I was not there but this is what happened. My dad and uncle put the bird on its hanger into the pot. Next they filled the pot with water until it was about 2.5cm above the bird. Then they took the bird out of the water and marked the level the water was at in the pot. Next they poured peanut oil up to the mark on the pot. When the oil had heated to the corrrect temp they put in the bird. The oil came over the top of the pot. Even after the bubbling stopped. My brother in law told me on Friday that he always goes 10-15 cm below his mark with the oil and it does not then overflow(he had the same problem the first time he tried to deep fry his turkey). So my question is: Why does peanut oil do this? I don’t know. My whole extended family awaits your answers.
I don’t have a clue, but obviously oil expands a lot when heated.
It does expand a lot-- we had a physics lab last year about viscosity, and we had to put oil in a little drum and warm it up. If you put in too much oil and then heated it, it would overflow.
Thank you guys.
And I’ve heard that one should always use peanut oil for pot-frying turkeys. It has something to do with fire resistance when the oil does overflow or spatter over on to the burner.
Did you make sure to dry the turkey thoroughly(inside & out)before putting it in the fryer? Even a little bit of moisture can cause a boilover.
I don’t know about fire resistance… any oil can catch fire, no? Some oils have higher smoke points than others. You can’t deep-fry anything in olive oil, for example, because olive oil decomposes at a temperature lower than what would be needed for deep-frying. Maybe peanut oil just stays good at higher temperatures.
My brother deep-fried a turkey for our dinner. During dinner, he said the Peanut Board website told him you can do four turkeys with the same oil before the oil breaks down. You can freeze it in between uses.
Do the job on the lawn, not on the deck. The cooker always bubbles and spits oil everywhere.
A mother and daughter recieved second degree burns , on Thanksgiving day, after dropping an apparently wet turkey into an oil filled pot.
This, from Fridays NY Daily News.
'Scuse my ignorance, but I’ve never heard of deep-frying a turkey, and it’s boggling my mind a little …
I’ve always thought a turkey needed long, slow cooking. How on earth do you get something as huge as a turkey safely cooked through on the inside, without burning it to a cinder on the outside? 
Julie
Just a WAG but perhaps it has something to do with displacement.
Peanut oil has a lower specific gravity than water and therefore may rise higher in the pot.
Keep in mind that when you submerge a turkey in hot oil, that hot oil fills the cavity inside the turkey as well, so the meat is getting high heat from both directions. And heat transfer by conduction (direct contact) is more efficient than transfer by convection (hot air).
Still, deep frying is a game for smaller turkeys; I wouldn’t try it with one of the 28-pound monsters we used to raise.
:smack: Thanks Max Torque, I was overlooking that.
Julie
Be great to have some metric-laden strategy here. It does appear that the peanut oil, when heated to 370 deg, increases in volume. I filled the oil to the water level that covered the bird and had to scoop 370 deg oil out with a saucepan to stop boil over. Can’t scoop out too much oil, the bird must be completely covered the entire cooking time. When you first lower the bird, the oil immediately contacts and begins cooking a large area of skin and meat. The cooking process begins at once pulling moisture out of the tissue which is released as bubbles, which rise to the surface. These bubbles also increase the volume of the oil. The bubbles are most plentiful when you first lower the bird into the oil.
What seems to help a lot, is to lower the turkey very slowly into the oil. Have somebody with good arm and shoulder muscles get into position. Cut the flame off. Lower the bird very slowly. Take a full minute to get it all the way into the oil. Slowest in the beginning.
If you have too much oil, pull the turkey out of the oil then scoop it out some oil with a sauce pan. Be careful, scalding oil. Don’t dispose till you know you haven’t taken out too much. Gotta get the pan away from the cooker before you turn the flame back on. Its a hassle. Knowing how much oil to start with would be smart.
I searched the Internet looking for expansion rate of peanut oil by rise in temperature, but found nothing. Any chemists out there, or math whiz that find the numbers to run would be appreciated by The League Seeking to Avoid Third Degree Burns.
My brother deep fried a turkey one Thanksgiving. The aroma permeated everything else on the table. Don’t recommend.
Pro-tip -
When you are smart and deep fry a turkey on your gravel driveway (instead of your deck because you like your house). After it boils over and diner is over, you can start a nice big camp fire on your gravel drive. This will burn the oil off the gravel before your dogs and every other critter in the valley comes calling trying to clean up the mess.
If you think ahead, you can make smoores over the fire while being glad that you still have a place to live.
Great fan of frying turkeys and a chemical engineer who has done a lot of calculations around expanding liquids from LNG to liquid metals.
My rule of thumb is 1 inch of thermal expansion per 8 inch of starting peanut oil level. In the spirit of the SD, here are the calcs to back it up.
Density of Peanut Oil at Temp T deg F = D(T) (g/cm3), Temperature = T (deg-F)
Then D(T) = -0.00039xT + 0.93874 (cite - See page 124 of the publication. I have taken the liberty of converting the temperature units to degree F and plugging in the constant)
Now take a typical fryer - Diameter is around 12 inches and height is around 16 inches.
Say the temperature of Oil is around 50 deg F when you fill the fryer to around 8 inches height of Oil. This will correspond to 3.92 gallons (905 in3 or 14826 cm3). The density of peanut oil from the equation above at this temperature is 0.9193 g/cm3 bringing the mass (weight) of oil to 30.05 lb (13630 g).
Now say you heat the oil upto 350 deg F (worse case scenario), the density of the oil now is 0.8026 g/cm3 and the new volume will be 4.49 gallons (1036 in3 or 16981 cm3). The new volume corresponds to 9.16 inches in height or an increase of 1.16 inches.
Its easy to take this into account. However as Designdad pointed out (and I fully agree) - its not the volume expansion but the vapor released from the turkey that results in the spillage.
My recommendation to you:
*1> Thaw the turkey completely. Make sure the turkey is as dry as possible - pat it with some paper towels even in the cavity.
2> Do not throw the turkey all the way into the oil all at once. Lower it a quarter way and watch that the oil is not bubbling crazily - if it is hold it there for a minute or two until it stops. Then lower it another quarter of the way - repeat.*
The most important part is to lower the bird in slowly. Don’t get in a big hurry.Take your time.Use a big leather glove if you have to along with pliers,tongs, or the hook provided in the kit if you have one.
Your saving time by doing it this way than baking anyway.Depending on the size of the bird 10-18 lbs. its 2:30-3:00 minutes per pound. If done right the best bird you’ll ever eat.
You say that like it a bad thing. 
Since the physics of thermal expansion of the oil has been explained, and much of the discussion is on cooking methods, let’s move this to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator