Gray Matter: The Fire Bird

11-28-2013 • http://www.popsci.com,

What Not To Do

Although most people do fry turkeys safely, the author created a fireball by lowering a bird that hadn't been properly thawed into five gallons of soybean oil at a temperature 100 degrees hotter than is recommended.

Nick Mann

Oil and water don't mix: it's an old saying, but it's never more true than when you're talking about a pot of hot cooking oil and the moisture condensed on the surface of a frozen turkey. it's pretty incredible the amount of fire that simple combination can create.

Cooking oil is flammable, but it doesn't catch fire in a deep fryer because it never approaches the approximately 800°F required. Even if you drop a match in the fryer, the heat is conducted away from the flame and dissipates into the oil, and the fire goes out.