It's getting closer to that time of year when I fry A LOT of turkeys (~20 just during Thanksgiving week last year) and I'm looking to streamline my operation. I have always had 2-3 setups going at once with the small 30ish qt pots frying one turkey at a time. I fry for work, friends, family and last year I dipped my toes into selling Thanksgiving turkeys. What do you think about using a 120 qt crawfish pot to fry 3 turkeys at once?

Lets work through the logistics:
1. I know I would need to figure out the right amount of oil to use to not overflow once the birds are in the pot, but do you think one jet burner would be able to maintain 350 deg with 6-9 gallons of oil plus three 12-15 pound turkeys?

2. How would you think I should have the turkeys in the pot? Put each turkey on a stand and put in pot or put the three turkeys in the basket without any stand? Just use the handle of the basket to lift all three out a once?

3. Safety of doing this?

4. Anything else I haven't thought of?

Let me know if you have done this before and have any tips. Thanks in advance!

What about doing a test run next month just to make sure it works and the quality is still intact.

I don't mind doing a test run, but wanted to see here first if anyone has already done it or has any tips. Why re invent the wheel if its already been done...

Have you reached out to anyone that does this on a commercial level?

Whether or not the burner could maintain the heat would depend on the burner BTU output, your gas supply, wind conditions, etc. Hard to say. If you have a pot, or have a pot in mind, contact the manufacturer and ask those questions - odds are they can answer them.

I would personally go individual on birds. Each bird is going to weigh different and will require different cooking times. May only be slightly different times - but a pound difference is going to mean a 2-1/2 minute delta in amount of time cooked. You don't want overcooked, and you sure as hell don't want undercooked. Individual racks with the ability to place and remove would be a must for me.

Safety - can't see it being any more or less safe than a single pot really. You are dealing with more oil, but that really doesn't have a lot of bearing IMO as it is the stability of the container that determines the safety factor. Would guess any 120 quart boiler/fry rig is on a solid 4 legged stand and stable.

The biggest thing will be lifespan of the oil to me. You can get 3-4 birds out of your oil before it starts getting bitter. How are you going to handle changing of hot oil? You won't be able to wait for it to cool because 9 gallons of oil will take a long, long time to cool down (hours), so you'll need to have a contingency plan to drain and store hot oil during the cooking process. Would assume any rig will have a drain port, but you'll need to pipe it up prior to firing the rig up and make sure you have a good control valve on it, along with good storage containers (can't use the polypropylene factory containers until the oil gets below 180F, so plan ahead).

I for one think it'll work great. That said, I've never seen It done. I too fry a lot of turkeys each year with a men's fellowship group.

I think oil life is extended because there's more volume of oil. Like you still replace oil every 3rd drop or so. A drop just has 3 turkeys instead of one. We typically pour the oil hot as heck into a steel barrel.

Oil has a much lower specific heat than water. If the burner can handle crawfish it can handle this fine

Just use similarly sized turkeys. Out of 20 turkeys you'll be able to make groups .

Presley said:

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I for one think it'll work great. That said, I've never seen It done. I too fry a lot of turkeys each year with a men's fellowship group.

I think oil life is extended because there's more volume of oil. Like you still replace oil every 3rd drop or so. A drop just has 3 turkeys instead of one. We typically pour the oil hot as heck into a steel barrel.

Oil has a much lower specific heat than water. If the burner can handle crawfish it can handle this fine

Just use similarly sized turkeys. Out of 20 turkeys you'll be able to make groups .

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It takes more heat to raise and sustain oil at 350F than water at 212F.

I used to fry about 80 for work. We used about 10-12 individual setups. I wouldn't recommend the multiple idea unless you have some kind of super burner. The fluctuation in oil temp would be really difficult to control with that big setup and oil temp we found to be pretty crucial to a good fried bird. Also tracking the cook time on each bird would be tricky , unless you found some way to keep track of which bird is which.

Thanks for the replies. Honestly, my biggest concern is the "maintain the oil at 350 deg" one. From my experience with turkeys, the time difference for a .5-.75 pound difference in birds wouldn't be a problem. Pretty much every single bird I fry goes into a cooler for 30 mins to a hour immediately after cooking so the carryover heat and sitting in a stable temp cooler balances that out.

My other concern is managing more than 3 setups all by myself. I've done 3 at a time, but worried that 4 or more would get pretty crazy.

I know I could add another person to help, but I didn't make a lot of $$ last year and that would cut into it even more. I think I sold them for too cheap a price ($50 each). Thinking about charging $75 per this year.

Not an Aggie but I have done this multiple times at the VFW for our Thanksgiving Luncheon for Vets and their Families.

Here's a link to my FB to a Picture of the Outcome. Should be a public post.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02WmfZ3n57tNn7rkRAs3JAkfV7EDfeAogFMV4CKGgrLS3Y7rRZK6yrwHV5jmJzS7BXl&id=1786561895&mibextid=Nif5oz

Worst. Bump. Ever.

FWIW ...if anybody is still interested .....if you are in the SA area check with the folks that run Aggie Park off 410 and West Ave.....they used to and probably still do have a set up made out of about a 6 ft diameter weld end that they could fry 20 -25 turkeys at a time....

Wow, randomly checking the board and see a 5 year old thread of mine back to the first page!

I'm still frying around a bunch of turkeys but I never ended up trying the big pot and multiple turkeys at once. I'm doing 4 rigs at once and I usually get about 5-6 birds done in one pot before I start to see the oil degrading. It's worse with the "jet burner" stands. I guess because the heat is so narrowly focused on the bottom of the pot and it gets too hot and will burn some of the oil. I have had better results with the wider spread burners and longer oil life. And speaking of the oil, holy smokes it has gotten expensive! $50 for three gallons this year!