course, since I was frying, I don't have any photos. After all this work. D'oh!

How was it?

I’ve got to say, overall, a bit of a disappointment. The problem was not the quality of the ingredients, but rather their use in this application. The Wooly Pig Belly was simply too fatty for this. Think about it this way. Really good bacon is all about the balance of fatty and porky, salty and smoky, crunchy and chewy. There just wasn’t enough meat in the belly to get much pork flavor. It was crispy and delicious, and exploded in piggy fatty unctuousness, but ultimately was just too much. I think there has got to be a better preparation out there. Maybe trim an inch or so of the fat off, (and for godsakes save it and use it somewhere delicious!), and then roast the belly? Or maybe salt cure it and dry it? I’m guessing it would make outstanding lardo.

Of course the leftover lard is, if anything, more flavorful and interesting now that it has a hint of the confit spices. Even though the belly didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, the fat from these pigs is simply outstanding. So I’ve been using it to cook with. I’m thinking about doing some tamales with it soon, use up the leftover turkey…

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No Knead Bread

In the past bread, and most baking in general, certainly the esoteric world of pastries, has been the exclusive domain of my lovely wife. It's not that I can't bake things, it's just that I don't get quite the same giddy thrill out of it.

Nope, I'm pragmatic when it comes to baking. Get it in, get it out, quick and easy with minimum fuss. Recently though, due to her becoming a productive member of society, the weekly bread loaves were slipping. So I stepped in and took charge of bread. Because well, what else have I got to do. Talking to the cat is getting old.

As I was saying, bread is pain in the neck and I hate making it. All that kneading, and sticky dough fingers. Bah. So I started experimenting with so-called 'No Knead' bread. The basic idea is that rather than kneading and rising and folding and rolling, you let the yeast do the work for you, albeit over a longer time-frame. The gluten necessary for soft springy bread develops naturally, rather than through your kneady efforts. Then you use the magic of a scorching hot dutch oven to keep it from drying excessively and to ensure a crunchy awesome crust.

Here's the recipe as I have been making it for the last few weeks. This has become our house bread. It's great for sandwiches and for soups. It costs maybe a buck to make. It takes about 3 minutes of actual work. Get a pen and paper ready, it's incredibly complicated.

• 22 ounces of bread flour
• 1 T kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp dry yeast
• 16 ounces of warm water

That's it. Seriously, bread is easy. Mix the flour, salt and yeast in a big bowl. Add the water. Stir around with a spoon until it comes together and most of the flour is absorbed. Done. Stop. No more mixing. Cover up with plastic wrap or something to keep it from drying out too much. I use my largest pyrex bowl (4 qt) which as a matching lid.

Now we play the waiting game. Let this sit somewhere reasonably warm for 19 hours. Yep 19 hours. Or 18, or 20, it doesn't really matter too much. I wouldn't go for say, three days. (Though I might do that soon just as an experiment...) During this time the yeast will rise the dough and glutens will develop. It will look like gross bread soup.


Flour up a counter or cutting board. Use your hands to pull the dough out, it should be sticky but will stick to itself more than to you. Fold it over on itself a few times and try to punch the dough down and press out the air. Cover with a towel and leave 15 minutes. Then get a bowl that will hold roughly twice the dough's size, lay a kitchen towel in it. Sprinkle about a tablespoon of corn meal on the towel. Shape the dough into a ball, drop it in the towelled bowl, and sprinkle another tablespoon of corn meal on top. Then fold the ends of the towel to cover it and set it somewhere warm to rise another 2-3 hours.

About half an hour before it's done, set the oven to 450 and stick your dutch oven inside. I have an enameled cast-iron one. I suppose you could just use a baking sheet and a pan of water in the oven, but I haven't tried it with this dough. When both ovens are hot, take the dutch oven out and take the lid off. Using the towel, carefully drop the dough into the dutch oven. Slap the lid on and stick it the oven. 30 minutes with the lid on, then take it off and go another 15 minutes without the lid.

