I will begin by saying that I love deep fried turkey, chicken, and hot dogs. (Yes, hot dogs.) I am from the south, how could I not love greasy, artery clogging food. However, this being said, my husband and I recently purchased The Big Easy by Char Broil. Remarkably, it turned out really good food that is as good as my deep fried turkey and chicken, with a few perks thrown in as well.
Anyone who has ever deep fried a turkey or a chicken, knows the routine. You get the turkey, thaw it out, remove the gizzards, neck and such. You can inject the bird with a marinade of your choice, down into the meat. Pat the old bird dry, sliding it on the stand, and then gently lower it into a couple gallons of super heated oil. It comes out very moist and a beautiful brown color, with a crunchy, flavorful skin. I’m getting hungry thinking about this.
My husband pulls The Big Easy out of the box, and gets it assembled. This is not a daunting task, as it was fairly easy to assemble. Next, we had to “season” the tub, such as one would with a cast iron pan. Simply spray it down with some Pam or Crisco spray oil, and super heat the tub, until it stops smoking. My husband agreed to start small, with a five pound chicken, just to test it out. I would like to add at this point, with a traditional fryer, you would need to be away from the house, away from anything you would like to have spared from a possible oil fire. We did this with this cooker as well, just to be safe. The instructions say, to place in the basket, breast side up. This we did, and cooked it for about an hour and a half. It was not done, we placed it in the oven and cooked it until done.
The only down side to the instructions was that they didn’t really offer up a time line to go by, such as seven minutes per pound, for example. It really was by trial and error that we figured out that it was around 10 minutes per pound for a fully thawed chicken. One of the perks to this cooker, is that you can actually use a dry rub with this, whereas with the traditional fryer you cannot. The oil washes all this away. Also, you can still inject the meat as well. We also figured out that, while hot, this cooker does not burn the grass or the deck. You can literally put the food in the basket, and leave it while you go about cooking the side dishes to go with it.
It may also help to know that the chicken cooked much better standing up, with the wings at the top of the basket. The skin coloring and crunchiness rivaling the traditional fryer. You may balk at the price, which varies from store to store, but averages around 139.00 dollars. If you really think about it, the price is not so bad once you compare it with a traditional turkey fryer and the gallons of oil you would have to buy to go with it. After you do the math you will see that the price is actually quite affordable.
You do not have to cook only chicken and turkey in this infrared cooker, it will also cook pork chops, roasts, lamb, and tenderloin. There are extra accessories that you can purchase in addition to the actual cooking unit, which comes with a basket, meat thermometer, and hook for pulling the basket out after cooking. It also comes with a top, that you can use if you chose to, that helps with the browning of the meat.
All in all this is a great little cooker, that definitely puts some competition on the turkey fryer. I would without a doubt recommend this to anyone who is willing to try it. It really is simple and easy to use, and so much safer than a traditional fryer. However, I will still keep my turkey fryer for the hot dogs.
