Each year I try to find something new to add to my annual post on producing the best possible Thanksgiving turkey dinner by deep frying said bird whole. The procedure for cooking your bird to perfection without killing yourself by fire or bacteriological warfare is down below the fold. But first, I want to address a secondary idea for those of you who won’t be frying your bird. After all, this process is not for everyone. As I note below, if you live in the city proper, this bird is not for you. A whole bird is more than many people need, as well. And you simply must not drink before or while frying a turkey.

… which alone is enough to put many of you off the whole idea!

So for those of you are not in a position to fry your bird, and who don’t mind just having white meat…

Admit it! Only your cousin Bob even pretends to prefer like the dark stuff.

…I have an alternative method of cooking your turkey that gives you perfect white meat, far better than anything you’ll get from a traditional oven, and almost as good as frying. Use a sous vide water bath oven.

It looks kinda like an automatic bread maker, only vastly more versatile.

I won’t go into a full discussion of how to cook via sous vide here. There are better resources than me, and I still want all of you, who can, to fry your bird safely. But if you don’t know what it is, you buy a special counter-top appliance which can maintain exact temperatures in a water bath. You’ll need an oven like the one above from Sous Vide Supreme. They come in two sizes, Regular, and Demi. They are not cheap, but you’ll use the snot out of yours year-round, because you’ve never cooked better steaks, fish, omelets, or especially turkey in your kitchen any other way.

You vacuum-seal an unprocessed turkey breast, along with butter and whatever seasonings you wish, and place the pouch (or pouches, if you need more meat) in the sous vide oven, with the water at the exact temperature you want the final internal temperature of your meat to be. For this, you need a vacuum sealer and the right sized pouches. We own a FoodSaver, but any such device will do the trick. Just make sure you have a good seal.

Cooking time is just about whatever is convenient for you. Depending on the size of cut, and how frozen it is (no need ever to defrost with sous vide), it will take a minimum of 90 minutes to 2.5 hours. But you don’t need to worry about being there to take it out when it is done. Because the water is the temperature of the final doneness, it will never overcook the food. Leave it in an extra two hours if the game goes into triple overtime, or the McGillicuddys drop by to say hello. When you are almost ready to serve the dinner, take out the pouch, cut it open, and either flash broil it, drop it into a rocket hot cast iron skillet, or just brown it to perfection with one of these. Guess which one I love doing?

That’s it. Serve right away. No need to worry about carry over, where the meat will cook an extra 5-10 degrees after you take it out. Nor do you need to let it rest before carving. The meat has cooked in every drop of its original juices, and is at the perfect temperature.

It is far better white meat than you will ever get from an oven-roasted whole bird. It’s easier. It’s more bullet-proof. And did I mention it tastes much better? The only downsides are: no dark meat, no carcass for stock, fewer leftovers, and you won’t have this scene at the dinner table.

But for lots of us, any or all of those aren’t really a drawback.

Anyway, on to the main event. Enjoy your Thanksgiving and don’t kill yourself!
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Ma’ane’i No Ke Aloha. An original Valentine’s Day drink from A Mountain of Crushed Ice

Today is the 14th of Tiki Month, I mean February, so I thought I’d look for a Valentine’s Tiki drink to give a whirl. Over at my new February lurking grounds, Tiki Central, I ran across this little offering, The Pink Wink.

I took a few liberties with WoofMutt’s recipe. First, I replaced his cherry garnish with the pomegranate arils because I think they are more Tiki-like, and more importantly so that whomever you offer them to will be yours forever!

Second, I guess the grenadine used in the original is the artificially colored stuff, because my natural grenadine made no impact on the color of this drink in the called for amount. I doubled it, and also drizzled a bit more to settle into the bottom of the glass among the pomegranate arils.

The result is an odd duck, but exotic. Contrary to the poster’s original comments, I don’t see this one wining over any gin-o-phobes. And and the frou-frou drink crowd won’t get it either. But if you are looking for a Tikified Martini, with some pleasant Valentine’s Day symbolism, the Pink Wink may be your destination.

