The Jackalicious Files

The southern region of the USA is a diverse and culturally rich place where distinct ethnic groups exchanged their cooking styles and created a new subculture of people and food traditions. Groups such as West Africans brought over as slaves, Scott-Irish who migrated out of Northern Ireland and French speaking Europeans who first settled in Canada and later migrated to the Gulf Coast. These people along with Catholic Irish, Germans and Eastern Europeans may have been distinct in their own right but their culinary knowledge merged to give us our eclectic and tasty diets we see today all across the Southland.

Originally most Deep South cuisine consisted mainly of farm fresh goods like beans, peas, corn bread, okra and so forth but things have changed a lot due to the prevalence of mass media. Today the Internet along with the many internal migrations patterns have often times corrupted what the traditional Southern diet is all about. Celebrities like the New England native; Emeril Lagasse, who has quite the popular line of restaurants, claims to know Southern food. While I do respect Mr. Lagasse and his background knowledge on food, you have to remember he's a salesman. I don't care how many 'Bams!" he throws in there either; I’m not buying it. I could write about tons of the latest food crazes of late, but one that comes to mind, and one that really strikes a nerve with me is this deep fried turkey nonsense.

You read it here first folks, the deep fried turkey has nothing to do with the South or at least in the traditional sense. It didn't truly begin in the south and really is nothing more than a marketing gimmick by folks like Cabelas or some outdoor mega-mart.

The fad of deep-frying a turkey took off in the early 1990s and quickly reached into all parts the U.S. Your friendly local Red Chinese Army Mega-Mart along with other outdoor stores began selling those large steel boilers similar to the type of boilers used for fish fries. Right about this same time they started selling these syringes for injecting marinades. One brand in particular was the "Cajun Injector" still being sold today. This device that is nothing more than a large syringe for livestock was sold and trademarked by Bruce Foods out of Louisiana, with a 1987 registration date for it.

Growing up in the 1970s, nobody I knew deep-fried a whole turkey. The main reason for this was the lack of outdoor propane burners or portable grills. As a child we had a permanent natural gas grill installed by the gas company, but it was permanently mounted in one spot directly to a gas line. This type of design came about in the late 60s, and its invention is credited to Bill Wepfer and Melton Lancaster, both engineers working for ARKLA (Arkansas-Louisiana Gas Company). The story goes they took a simple charcoal setup and ran a gas line to it. The object was to find ways to sell more natural gas. The idea worked and many home across the south and particularly the gulf coast had them installed in their back yards.

Often times we laugh at the dry humor of Mike Judge with his animated character, Hank Hill of the hit animation, "King of the Hill". Hill often touts the many uses of propane for his sales pitch. He made mention in one episode that it was his dream as a child to sell those "Energy-efficient clean-burning propane gas for all our sacred heating and cooking needs.", but in reality that luxury didn't exist. If Hank Hill was a real man in his forties in the 1980 or 90s, he could not have known what a portable propane tank was in the first place, or at least until the 1970s.

Could I have somehow missed seeing those gobblers being fried by my Mother or Grandmothers slaving over that propane burner in the back yard, right? Wrong. It seems that the deep fried yard bird history goes back to a smooth talking celebrity TV chef from Louisiana by the name of Justin Wilson. It was Wilson to first mention the practice (whether real or imagined) in one of his cookbooks. In one of his books he stated that he first saw a deep fried turkey in Louisiana in the 1930s. It's obvious the late Mr. Wilson either had his dates mixed up or he was pulling the wool over the eyes of the many men and women who purchased his latest cookbook. Wilson wrote in his book, Justin Wilson's Homegrown Louisiana Cookin'(1990),

I first made a turkey like this in the 1930's when I lived in Crowley, La. Some friends and I had no luck in our hunting so we killed a yard turkey and tried it in fresh rendered lard. I've been doing it ever since. It is the best way to cook turkey that I know of. The turkey doesn't get dry like most baked turkeys do.

It really is a neat story and quite believable but I see it for what it really is, and nothing more than a 'story' to sell a book.