Your bread will be golden brown and delicious. And it was foolproof, quick and made very little mess.

One thing I have also done that worked out well was add herbs. A handful of chopped rosemary went in a couple loaves back, and it was delicious. Just add right at the beginning, when you're mixing everything.

A couple months ago we tried making a sourdough starter. We got about two loaves out of it before it went horribly, horribly wrong. To the point where I kicked it outside to make it think about what it had done. And had to wash it out with the hose. Seriously, how can flour and water make that kind of smell!?! But if you've got a good starter, you could add a scoop rather than the yeast and this would make awesome sourdough bread.

Finally a word on scheduling. This bread takes about 24 hours to make. In terms of actual work time it takes about 3 minutes, but there's lots of resting. So I start it in the afternoon, so it's ready to be folded and re-risen the next morning, then baked and ready by dinner.

Now it's time to go make a sandwich, with some of the leftover sous vide turkey breast...

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Why it's Christmas sah!

Fremont lit up the Lenin statue.
And it's 28 outside right now.
It's officially Christmas Season.

Merry Christmas Comrades!

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Sous Vide Turkey and Stuffing

Ok, got a nice pint of Snoqualmie Avalanche Winter ale in front of me. Onwards.

Follow up to the Fried Turkey Post. So a year ago I saw this video of Grant Achatz, of Alinea fame, cooking a Thanksgiving dinner sous vide.



I really wanted to try it but never got around to it. Well this year we had several days of Thanksgiving chaos and at the end of it M and I were feeling a bit...let down. It had nothing to do with our families or the meals, it had everything to do with, dare I say, Holiday Imperialism!

Which is to say, when we lived in Miami we stayed there for Thanksgiving and came home at Christmas. So it became our holiday. We cooked what we wanted, invited who we wanted, and ran it how we wanted. And though it was fun to see our families and friends, something had been lost. So we talked about it and hit upon the solution: Thanksgiving 3.0

We went to the Farmer's market the Sunday after and picked up some ingredients: sage, thyme, root vegetables, mushrooms. Went to the Ballard Market and picked up a 20lb turkey. Went to Larsen's and picked up some day old bread. Got to cooking.

I decided we'd do both the sous vide turkey and the stuffing. Recipes here.

Boned out the breasts of the turkey, and cut off the hindquarters. Stuck the breasts in one gallon ziplock bag, thighs and drums in another. Each bag got a stick of butter, some sage and thyme, salt and pepper. I say some because, like Achatz, I really didn't measure. Squeezed as much air out as possible.

Took the cleaver and hacked the hell out of all the bones, the neck, and the necks and guts from the two fried turkeys from Thanksgiving. Roasted for an hour at 425, added some mirepoix, roasted a bit more, made stock. With the amount contributed by my mom (from the Fried Turkey carcasses. Thanks mom!)

I am now the proud owner of a gallon and a half of delicious turkey stock. Of course this went into the stuffing, made gravy, and formed the base of a Thanksgiving Leftover Shepperd's Pie.

Took my largest pot, the 7.5 gallon aluminum pot I use for frying turkeys, and put 4 gallons of water in. Heated to 175 and added the turkey bags. Thanks to all that water volume, it held 170-175 without too much faffing for the 2 1/2 hours of cooking.

Got to work on the stuffing. To the recipe I added about a quarter pound of cooked Chanterelles, two good handfuls of wild cranberries, and the rest of our leftover pecans, chopped. Again, everything went in a bag and into the pot. This one floats way more than the turkey, bread is full of air bubbles, so I weighted it down with a pot.

After 2 1/2 hours we pulled it and took some temp readings. Right on, even a bit over-cooked. Next time I may keep the water at 170 for an hour and then ramp down to 160.

But there was a problem.

Here's what the legs looked like.