Three hot, dusty camels trudge across a nighttime desert waste. Their hotter, dustier riders slump tiredly in their seats. Each occasionally looks up at a particularly bright star in the sky ahead of them.

Melchior: <Straightens and begins to sing>We three kings of Orient are, bearing….
Gaspar: Oh cripes! He’s in the mead again, Balthazar!
Balthazar: Melchior, will you please quit it with the kings bit? No one believes you.
Gaspar: Seriously. If we are supposed to be kings, where are our entourages?
Melchior: Like I told that barmaid back in Jerusalem, Gaspar: “With the economic downturn, we’ve had to make cutbacks in the sycophant budget.”
Gaspar: And how’d that line work out for you, your majesty?
Melchior: Shut up.
Balthazar: And why do you need to pump yourself up, anyway? We’re astrologers—the best astrologers in the world. We can look into the sky and divine the purposes of God.
Melchior: <Yodels>We are the Kings of Astrology!
<Balthazar and Gaspar shake their heads>
Balthazar: Speaking of kings, I woke up this morning with the unmistakable impression that once we find this kid, we should go home some way other than back through Jerusalem.
Gaspar: Gee, you think? That Herod character seemed a bit too eager to hand over the keys to the palace to a replacement he never heard of.
Melchior: I’m happy to go home another route. Herod smells worse than ol’ Camile here. <Slaps his camel’s flank affectionately>
Gaspar: That, and the fact that that barmaid’s father will have had all this intervening time to sharpen his scimitar….
Balthazar: <Coughs on some sand>Well, whatever Melchior’s thinking about kingship and whatnot, he’s got the right idea about a drink. <Starts to rummage through his camel’s pack. Finds a present and pulls it out> Hey! My gift for the kid! Did you guys remember to bring yours?
Gaspar: Don’t you think you might have asked that question earlier, when we were still able to turn around?
Balthazar: I got him a batch of Frankincense.
Melchior: Still on with the incense? It’s a baby. You’ll give it colic.
Balthazar: Look, my reading still says the kid’s gonna be a god. He better get used to people waving incense around his face. What’d you get him, Gaspar?
Gaspar: Gold.
Melchior: Cash? You got him cash? You might as well have gotten him a Target gift card!
Gaspar: My reading is that it’s going to be a king, not a god…
Balthazar: Something you might have kept to yourself around Herod…
Gaspar: <Overrides Balthazar’s interjection>… and gold says, you’re the king.
Melchior: Gold says, Here’s some cash, I couldn’t be bothered to think of anything appropriate to get you.
Gaspar: <Makes a rude gesture a Melchior>OK, Miss Manners, what did you get the child?
Melchior: <Mumbles something>
Gaspar: What’s that? You didn’t really forget your gift, did you? You’re not adding your name onto my tag, like you did for Balthazar’s last birthday.
Balthazar: I remember that. You still owe me a gift.
Melchior: I didn’t forget my gift. It’s secure in my pack.
Balthazar: Then what is it?
Melchior: Look, my reading just doesn’t end well for this poor kid. Doom, Gathering Gloom, Death, and all that.
Gaspar: Melchior, you cannot give a shroud for a baby shower gift.
Melchior: No! No. I just got to thinking and Myrrh popped into my head.
Gaspar: Perfume? You bought a baby perfume?
Balthazar: Maybe the mom will like it.
Melchior: I didn’t actually get pure Myrrh…. That’s kind of expensive, and I’m a little short this month.
Balthazar: Then what are you… Wait! You didn’t, Melchior.
Melchior: <Defiantly>Yes I did. What of it?
Balthazar: You brought a bottle of Fernet Branca?!?
Gaspar: I’d have gone with the perfume.
Melchior: Come on, it’s got Myrrh in it! And we love it.
Gaspar: We are bartenders.
Balthazar: We are astrologers.
Gaspar: We are astrologers who tend bar to make ends meet. Together, that makes us the wisest men on Earth.
But after a long shift kissing the backsides of arrogant camel brokers in their red power keffiyehs, we need something exotic to cleanse the pallet. Fernet Branca gets rid of every bad taste you got in one shot.
Balthazar: Leaves it’s own rather… imposing set of aftertastes. Like the Myrrh, for instance.
Melchior: I brought a case of Canada Dry Ginger Ale too.
Gaspar: Oh… well… that’s fine then. <Pauses> Except have you forgotten it’s a gift for a freaking baby?
Melchior: Look guys, like I said: My reading says this kids got a rough road ahead. I figure he’s going to need to fight off a lot of bad tastes in his mouth. I’m just trying to equip him properly.
<Tired, companionable silence>
Gaspar: <Spits>Ugh, all this sand… Look, Melchior, I’ve got a lot of gold here. It was a good month for tips for me. Let’s stop off at the next town, and we’ll buy some real Myrrh for your gift.
Balthazar: Perfume would be more appropriate for a god than booze….
Melchior: <Suspiciously>And why, pray tell, are you suddenly feeling so much like sharing, Gaspar?
Gaspar: Well…. <rubs his throat> If you are going to give real Myrrh when we find the kid, then we can crack open your bottle of Fernet Branca right now….
<Fade to black>
Balthazar: Um, Melchior, I don’t suppose you brought any Moxie, did you?

