I am frying a turkey Tgiving morning to take to my parent's house. It will probably sit for like 3 hours prior to carving. Any suggestions on the best way to do this? Any chance of keeping it crispy?

If it's going to sit that long, you'll be much better off to just bring your frying equipment to their house and fry it there.

I've done the fry then transport thing, but it was less than an hour from pot to table/carving. Can't speak for a 3+ hour gap.

At three hours, you are pushing the food safety envelope. I'd cook it there if possible.

schmellba99 said:

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If it's going to sit that long, you'll be much better off to just bring your frying equipment to their house and fry it there.

I've done the fry then transport thing, but it was less than an hour from pot to table/carving. Can't speak for a 3+ hour gap.

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100% this!

I hear all you. The problem is that I will be driving back with my wife/kids and I don't think the oil will be cool enough to put back in the plastic container by that point. I guess I could leave it in the pot, but that would be risking spilling.

thenational said:

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I hear all you. The problem is that I will be driving back with my wife/kids and I don't think the oil will be cool enough to put back in the plastic container by that point. I guess I could leave it in the pot, but that would be risking spilling.

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I would probably just dispose of the oil somehow. I would rather have that problem than getting everybody sick.

Not a food scientist but I don't get the food safety concerns. I mean if it is fully cooked and he hasn't jacked with it, is it really that realistic of a risk?

how many people would pack a turkey sandwich for their or thier kid's lunch on Monday?

Fry it then transport in a cooler.

It's the holding temperature that's the problem. The reason this works with a brisket and not a turkey is that a brisket is a solid piece of meat cooked to around 200, and a turkey has a giant hole in the middle of it that has only been cooked to 155-165. When you make a sandwich the next day, the meat is cold.

You can't keep the skin crisp when you put it in a cooler. It will immediately start producing steam and will soften the skin.

Decided to just cook it there. I need the oil to do another turkey the following weekend, so I will just put it in to my crawfish pot (way bigger) and bring it home so that it won't spill over the edges when driving. Thanks everyone..

thenational said:

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Decided to just cook it there. I need the oil to do another turkey the following weekend, so I will just put it in to my crawfish pot (way bigger) and bring it home so that it won't spill over the edges when driving. Thanks everyone..

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Can't you just place the pot in a ice bath immediately after you pull the turkey? By The time you get done eating, it should be cool enough to funnel back into the jug for safer transport.

that's actually a really good idea. Thanks!!

Maybe separate it into a few small pots to cool faster

how about this:

Wort chiller

How about transporting a smoked turkey... same rules apply I presume. I will be taking it 45 min away

HTownAg98 said:

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At three hours, you are pushing the food safety envelope. I'd cook it there if possible.

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With the major caveat that it's better to be safe than to believe an anonymous post on TexAgs...

I think this is unduly paranoid. The bacterial contamination of raw poultry comes from the fact that the birds are ecosystems with massive numbers of bacteria, some of which make it from chicken poop through processing. It's surprisingly hard for me, despite being a microbial geneticist, to find the right numbers in the food science literature, but I think that the bacterial load on contaminated raw poultry is on the order of 10^3-10^4 cfu/kg. Or higher... based on the figures in this paper (probably behind a paywall). That should drop by many orders of magnitude from cooking, effectively to zero.

So unless you didn't wash your hands between handling the raw bird and the cooked bird, I think you're safe leaving a cooked bird at room temp for 3 hours or longer, especially if it's put in a clean container and covered. Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation a long time ago.

The major pathogens are Salmonella and Campylobacter. Those should both be gone. I don't know if there are any spore-formers to worry about, but if not, I suspect you could keep it safely for longer than you'd want to eat it due to other factors like dessication.

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the bacterial load on contaminated raw poultry is on the order of 10^3-10^4 cfu/kg

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Yeah, that is about what I would have guessed

thenational said:

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I hear all you. The problem is that I will be driving back with my wife/kids and I don't think the oil will be cool enough to put back in the plastic container by that point. I guess I could leave it in the pot, but that would be risking spilling.

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Decant it into smaller pots to cool. Place the smaller pots onto a good heat sink - the ground works well. All you need is to get it to about 150 or lower to be able to put back in the polypropylene jug. Last time I did it, I used some of the cheap aluminum trays you buy to put the turkey in, placed them directly on the cool ground, then filled them about halfway. The oil cooled enough to put back in the jug inside of a couple of hours, that's from the time i shut the flame off.

No joke, and this was many years ago, but I boxed up my turkey fryer (minus propane tank) and checked it in as baggage on Southwest flight. Family lived about 6 hours away so no other way to get it there. We fried turkey and I boxed it back up and brought it back.

Worked like a charm except I was disappointed that Southwest did not give me any frequent fryer miles. Bada bing.

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cfu/kg

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