Two very clear facts about deep-frying a turkey are as follows:

First, Deep frying a turkey needs a very expensive setup and a lot of lard, oil or shortening in order to cook, - never mind the huge deep fish fryer involved. Furthermore, deep-frying a turkey cannot be done indoors.

Secondly, The propane or natural gas grill as we know it today was invented in the 1960s. The first setup was a permanent style grill that fed off of the main natural gas lines in ones area (if they had it to offer). Usually it was the local natural gas company that offers them at a discount. Later on in the 70s, the propane cylinder followed along with propane attachments and stoves thereafter. While stored gas in cylinders or tanks wasn’t new, the idea of a smaller 20lb canister especially for Propane grills was. Therefore, a deep fried turkey (as we know it today) couldn’t have existed before this.

I really hate to burst the bubble of all those folks who stereotype the south, but the deep fried turkey is more than likely the invention of a smooth talking Louisiana TV chef that made his money telling jokes and selling his cook books. The rise of the local Mega-Mart along with outdoor mail order catalogs helped it along and grow to what it is today. While the origins of the deep fried turkey may have been invented by a Cajun, it's really not a southern tradition at all.

At the conclusion of this article, I have a short video with Alton Brown talking about how to cook a turkey. He gives a few examples on how dangerous it can be with a bit of comedy.

"There's a Sucker born every minute." ~ P.T. Barnum (1810-1891)

Turkey Recipe:

Like most Americans, I prefer my Turkey baked in a real oven and preferably a gas oven, and always brined before cooking. Brining is a process of adding moisture and flavor to your meat before cooking. Your turkey will NOT be dry and quite moist. Once you cook it this way, you will not change to your old way.

For my Turkey I place it in a large pot where it can be submerged in brine water that is salty enough to float an egg. As a rule of thumb, I prefer to use Kosher Salt at the rate of 1/2 cup per quart of water, and then 1 quart per lb of Turkey, not to exceed 3 gallons of brine. Lately I've been on a sea salt kick and found that it gives it a very different flavor and adds a lot more minerals our body might need in regards to nutrition. If using regular grained sea-salt use about 2-2.5 tablespoons per quart and the quart to lb ratio not to exceed 3 gallons. I have done a 50/50 of sugar* and salt and it seems to do well.

Brined turkey also moistens the skin and browning can be hard to do. To solve this, be sure and let your bird's skin dry out well and maybe a few hours in the fridge after removing from the brine.

I let this turkey sit in my refrigerator in the brine (submerged completely) 1-2 days before Thanksgiving, Christmas or any special occasion. That morning I remove the turkey, rinse it off and pat it dry. I then coat the bird liberally with olive oil. Once the bird is coated and shiny with oil I sprinkle powdered turmeric first, then some coarse garlic (fresh), a little chili powder and lastly sea salt. I rub it all in well quite liberally. Sometimes it's easier to mix all the spices together and then just rub it into the bird. (I always wear latex or vinyl disposable gloves while doing this). Be sure and spice the inside cavity of the bird as well. If using a stuffing, disregard this step.

When cooking, I preheat the oven at 450 and after placing the bird on the middle rack (directly laid in the pan) I turn it down to just over 250 degrees. Once the inside meat temperature comes up to safe eating temperature for turkey, I take it out.

This turkey will cook much faster and be so tender the meat will fall off the bone if you are not careful. It's delicious, it's simple to do and it's a REAL tradition.

*cooking with sugar

Those unaccustomed to Southern cuisine find sugar as a seasoning in food to be unusual. However, sugar is found in a lot of old style southern style foods and especially in peas or beans. The sweetness of sugar in cooked southern foods is not sweet like candy or deserts at all. The sugar helps 'wake up' the food flavor and offsets the saltiness. For example, sugar, salt along with pork grease from fat back or bacon is added to garden peas (clay, cow, black-eye) for cooking along with some black pepper. Amazingly these few ingredients will give a lot of flavor to your food and is considered by some to be the De facto way of cooking old style southern food.