These days the holiday turkey is quickly becoming the least expensive part of the holiday meal. These days it is more than just food that gets bought up in the days before the big cook, it's cooking equipment too. From roasting pans to turkey fryers this is one of the biggest times of year for outdoor cooking makers too. I believe that the popularity of deep fried turkey is largely to blame for this phenomena. People spending $40USD to $50USD on small turkey fryers have led to companies producing $150USD units specifically for cooking a turkey. Of course these cookers are good for far more than a one time cookout, but the promise of a great turkey for the holidays is the drive behind them. While there are many ways to cook a turkey these represent some of the latest innovations:

North American Outdoors 35-Quart Aluminum Saf-T-Fryer: This turkey fryer unit includes several safety features that take a lot of the risk out of the ever popular deep fried turkey. This unit will run you about $100USD and can be used for everything from frying roasts, poultry or fish to clambakes and anything else cooked in the gallons instead of cups. This unit cooks turkey at about 3 minutes per pound.

Char-Broil's The Big Easy Oil-less Infrared Turkey Fryer: Char-Broil has taken the oil out of the fryer and replaced it with an ingenious infrared cooking system. At around $150USD this unit doesn't waste oil (at up to $40 to fill a typical fryer) and will cook up pretty much any large cut of meat. Cook your turkey at about 10 minutes per pound in this "fryer".

The Orion Cooker: This charcoal powered cooker can produce good barbecue (up to 8 racks of ribs at a time) or a perfect turkey at about 10 minutes per pound. This unit burns a good deal of charcoal but is still cheaper to operate than a typical deep fryer. This is actually a very versatile cooker.

Masterbuilt Butterball Professional Series Indoor Electric Turkey Fryer
: Basically this is a large fryer designed to hold up to a 14 pound turkey in a specially designed (turkey shaped) frying chamber. Like other modern fryers this unit is thermostatically controlled and has a built in timer so you can tell it how long you want to cook. The interior frying chamber is molded to fit a turkey so you don't need to use a lot of extra oil to fry the bird.

One of the tricks of brining is finding a container to brine it. This is pretty simple for smaller items like pork chops or chicken breasts, but when it comes to large foods like whole turkeys it can be a challenge. This is especially a problem since you need a none reactive material like glass or plastic so that the turkey doesn't pick up a metallic flavor. Now when I brine pork chops I put them in a one gallon "zip-top" bag. Of course no self respecting holiday turkey is going to fit into a one gallon bag. Fortunately both Reynolds and Ziploc make much larger bags. In the case of Renyold's it is there Oven Roasting Bag for Turkeys and with Ziploc it is there XL storage bag. Both of these are widely available these days, made of food grade plastic and perfect for brining big foods. So when you need to brine a 15 pound turkey look for one of these products to make the job a little easier.

Take the mystery out of all the hype about turkeys by knowing what you want and how to get it. There are a lot of labels on turkeys these days, some are helpful and others misleading. If you know something about turkey then you will be able to purchase the perfect kind and size of bird for your holiday meal.

For most people we tackle the whole turkey only one time a year so there isn't much chance for practice and no excuse for getting it wrong. These turkey recipes will help you make the most of the few chance you get to get it right. Whether you grill, smoke, fry, brine, or roast your turkey you can find out the science and the art to a great bird through these recipes. So don't be shy, because turkey isn't really that hard if you know what you are doing.