Not particularly appetizing. There's no direct high heat, so no Maillard reaction, so no delicious browning. The meat may be perfect and moist, but the eyes say "Eww".

Depending on your serving plan you can skip this next step or not, but if you plan to present this to anyone or are a huge fan of crispy skin, you'll need to do this. Take a big pan, heat it to scorching, ridiculous hot and film it with oil. Sear the hell out of the turkey until the skin browns, it doesn't take long.

When you're done it looks like this.

Much better, no?

The Final Verdict:

It was seriously delicious turkey. Moist, and well seasoned. Also reasonably easy to do, and still took less time than oven roasting. Next time I'd cook them to 160 or so. Even sous vide, where no liquids can escape and it can't physically go above the temp of the water, 170 is pretty dry for poultry. Carving is a breeze, it's more like slicing deli turkey. All in all, if I didn't want to bother with the oil and cleanup of Fried Turkey I'd totally recommend this. On par with fried. Waaaay better than oven roasted.

The stuffing, however, was OUTSTANDING. For days we've been talking about it and because we made a whole Thanksgiving feast (there was also mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc) for two people, we have been eating it for a week now. And will be for at least another week... It is seriously, awesomely delicious. Chanterelles: absolutly, god yes. Cranberries: gives a nice sour bite and red color. Pecans: enh, take em or leave em, it's a texture thing. I may use pine nuts next year. But if you take nothing else from this the lesson is clear: poach your stuffing. Which is kind of funny. Here we have the chef of one of America's most cutting edge restaurants, essentially making a boiled British pudding right out of Lobscouse and Spotted Dog.

And it's delicious.

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Brewday: Sled Crash '09

Right. Way too many distractions at home. Way behind after Thanksgiving. So I've relocated to the Dray, got a nice glass of La Folie in front of me, and it's time to write.


It's been really nice here this last week, clear and crisp, cold but no rain. So it was time to get outside brew while the sun shines. Above is a photo I took yesterday while taking Ase for some walkies in the park. Of course they're forecasting it to get into the 20's tonight, maybe the teens with windchill.

Sled Crash is my annual Winter Ale, and is pretty special to me. My first proper brew ever, once I got serious about brewing, was Sled Crash '04. Brewed nearly six years ago to the day comes Sled Crash 09. The recipe evolves but at it's heart it is a standard NW Winter Warmer, a hoppier version of an English Old Ale.

Recently I've been working on cutting back on my crystal malts. I feel that in past years I've been overdoing it, and at high percentages crystal can give a bit of a caramel-sour taste that I'm not going for here. This year I added two biscuit malts to up the Englishness a bit, give it a bit of toasty-bready. Special B just for a little sumpin sumpin. Hops were just an ounce and a half of Cascade and some leftover Magnum and Nugget I had around. Yeast was Safale 04, the dry British yeast. This will be a starter for the next two beers: Buckwheat Honey Stout (on Nitro!) and round two of Triticus Maximus, my wheatwine.

One thing I did differently this time was I really got into the water chemistry. Seattle's water is pretty darn close to distilled, and while that's great for making Pilsners it needs some more buffering capacity if you don't want darker beers to over-acidify the mash. I used John Palmer's spreadsheet to calculate the mineral additions. It was actually pretty instructive, I ended up using four times more chalk than I normally would. It must have worked, I ended up getting exactly the gravity I calculated for, 75%. Not bad considering the problems I've been having in the previous batches.

