Monday, November 25, 2019

Happy Thanksgiving! (Don't go up in flames)


Fried turkey can be delicious, but you need to do it right. This video has some excellent safety tips for frying your turkey with relative safety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65m8-Em2ziA

At a previous job the CTO came back after Thanksgiving and told us how he’d just burned down his deck and done significant damage to his vinyl siding. He’d been using a Turkey Fryer. He’d plopped the frozen turkey into the fryer. First, the oil overflowed and caught fire. Next, the ice in the turkey did what frozen water does when you drop it in boiling oil. Within seconds his deck and the side of his house were covered in burning oil and flaming chunks of turkey.

He finished the account with saying that next year he would set the fryer up in his garage, which had a cement floor. I left that job before Thanksgiving rolled around again, so I don’t know if he followed through.

Here are a few videos demonstrating what I suspect his back deck looked like thanks to his flagrantly ignoring pretty much all the safety advice around using a turkey fryer.

This video shows what a frozen turkey will do when put in boiling oil. Check out the air time that oil gets when it sprays up:

Here’s a short video of what happens when the fryer overflows:

Remember, the CTO I mentioned had BOTH happen.

Did you know Underwriter’s Laboratory has never certified a SINGLE turkey fryer? Here’s why:

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has their say:

Have an happy and enjoyable Thanksgiving! I hope everyone comes back to work Monday uncharred and without any new home repairs suddenly added to their calendar.


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