How to Safely Deep-Dry a Turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner – According to a Chemist

Deep-Frying A turkey A great way to get delicious, moist food Thank youbut this method cooking Can be a very dangerous undertaking.

Every fall, millions of dollars in damage, trips to the ER, and even deaths occur as a result of attempts to deep-fry a turkey. Most of these accidents happen because people put frozen turkeys in boiling oil. If you’re considering deep frying this year, don’t forget to thaw and dry your turkey before placing it in the pot. failure Doing so could result in an explosive disaster.

What’s so dangerous about putting even a partially frozen turkey in the deep-fryer?

I’m a chemist who studies plant, fungal, and animal compounds and I love food chemistry. The root cause of frozen turkey cracking is difference in density. There is a difference in density between oil and water and a difference in density between the solid, liquid and gas states of water. When these density differences interact in just the right way, you get an explosion.

understanding density

Density is how much an object weighs given a specific volume. For example, imagine you have an ice cube in one hand and a marshmallow in the other. While they are approximately the same size, the snowflake is heavier: it is more dense.

The first important density difference when it comes to frying is that water is more dense than oil. This has to do with how tightly the molecules of each substance are held together and how heavy the atoms that make up each liquid are.

Water molecules are small and tightly bound together. Oil molecules are very large and do not pack together comparatively. Additionally, water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, while oil is composed primarily of carbon and hydrogen. Oxygen is heavier than carbon. This means that, for example, a cup of water contains more atoms than a cup of oil, and those individual atoms are heavier. This is why oil floats on water. It is less dense.

While different materials have different densities, liquids, solids, and gases of the same material can also have different densities. Whenever you place a piece of ice in a glass of water this is what you see: The ice floats to the top because it is less dense than water.

When water absorbs heat, it changes to its gas phase, steam. The volume of steam is 1,700 times greater than the same number of molecules of liquid water. You see this effect when you boil water in a tea kettle. The force of the expanding gas pushes steam out of the kettle through the whistle, creating a sizzling sound.

frozen turkeys filled with water

Frozen turkey – or any type of frozen meat for that matter – contains a lot of ice. Raw meat can contain anywhere from 56% to 73% water. If you’ve ever thawed a frozen piece of meat, you’ve probably noticed all the liquid coming out of it.

For deep-frying, cooking oil is heated to about 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 C). This is much hotter than the boiling point of water, which is 212 F (100 C). So when the ice in a frozen turkey comes in contact with hot oil, the surface ice quickly turns to steam.

This quick transition is not a problem when it occurs at the very surface of the oil. The steam escapes into the air without causing any harm.

However, when you submerge the turkey in oil, the ice inside the turkey absorbs the heat and melts, creating liquid water. This is where density comes into play.

This liquid water is more dense than oil, so it falls to the bottom of the vessel. The water molecules continue to absorb heat and energy and eventually they change phase and become vapor. The water molecules then rapidly spread apart and the volume increases 1,700 times. This expansion causes the density of water to drop to a fraction of a percent of the density of oil, so the gas tends to rise to the surface quickly.

Combine a sharp change in density with an expansion of volume and you get an explosion. The steam expands and rises, forcing the boiling oil out of the pot. If that wasn’t dangerous enough, as displaced oil comes in contact with the burner or flame, it can catch FireOnce a few drops of oil catch fire, the flames will rapidly ignite nearby oil molecules, resulting in a fast-growing and often destructive fire,

Thousands of such accidents occur every year. So, if you decide to deep-fry the turkey for this year’s Thanksgiving, be sure to thaw it thoroughly and pat it dry. And the next time you pour a little liquid into a pan filled with oil and the oil splatters all over the stove, you’ll know the science behind why.