Here's what I do just about every year and I always end up with requests to do it again:
1. Obviously, ensure your turkey is completely thawed. Very important.
2. Take your thawed turkey, put it in your pot. Fill pot with water until the turkey is just covered. Remove turkey, then mark the outside of the pot where the water level is. This is your oil fill level for that bird.
3. Injecting the marinade: I typically use Cajun Injector brands - Creole Butter and Garlic Butter flavors. I mix the two together and inject multiple places. Be sure to use small injection pockets - large pockets tend to burn and ruin the flavor of the meat. I also inject from the inside of the carcass so that the injector doesn't ooze out nearly as easily as it does if you inject on the outside. Inject in 10 to 12 different places. When you are done, massage the bird all over for 3 or 4 minutes to work the marinade in and keep any large pockets from standing.
4. Tony's - get 2 cans. Use 1 can on the outside of the bird. Don't worry about putting too much on as much of the seasoning cooks off when it's frying. Once you are done with that, take the other can and dump it in the organ cavity (all of this is obviously after removing the neck and gizzards and the plastic baking indicator). Dump it in there liberally - these seasonings will help flavor the meat from the inside out.
5. Let the bird marinade in the fridge for 24 hours to 48 hours.
6. Cooking - take your pot and clean it. Don't be afraid to clean it 2 or 3 times. You want to ensure that all dirt, oil, grease, etc. is cleaned out to prevent anything like this from burning and ruining your bird.
7. Fill pot with cottonseed or peanut oil to your mark on the outside of the pot. Heat to 350. SLOWLY drop bird into oil when it's reached the right temp. Remember that your temp will drop to about 300 when you first do this - it is important to not freak out and make massive adjustments to your heat input, otherwise when everything stabilizes you are going to have the oil too hot and end up either burning your bird or you'll spend the entire time adjusting up and down trying to regulate the temp. After about 5 minutes, if you need to increase the heat, make small adjustments until you hit your target temp.
8. Boil/Fry at 350 for 3 minutes per pound. If you cook at 325, add another 1/2 minute per pound.
9. When your bird is done, remove from oil and hold it over the pot for a minute or so to allow the residual oil to drain out. Not doing so will leave you with a soggy bird that isn't nearly as good.
10. This is very important: Let your bird sit for 10 minutes before carving. I use a large cutting block for this, but you can use a basting pan. This lets the last bit of residual oil to drain out, lets the bird finish cooking and start cooling down. Odds are you'll ahve to keep people away, but if you don't let it sit, the bird generally ends up soggy and not nearly as good.
11. After 10 minutes, carve and serve. Then bask in the glory of being the cook.
EDIT: I typed 2 minutes per pound for cooking time. Meant to type 3 minutes. My bad.
[This message has been edited by schmellba99 (edited 12/13/2009 11:51a).]