Paula Deen's Deep Fried Turkey Recipe

At last I’m fixing to spend a little time now with our guess of honor Mr. Tom Turkey. We’re going to start with the clean bird. Now, he's been washed and cleaned and we've removed all the giblets and don’t forget to check the neck. I never will forget one of my friend’s picks their first thanksgiving meal and she was so proud of her turkey. It was so beautiful, took it to the table, went to slice it and out came all this raw giblets in a paper bag and we've teased her unmercifully about that. So, make sure you watch for the giblets.

Now we’re just going to hold him down and then we’re going to cover him in salt, black paper and garlic powder. And you can do this part actually early in the day and letting it sit around. It would be soaking up all of those seasonings. Then we’re going to turn him over and giving him a very, very nice back rub, get him ready for that wonderful hot peanut oil. How do you like that massage Mr. Turkey? Go and get him good back here in his back side. And now we’re going to finish up with just the rotisserie chicken. This is Dr. Paprika and some more spices in it. This is going to give him that nice brown color and just rubbing good all over under his arm.

We used peanut oil at the restaurant. We don’t fry anything and anything else but peanut oil. And I’ll tell you, it’s a little bit more expensive than your regular oils. But it gives things a flavor that you wouldn’t believe. We've got him rubbed down good now. The last spot we’re going is inside. He's going to come out so beautiful and brown and if you’ve never had fried turkey before, I just can't tell you how wonderful it is. It's like having one great big piece of friend chicken and that skin gets brown and crisp and succulent and we when you cut in into your bird, all the juices are trapped inside from that crispy skin and they just come rolling out and you’ll just going to be so pleased with your thanksgiving meal.

Alright, we’re going to pick this baby up and we going to just drop him into our basket. Once you fry the turkey, you’re going to find it to be so much easier and so much better than other oven turkey. You’re oven turkeys can have a tendency to dry out on you, plus they take longer and you can’t get any more simpler than this. We’re going to cook this turkey for three minutes a pound. We have 13-pound turkey. That’s 39 minutes. And always no matter what size of turkey you’ve got, always add an extra five minutes after you’ve completed your three minutes a pound. And you can see he's down there sealing himself up in that hot peanut oil and he's just going to be so good if you're not going to believe it. In just 44 short minutes, we’ve got the most delectable looking turkey you’ve ever seen.

He's brown to perfection. His skin is already starting to crisp up now that we've taken him out of our oil and we’ll let him sit there for a few minutes and let oil drain out of him good. Then we’re going to take him out and put him on a platter. This is going to be the time to eat.