There are 5 risks involved with frying a turkey:
- Turkey fryers can easily tip over spilling hot oil across a large area.
- An overfilled cooking pot will cause oil to spill over when the turkey is put inside.
- A partially frozen turkey will cause hot oil to splatter when put in the pot.
- Without thermostat controls, turkey fryers can overheat oil to the point of starting a fire.
- The sides of the cooking pot, lid and pot handles can get dangerously hot.
The U.S. Center for Product Safety Commission (CPSC) created a video to illustrate these risks.
Remember to add fire safety into all of your Thanksgiving recipes. There were an estimated average of 2,300 residential building fires reported to fire departments in the U.S. on Thanksgiving Day from 2017 to 2019. These fires caused an estimated annual average of 5 deaths, 25 injuries and $26 million in property loss.