And that, children, is the real story of Epiphany!

Craked.com tries out Cocktailblogging for size, as only Cracked can. I’m ashamed to admit, Soren’s post is better than a healthy chunk of my work… damn noob.
Read to the end. It’s worth it.

Deploying advanced new in-flight EggNog resupply technology.

A happy Yuletide to you all.
Just like Santa, you need plenty of eggnog today, so my gift to you is a bunch of links to friends who know eggnog better than I.

• Paul Clarke: General Harrison’s Eggnog
• Darcy O’Neil: Eggnog Recipies (1898)
• Camper English: Eggnog Goes Bananas
• Kevin Gray: Holiday Cocktail Recipies
• Lance Mayhew: Kahlua Cinnamon Spice Eggnog
• Andrew Bohrer: The Cocktail Advent Calendar-Eggnog
• Jeffrey Morgenthaler: Egg Nog

The gift for the cocktailian who has everything.

It is November, so it is obviously time for my annual post/repost on how to fry your bird for Thanksgiving (or any other day of the year where you crave copious quantities of the best fowl you’ve ever had). I might have skipped it this year, were it not for my personal hero, William Shatner.

Hey wait!
I thought I was your hero…

Don’t pout, Alton Brown. You’re my hero too. And as it happens, both you and Bill have worked to keep people safe and happy when they fry their turkeys.

I’ve gone over a lot of what Alton has come up with on frying a turkey before, but the Shatner’s deal is new this year. It is actually an insurance PSR from State Farm, who is apparently getting tired of paying for new garages every year at this time. Behold the awesomeness that is “Eat, Fry, Love”, the inevitable winner for this year’s Oscar for best short documentary.

As with all things Shatner, it needs to be watched in full to absorb its majesty.

Unfortunately, it is a bit shallow, and misses a few very important safety tips. (State Farm, what the hell?) I’ll run down where Bill is still in danger of setting himself on fire in this safety video, touch on a few other points, and then repost my annual rundown on the complete, nearly bullet-proof, procedure below the fold.

I’ll start with the turkey fryer kit shown. Each year these get better, and closer to actually being safe and effective. But only closer. I still recommend you build your rig from individual parts. The kit pots are often too narrow or too small to hold enough oil. A larger pot is both going to produce a better cooked bird, and be safer. One of the critical elements in a deliciously fried bird is maintaining the proper oil temperature. The more oil you have going, the easier it is to maintain your temp when that huge amount of room-temperature flesh goes in to cook. But nothing is more important than keeping that oil inside the pot, as the video demonstrates, so a bigger pot is essential. See the post below where I describe how to exactly determine the right oil level before you heat it.
The second, and larger, problem with most fryer kits is the burner. This is usually the disqualifier. Your burner must be ballsy enough to keep all that oil hot, and to make it recover its hotness quickly after the bird goes in.
And from a safety standpoint it must be ridiculously stable! If you can’t stand on it and safely do the Watusi, you probably need a lower, sturdier, burner. Get a more powerful one while you are at it.

