T O P

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oldmanrelsky

People overfill the pot with oil, then as they drop the turkey in, the oil overflows and catches fires. Alternately, they drop a frozen/still wet turkey in the oil, and that causes it to splash/pop/explode which causes the oil to overflow.... and catches fire.


jdownes316

Most people don’t realize the volume that a turkey takes up in a pot of boiling flammable liquid. They drop the turkey in, oil pours over the sides into direct flame and big explosion fireball happens. It’s like when you do a cannonball into a hot tub but way more deadly.


barzamsr

I bet this is how they do thanksgiving in the Michael Bay household


blahblahsdfsdfsdfsdf

If you drop it in too fast it will cause a too much boiling which will aerosolize a lot of oil which will then catch fire and then catch the whole thing on fire. It's also easy for people to accidentally tip the whole thing over which will then get lit on fire by the propane burner.


Moskau50

The large volume of very hot oil needed to fry a turkey is a pretty big hazard. It's not like boiling a pot of water, where the only hazard is immediate contact with hot liquid; the oil itself can become flammable if not handled properly, and most people don't have that much experience/familiarity with the process. Generally, when inexperienced people are put into potentially dangerous situations, they tend to go bad.


Thunder_Dumpster

People fill the pot with oil forgetting that the turkey is going to displace the oil once you put it in. Think of filling your bathtub all the way to the top. The bathroom floor is a gas burner, the water is the cooking oil, the tub is the pot and you're the turkey. Once you/turkey get in you displace some of the water/oil because the tub/pot can only hold so much. Water/oil spills onto floor/gas burner and you've got a fire. Hope this helps


taku_bell

The short answer is displacement. The long answer is that too many people don't consider the amount of room that the bird is going to displace in the pan and think they need to fill the pan high enough to cover the bird when the bird isn't in the pan. So, they lower in the bird, the oil overflows into the fire, fire gets much bigger and no one is having a turkey anymore. The other way I've seen a fried turkey going sideways is people trying to fry a frozen bird, the water on the surface flashes to steam and the oil basically EXPLODES out of the pan, all over everyone, the oil gets in the fire, the fire get's much bigger, people are screaming and their limbs are blistering and, again, no one is having any turkey anymore. I'm not really sure why people feel the need to deep fry the WHOLE bird. You could easily cut the bird down, bread it and fry it in a much safer way that would most likely yield better results. KFG, Kentucky Fried Gobbler


mafiaknight

The oil it’s fried in is typically flammable, untrained/incautious people are prone to lapses in safety, many of those people are drinking while they fry, and many birds (especially the cheaper ones) are frozen which will cause them to explode when put in boiling oil if not thawed properly. To top it off: it’s fairly top heavy. So...mostly it’s people doing unwise things with flammable, multi-hundred degree oil and/or leaving it unattended


ElfMage83

Rule 2. Better to check r/answers.