Yard Bazaar, Issue No. 4. Written in Tampa, Florida, third week of October. Yard Bazaar is put out by Portico Goods, which is my store, so when I point at something we sell I'm telling you that up front rather than at the bottom in grey type.
Thanksgiving is November 26 this year. That's five weeks out, which feels like a lot and isn't, because the two things that matter most about cooking a bird outside — buying the equipment and learning not to hurt yourself with it — both want doing well before the week itself.
Last issue was the gift guide. This one is narrower: the turkey goes outside, and here's what that actually involves.
Why is the turkey outside in the first place?
Three honest reasons, and only one of them is about the food.
The oven. A twenty-pound bird occupies your only oven for four or five hours on the one day of the year you need it for nine other things. Moving the turkey to the driveway doesn't make the turkey better by itself, but it hands you back the oven, and that's usually the real win.
The time. A fried turkey is roughly three and a half minutes per pound. A fourteen-pound bird is under an hour. You are not going to beat that indoors.
And the fact that it's seventy-four degrees out. In most of the country, cooking outside in late November is a stunt. Here it's just Thursday. We have maybe the best Thanksgiving weather in the country and most people still spend it inside looking at an oven door.
How do you not set the house on fire?
I said last issue that the fryer is the one thing I sell that actually hurts people, and I'd rather over-explain this than sell one more of them.
Almost every turkey fryer fire is the same fire. It is water meeting hot oil, and it happens in about a second.
Thaw it completely. Not mostly. A twenty-pound bird needs four to five days in the refrigerator. If it's Wednesday night and the middle is still hard, you do not have a fried turkey this year — you have a roast turkey, and that's fine. Ice in 350-degree oil is a fireball that goes up about fifteen feet, and it does not care how careful you are being at that moment.
Pat it dry, inside and out. Then do it again. Surface water spits; cavity water is worse.
Measure the oil with water first, the day before. Put the bird in the empty pot, cover it with water, pull the bird out, and mark where the water sits. That's your oil line. Dump it, dry the pot completely. Overfilling is the second-most-common way this goes wrong and it's entirely preventable with ten minutes of arithmetic the day before.
Dirt or concrete, ten feet from anything. Never a wooden deck. Never a garage, never under an eave, never on the lanai. The whole point of outside is outside.
Turn the burner off before the bird goes in. Lower it slowly, then relight. This single habit removes the ignition source from the only moment that a boil-over could find one.
Keep a dry chemical extinguisher within reach and never, ever water. Nobody plans to need it, and that is exactly the point.
What do you actually need?
Less than the internet will tell you.
The 30-quart kit is $119 and includes the burner stand, which is the part people forget to price. Thirty quarts handles a bird up to about twenty pounds, and it spends the rest of the year as a seafood boil pot that does twelve people in one go. We're holding 539 of these as I write, which is a comfortable number in October and a number that falls off a cliff around the third week of November. That's not a sales line, it's the same thing I told you last issue and it will be true again next year.
A wireless thermometer is $34.99 and is the only accessory I'd call genuinely necessary. 165 in the thickest part of the thigh. Guessing at this with a bird in hot oil is how people either poison their relatives or serve them luggage.
Then there's the oil, which nobody warns you about. Three to four gallons of peanut oil, and on Friday morning you own three to four gallons of used peanut oil and a quiet sense of dread. The 10-gallon grease caddy is $179 with a pump and casters. That is real money, and I'd only call it worth it if you fry more than once a year — a turkey, a few fish fries, a boil. If this is strictly a once-a-year event, let the oil cool overnight, funnel it back into the jugs it came in, and take it to a restaurant-supply recycler. Free, slower, slightly miserable.
What I'd skip
Two things, and I sell both of them.
The double 16-quart propane fryer is $299 and it's a good piece of equipment, but it is for people doing two birds or a bird and a side at volume. If you're cooking one turkey for one table, you are buying a second burner you will use once. Buy the 30-quart.
The four-piece chafing dish set is $279, and I want to be straight about it: this is catering gear. It is correct if you are feeding thirty people buffet-style on a folding table in the garage. For a family of eight around one table it is $279 of stainless steel that keeps food at exactly the temperature a kitchen towel keeps it at. We're down to eight sets, and I'd rather they go to people hosting the big one.
What about everything that isn't the turkey?
This is the part I actually enjoy, because once the oven's free and the fryer is doing its forty minutes, you have a burner and a fire and nothing to do.
A 12½-inch camp Dutch oven is $89.99 and it is the single most useful thing in this issue. Legs, flat lid, lid lifter included. Dressing, braised greens, a cobbler finished over coals while everyone eats. It outlives you.
The three-piece skillet set is $69.99 and is the sensible gift for someone who has just discovered they like this. Cornbread in the 10-inch is most of the argument.
And the tripod grill with fire bowl at $89.99 is the cheapest way to make the yard the place everyone stands. Adjustable grate over an open fire. We have 920 of them, so no urgency — I mention it because a fire with food over it does more for an afternoon than any furniture I sell.
Does anyone actually eat outside in November here?
Yes, and this is the bit transplants take two years to believe.
Late November is the first genuinely pleasant stretch since March. Mid-seventies by day, sixties after dark, and the humidity finally gone. The whole year has been building to about eleven weeks and this is the start of them.
What stops people eating out there isn't weather, it's that the yard is set up for a 2 p.m. cookout and not a 7 p.m. dinner. Two things fix it. Light you don't think about — 197 feet of string lights is $44.99 and is enough for most yards twice over. And something to sit around after: the 28-inch wood burning pit is $159.99 with a spark screen and a cover, and it's the right size for six chairs.
Buy firewood now if you haven't. I said this in October and I'll keep saying it — wood bought wet in December is a smoke machine, not a fire.
About the fryer we're giving away
Briefly, because people have asked. We're drawing for a 30-quart fryer, the same $119 kit above. Entries have to come from a real person at a real address, the draw is tied to this shop making at least one sale during the entry period, and if that hasn't happened by November 1 we extend rather than cancel. If it has, we add a second fryer and draw two winners. The full rules are here and they're written in English rather than in the usual fog.
The short version
Thaw it all the way, dry it twice, measure your oil with water the day before, and kill the burner before the bird goes in. Buy the 30-quart kit rather than the double. Get a thermometer. Skip the chafing dishes unless you're hosting thirty. Put a Dutch oven on the second burner and a fire in the yard, and then go outside, because for about eleven weeks this is the best place in the country to be standing.
Order-by date for anything on this list with the Portico Promise on it: November 16. That's a US warehouse and three to seven days, with a few days of slack for the week everyone else is shipping too.
Next issue, first week of December: what survives a Florida winter on a screened porch, the two weeks a year you can actually plant something here, and whether the fern made it.
Everything I pointed at is at Portico Goods. Most of it ships from a US warehouse and lands in three to seven days. Stock figures above were read from our supplier the morning this went out, and they move.
— Vincent