Thanksgiving, 2006. A day that will live in infamy.
I had made arrangements with a friend of mine to put on a joint Thanksgiving dinner that was (or so we initially thought) sure to gastronomically delight all of our friends. Oven space was at a premium, and my friend had a turkey fryer, so we opted for a deep-fried turkey.
My first mistake in this whole chain of events was that I assumed that my friend knew how to use said turkey fryer. This should have become glaringly obvious when he asked if he could set up INSIDE MY APARTMENT. I directed him to the vacant parking lot and thought nothing more of it, busying myself instead with side dishes and desserts.
Three pies later (I was mass-producing pumpkin at the time) I checked in with my friend as to the status of the oil. “It’s not ready yet,” he told me. “I think I’ve got the fire too low.” At this point, I should have run screaming in the opposite direction. As it was, I made a noncommittal noise and commenced work on the dinner rolls.
Allow me to take a moment to explain something. My friend thought that the oil needed to be boiling before we could fry the turkey. In reality, the oil needed to be quite a bit cooler than that. Something that also bears mentioning is that he had inadvertently superheated the oil (a note to chemistry students: if your lab instructors yell at you to put a boiling chip in your flasks, it’s to avoid superheating. Follow their instructions).
Eventually, he became impatient and grew tired of waiting for the oil to start boiling. At this point he came in and asked if I could “give him a hand with the turkey”. This translated into, “dip the turkey into the deep fryer”. Now, the situation I was entering into was this:
- The turkey was large. Large things displace a great deal of liquid.
- The oil was superheated. It was primed to boil violently at the slightest provocation.
- I was aware of #1, but #2 was going to strike me completely by surprise.
I had the presence of mind to wear an oven mitt that went to almost the elbow. This, however, did not prepare me for the event I was about to unleash. The instant the turkey touched the surface, a fountain of boiling peanut oil showered up at me. Acting on instinct, I withdrew my hand. The hand that – lest we forget – was holding the turkey.
Not the turkey fell to the bottom, displacing an entire turkey’s worth of oil. The cascade leaped over the edge of the container and created a uniform layer of oil across the parking lot. Remember now, dear reader, what we had used to heat the oil – a propane flame. Oil is flammable, but luckily the majority of the oil had managed to avoid catching fire. We simply had a small pool to deal with. One Class B fire extinguisher later, the fire was out, and we were able to regroup and begin cooking the turkey anew.
Our guests had to wait for the new pot of oil to heat to a reasonable cooking temperature, but they amused themselves in the meantime by skating on the oily-smooth surface of the parking lot and laughing at our misadventure.
Moral: If you play with fire, make sure the person who is playing understands how fire works.
Corollary to the Moral: If you play with fire, have a fire extinguisher on hand.
Applied Phlogiston 