Otherwise a largely uneventful brewday. Missed my target mash temp of 152, got 147-149. Two kettles of boiling water brought it to 153 pretty quickly. No prob. Also the knockout was cold, 163, but I blame the fact that it was 40 degrees out. So here's there recipe:

Sled Crash 09

12/2/09
5.25 gallons, All Grain
Est O.G. 1.073, Act O.G. 1.073
Est F.G. 1.017, Act probably 1.015
ABV 7.5%
21 SRM, 39 IBU

Grain

• 9lbs US Pale
• 2lbs Munich II
• 8 oz Crystal 80
• 8 oz Special Roast
• 8 oz Victory
• 4 oz Chocolate Malt
• 2 oz Special B

Hops

• 1/4 oz Magnum (Leaf, 14%) at 90
• 1/2 oz Nugget (Pellet, 12%) at 90
• 1/2 oz Cascade (Leaf, 5.5%) at 30
• 1/2 oz Cascade (Leaf, 5.5%) at 15
• 1/2 oz Cascade (Leaf, 5.5%) at 2
  

Mash Water Modification (for 3.8 gallons mash water)

• 8 gm Chalk, 1 gm Baking Soda, 1 gm Kosher Salt, 1 gm Gypsum
  

Other

• Whirlfloc tablet at 15
• 1 lb. Dark Brown Sugar at 15
  
• 2 packets dry Safale 04

Mash in at 152-54 for 60 minutes. Knockout at 168 for 10. Collected 7.5 gallons, boiled 90 minutes, got pretty near 5.25 gallons. Fermenting away at ambient house temp, 65 degrees.

I had a request for some photos and explanation of my cooling setup, so here it is.


From Left to Right. Ball valve from the converted keg-kettle goes to a high-temp hose line into an NPT fitting in the Wort-In on the Shirron plate chiller. Below that is the Hot-Water-Out, connected to a short hose that drains the waste water. In the Summer I collect it and water the plants with it. Top Right is the wort-out, an NPT fitting that goes to a Blichmann Thrumometer to a hose with a spray tip and into the carboy. Below that is the Cold-Water-In, which has a plastic garden hose quick disconnect, so I can just click my hose right into it. The basic idea is that cold water and hot wort run past each other in opposite directions and separated by copper plates in the plate chiller.

On this day I had to really throttle the cold water end, almost to a trickle. The ground water is pretty cold right now and at first the Thrumometer was showing temps off the bottom of the chart (58). I'm planning to put a butterfly valve there at the connection so I can throttle it there, rather than having to run to the side of the house. But I got the 5 gallons cooled in about 8 minutes. In the summer I have to run the water full blast and throttle the wort valve to deal with warmer groundwater temperature.

UPDATE 12/14/09

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Fried Turkey

A couple years ago, while still in Florida, we took to the hallowed Southern tradition of frying turkeys. The merits of the method are many. Moist meat. Crispy skin. Total cooking time of about an hour and 15. So now we're back in Seattle and naturally The Family commanded that we produce a fried turkey. Or two, as the case turned out to be. So I've got my frosty beverage and will sit down to write. Here's the story, following this anyone should be able to handle frying their own turkey.

First, if you haven't seen it yet watch Alton Brown's Fry Turkey Fry.



At least watch part 2 for the flaming lesson in what not to do.

Equipment

• I have a Bayou Classic Cajun Cooker of about 40,000 BTUs. It was $40 at Home Depot. It's main purpose in life is brewing.
  
• A large pot. I have a tall 7.5 gallon aluminum pot with a turkey lifter insert that came with a previous Turkey Frying kit. It is also good for things like Crab Boils. The burner that came with the kit was terrible though, and was replaced within a year.
• A lifting device. No, you don't need Alton's Turkey Derrick. It's ridiculous and no doubt the product of gun-shy lawyers. (Seriously, what is with those guys?) But I also wouldn't use the "glove and small lifting handle" method either. Solution: my patented turkey lifting stick. Ok not patented, or particularly special. It's a broom handle with a steel hook screwed in the end. Sturdy and cost about $8. You could also use it to, I don't know, reach tall things and, um, hook them.
• A long clicky lighter
• A long dial thermometer. They come with the kits but otherwise run about $10.
  
• A fire extinguisher rated for grease fires (Class 'B'). You're not going to spray water on a grease fire are you? No you're not. Because you like your house and skin just the way it is. Un-incinerated.

