Cooking for supper clubs dinner parties doesn’t need to be dangerous, but can be. Grilling and sautéing can be problematic. The real cooking risk involves frying with hot oil.
The classic story involves a buddy of mine that tried to fry a turkey for Thanksgiving. My buddy is a great guy, but he:
- Is not a cook
- Lacks a certain level of common sense
In his defense, Thanksgiving is the leading day for home fires involving cooking equipment with three times the average number. It does get a little hard to explain why he thought you have to get the oil to boil to cook a turkey. Turkey should be fried at 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Oil will have to be over 570 degrees to boil. It is real lucky that my friend didn’t kill himself when he put the turkey into the overheated oil.
The good news is that no one got hurt. The bad news is that oil boiled over and caught on fire. He quickly called the fire department and they arrived to minimize the damage. As the firemen were extinguishing the fire one of them noticed that my pyromaniac friend was coincidently wearing a tee shirt that said CHICAGO FIRE DEPARTMENT. When my buddy saw the fireman giving his tee shirt a quizzical look, he told him “It was a gift”. To which the fireman responded: “I guessed”.
Check out this YouTube video to see what can go wrong:
The other side of this story is that we have been using the turkey fryer with 8-inch by 20-inch fry pot to make French fries for over 20 years and I have never had a problem. You just need to be careful with oil temperature and lowering the fries in slowly to make sure the oil doesn’t boil over the pot
The moral of this story is that if you are going to use an open-flamed fryer, you have to be careful
If you enjoy this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and be on the look out for my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs due out from Morgan James Publishing on January 30, 2018.