What's not to love about deep-fried turkey? The meat is juicy, it has a delicious, crispy golden skin and it's quick to cook. If only it wasn't so dangerous. If you've never seen anything bigger than a deep-fried chicken wing or prawn tempura, cooking a whole turkey in a vat of hot fat sounds ridiculous. But in North America, deep-frying turkeys for Thanksgiving became a craze in the 1990s. Food Network celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse wrote about it in New New Orleans Cooking (1993), and after Martha Stewart enthused about deep-fried turkey in her magazine, everyone wanted to try it.
The South is, of course, the stronghold of the American tradition of barbecue and outdoor cooking. (See cover story, pages 6-7.) Food historians believe people started deep-frying turkeys in the 1930s in the bayou region of Louisiana and Texas. Today purpose-built deep-fried turkey cookers are sold all over the US.
Ian Perrins, a native South African, first heard about deep-frying turkey a few years ago when planning a Christmas gathering. 'I just had to try it,' he says. 'If you're going to eat - and you have to - make it ... worthwhile. Bad food is like bad sex - just not worth it.'
Perrins is a more than competent home cook. A Hong Kong resident for 17 years, he works in the architectural services industry. As a teenager, he was conscripted to the South African army and spent two years in military service in the catering corps.
After basic training, he was posted to Kimberley in the Northern Cape. Amid the Victorian splendour of the Jack Hindon Officers' Club, once one of South Africa's finest hotels, Perrins cooked three meals a day for 300 officers, plus the occasional 'fancy' banquet.
Out on manoeuvres, he improvised in a mobile kitchen. 'I loved being way out in the bush. Generally, I was on my own in the 'kitchen' in the bush and had more freedom with the menus.' After the army, he worked his way through university in Cape Town restaurants.
Now living in a house with a garden on Lamma Island, Perrins and his wife, Pam, have plenty of space for braais (barbecues), entertaining and occasionally deep-frying a turkey. Perrins sourced his deep-fried turkey kit from a Chinese kitchen supplies shop in Wan Chai (King Tak Hong Porcelain Co. Ltd, 128 Queen's Road East, Wan Chai).