Shatner also touches on the fact that your bird must not be frozen. If you put a frozen bird in your oil, it will be a lot of paperwork for your State Farm agent. It’s the holiday season and she’d really rather be out fighting the Black Friday crowds than arranging for your new garage and hiking your premiums. Also, it is nothing compared to the paperwork your doctors and nurses will have to do down at the hospital….
I usually try to buy a fresh bird so no defrosting will be needed, but if you must go with a frozen turkey, remember that defrosting in the fridge is safest. This will take a day for every four pounds of your bird. So get cracking.

Next, is the “dingle-dangle”. For safety reasons, call this a “lifter”. Calling it a dingle-dangle will likely result in an immediate atomic wedgie from any of your friends who hear you use such a dorky name… even if all your friends are elderly ladies. Do not ever be tempted to use the coat hanger-like upper handle! To use this, you must actually put your body right over the oil at the most intensely risky part of the frying process: initial immersion. The best way is an apparatus like the turkey derrick I rip off from Alton Brown describe in the Spa Day for Tom repost below. If you don’t want to go to that trouble, attach a hook for the lifter to the middle of a long broom handle and two people can safely lower the bird into the oil while maintaining a couple of feet distance. If nothing else, it will save you spatter burns. No matter how dry you get your bird, there will be a hell of a lot of popping when it first hits the oil. Just like you don’t fry bacon in the nude, son, you don’t put your hands over that fryer.

And kudos to Shatner and State Farm for mentioning at the end (though not portraying in the film where people will actually see it) the most important turkey frying safety precaution of all: Turn off the damn flame when the bird is going in! No matter how careful you are, freak accidents happen. If that pot tips, the boiling oil is lethal enough. If there is a flame…
If Bill had actually just dropped a bird into boiling oil that then sloshed over like that onto a lit burner, we’d have had a year of Shatner Memorial ComicCons around the country. Kill the fire until the bird is in and the bubbles have stopped rising. Then relight it quickly.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving, folks, and thanks to Verum Serum, where I first saw this video.

P.S. That looks suspiciously like a Gin ad Tonic that Bill is enjoying while frying his bird. Don’t. Even. Think. About. It. Until after the bird is out and resting.

Below the fold is a reposting of last year’s version of Spa Day for Tom.
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Aaaaah!
You’re being too scary, Doug!

What? I haven’t even started writing yet.

You are about to do the scariest of all blog posts, aren’t you? A repost?

Um, yeah. I am. Sorry.
This has been a lame two months around here, but Real Life has needed no costume to be scary.
Why is a repost so scary for you?

In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t get out much, except when you write here. Reposts are just another chance for me to not get out of the drawer.
…
It’s dark in there….

Hey, you’ve got your own Twitter account and everything these days! You can always mock me there. Or go mock SeanMike….

Anyway everyone, Happy Halloween! I hope you have a drunken good time after all the urchins have been bought off. Since I have had no chance to create anything new for this year’s festivities, I’ll simply offer excerpts from two earlier Halloween missives that tickle my fancy.

The first is the greatest cocktail-themed Halloween Costume ever: Morgan Hendry’s Tiki Bar Tiki.

Secondly, I’ll embed here a video that I actually made, showing the results of the Liquor Fairy-inspired Halloween cocktail, The Skeletal Mule.

Be sure to save some Three Musketeers for me when I ring your doorbell!

Happy American Independence Day, all!
Lots of blogs, newspapers, and magazines have posts up about a specific cocktail to celebrate the Fourth with…

Bunk, I say! This is Independence Day, Americans. Choose your own damn cocktail, that suits your own damn fancy. I will offer the suggestion that you might want to make sure your libation of choice be a cocktail (the national cuisine of America), and that you might want to lean toward one made with bourbon (our national spirit, and a creation of freedom-loving, tax-hating immigrants). Of course, if you want to celebrate with a Pegu, that creation of the British Empire, well I won’t stop you.
But today, I drink bourbon.

It is traditional on Independence Day to offer thirteen toasts to the Union, but I couldn’t find thirteen entertaining ones, and don’t have time to compose my own. Instead I present this two million hit video. It is stirring, beautiful, hilarious, and a bit crazed—Just like America.