Turkey, Southern Style

So a couple of years ago, my sister decided we needed to be more adventurous when it came to cooking our Thanksgiving bird. I guess she had seen some cooking show where they showed you step by step how to fry a turkey.

The chef claimed you hadn't really tasted turkey until you had tasted a fried turkey. With that statement uttered, my sister decided it was game on! She went out and bought all the necessary tools - deep fryer, oil, tongs, hooks, flame-retarded oven mitt and of course, the bird.

(Disclaimer! If you're a vegetarian or grew up on a farm where you named your little gobble-gobbles, the images you're about to see are graphic in nature.)

Here's Holly with her bird - pre-fryer. The secret to a moist bird is to inject it with marinades, spices and coat it with a special dry rub seasoning.

Here's my sister's boyfriend, my dad and Holly getting ready to lower our turkey into the fryer.

And a quick 45 minutes later, our bird emerged cooked (yep, it's supposed to look charcoaled!) and ready for consumption.

With her uncanny ability to turned anything into gold (or in our case, dinner!), Holly salutes her masterpiece.

And while her fried turkey was beyond juicy, I still enjoyed my mom's oven-cooked variety (our backup bird!) just as much. So go ahead and be adventurous. Just know, you can never take the turkey out of Thanksgiving. It will always be the star of the show. And the stuffing a close second!

PK