Turkey

Ok. Now we need a turkey. 10-14 lbs tends to work best. Bigger and you start running into trouble. But smaller is ok. (Or try a 3lb chicken as practice. Or three, stacked on the turkey lifter...) We went for some labelled "Northwest Natural" and though 'natural' means nothing, at least these were apparently local-ish, vegetarian, antibiotic and hormone free. Farmer's market turkeys all were reserved well in advance. Bummer. Figure a pound a person so we got a 10lb and 14lb.

Brine

Of course you're going to brine your turkey, because all turkeys should be brined. I've done it several ways, including the cajun injection and cover with Tony Chachere's method. Spices always just fall off and burn, and ruining your oil. No, keep it simple. Alton's on the right track here. You'll need:

• a gallon and a half of water
• 1 lb dark brown sugar
• 1 lb pickling/canning salt

Stir until everything is dissolved. Then stick your turkey in a bag and pour it in. Squish out as much air as you can. I've used garbage bags before, but actual Turkey Brining bags are available and they are cool because you can fit two smallish turkeys in! Double the brine, naturally. Let it sit in the fridge overnight, or at least 12 hours.

Time to Fry

Measure the oil you'll need. Have at least 3 1/2 gallons on hand. Peanut is best, but anything with a high smoke point will work. Got 4+ish gallons from Costco for cheap-ish.

Take your turkey out of the brine, put it on the lifter, and stick it in the pot. Add water until the level kindof meets the ankles of the bird. That's how much oil you'll need. But even in my 7.5 gallon pot I think 3.5 gallons is about as much as I'm comfortable using, I wouldn't go much past that even if I measured more. No one eats the bone part of the drumstick anyway. Dump the water, towel dry the bird, and dry the pot.

It's time to fry.

Add the oil in and start heating it. Adjust the air vent on the burner to get as much blue, and as little orange, as possible. From now on you're glued to the burner, so send someone else to get you a beer.

Heat it to 250. In the past I have tried heating to 375 first. While the addition of the bird is fantastic and terrifying, it mostly resulted in a lot of unnecessary danger and overcooked birds. But if like me you are frying two turkeys, you don't have much choice. Oil stays hot a long, long time.

Add the bird

• turn the flame OFF
• make everyone stand back
• carefully lift and SLOWLY insert the turkey
• if the oil is 250, this won't be very spectacular
• if the oil is 350 this will be very spectacular, so add it slowly, an inch or two at a time and hold it there for 15 seconds or so before lowering it any further.
• Dropping means splashing. Splashing means overflowing. Overflowing means Burn Ward.

Right. Turkey is safely in. Light 'er up and crank up the heat.

You're shooting for 350. It will take a bit to get there as the water boils off the turkey, but then it will shoot up once most of the water is gone.

So don't go anywhere.

Drink your beverage.

On the first turkey, at 14 pounder I put in 4 gallons of oil, which was a bit excessive and I had to watch it like a hawk. Frankly, I didn't need the added stress and about halfway through carefully took out two quarts of oil. Safety first.

I went for 35 minutes on the 14 pounder. Turn off the heat and carefully lift it out, then check various parts with a thermometer. It worked out pretty well, a bit overdone at internal temps around 160. You're shooting for 151 because carryover will take it to 160, so the carryover took it to 170ish, which is a bit overdone. Still tasty though. Went down to 30 minutes on the 10 pounder, came out perfect.

Let the turkey rest for 30 minutes before serving.

How was it? A rousing success. Moist, tender, crunchy skin, pleasantly seasoned. And two turkeys, enough to feed 21, took about 2 1/2 hours, didn't occupy any ovens, and were also entertainment for the crowd.

Unfortunately now it looks like I might have "volunteered" for all future T-days...

Cleanup

Let the oil cool down, overnight is best. Crispy crunchy bits will sink to the bottom. You can a) pour it out on your compost/corner of your yard or b) decant off the cleaner oil through cheesecloth and use it again. We always do.

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