Deep-fried turkeys gone wrong.
I especially liked the genius who decided to deep-fry a turkey on a wooden deck.
Alton Brown did a Good Eats episode on deep frying a turkey.
3 parts on YouTube-Part 1
He also shows how to make a derrick to lower the turkey into the pot.
A good friend of mine had his house burned down by one of those things…on Christmas Eve…
One Thanksgiving the neighbors tried to fry a turkey in their garage. The house caught on fire, but the fire department put it out before serious structural damage was done.
The excitement happened just as we were finishing the pie, so it was perfect after-dinner theater.
I can almost gaurantee that there will be one fire page in my county somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday of Thanksgiving week from some schlub setting the yard or house on fire trying to fry a turkey.
If there are no injuries involved, they usually get laughed at after the flames are out.
Bonus Turkey Tip: No matter how you’re planning to cook the turkey, if it’s frozen, make sure it is completely thawed before you start cooking it. Roasting a frozen turkey or turkey breast doesn’t work, either. I tried, once. Unbeknownst to me, the turkey breast I was cooking wasn’t thawed all the way through. When I put the meat thermometer in the center of it after the appointed cooking time, it measured a temperature of 38 Fahrenheit. Not as epic a fail as the ones in the video, but not edible, either.
People don’t read instructions. You make sure that the turkey is completely thawed and patted dry before putting it in the oil. Most of the idiots in the video, other than the firemen doing demonstrations, would probably burn their houses down if the were left to cook a normal meal in their own kitchens.
My evil half-brother was responsible for the turkey one year. It came blackened. Not Cajun-spiced, blackened. It was awful.
Is this thread a political metaphor?
I can’t locate a decent copy of it, but I adore the Allstate commercial that addresses this very topic.
“Fifteen succeeded in setting their houses on fire.”
Here it is. Admittedly, not high quality. It was shot off the tube with a camcorder. But it’s watchable.
Incidentally, I just found out that the new character in the Allstate commercials, Mayhem, is played by Dean Winters, famous for playing Ryan O’Reily in Oz and Det. Cassidy in Law & Order: SVU. And of course, he played Charley in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I never even recognized him.
It certainly wasn’t intended to be. I saw a funny video of deep-fried turkeys gone horribly wrong, and thought people here would like to see it, too.