Can your turkey explode? Consumer watchdogs have a warning about your holiday cooking

Miami Herald Archives

You might be thinking of turkey right now. Maybe you need to buy a bird. Or plan the Thanksgiving menu.

But you may not be thinking about your turkey exploding.

If you cook your bird a certain way, your turkey might catch fire and torch your house. Talk about holiday heartburn.

For years, fire departments in South Florida have been warning that deep-frying your Thanksgiving turkey can be risky. Crews have even produced video showing what can happen when frying goes wrong.

Of course, a burning bird in a forgotten oven isn’t great either. But frying comes with hazards. Like melting your skin and destroying your residence.

Yes, turkeys can explode.

A warning about how you cook a turkey

A South Florida firefighter shows what can happen with a deep-fried turkey.
A South Florida firefighter shows what can happen with a deep-fried turkey.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued warnings on the dangers of deep-frying turkeys for Thanksgiving.

Why?

A bird plopped into a cauldron of hot oil can burst into flames and spread through a property.

“Only fry a turkey outside and away from your home.,” the agency advises, “and never use turkey fryers in the garage or on the porch.”

The agency says it knows of 217 fire or burn incidents involving turkey fryers, injuring 83 people and destroying $9.5 million in property since 2000.

And there are other risks to frying a bird indoors.

In 2017, seven people were sickened inside a West Kendall apartment with carbon monoxide poisoning.

Why turkeys can explode

In a demonstration, a Broward firefighter lowers a frozen turkey into a a pot of oil in a propane-fueld fryer. At the time, the fire chief said: “We urge people who enjoy deep fried turkey to purchase one prepared by a professional, like a grocery store or restaurant. The risks of consumer grade turkey fryers are evident and can cause serious burns and devastating injuries. What you have is five gallons of 400-plus degree oil in a pot that can easily splash, tip or get knocked over.”

So why do people deep-fry turkeys? Well, who doesn’t like moist meat and succulent skin?

But there is also good reason turkeys explode inside the deep-fryer.

We’ll leave it to science to explain:

“When you submerge a turkey into the oil, the ice inside the turkey absorbs the heat and melts, forming liquid water,” writes Kristine Nolin, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Richmond.

“This water is denser than the oil, so it falls the bottom of the pot. The water molecules continue to absorb heat and energy and eventually they change phases and become steam. The water molecules then rapidly spread far apart from one another, and the volume expands by 1,700 times. This expansion causes the density of the water to drop to a fraction of a percent of the density of the oil, so the gas wants to quickly rise to the surface.

“Combine the fast change in density with the expansion of volume, and you get an explosion.”

Advertisement