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Great product for a great price.
I really like the cooker. I have used it for shrimp boils and it is perfect. I did have to purchase a basket to go inside. Finding the basket was not easy or inexpensive. In fact the basket cost me more than the cooker ($39). Factor that in to your purchase. Excellent Product, Excellent Price Haven't used it yet, but product shipped on schedule. Easy to assemble, and the burner will be used for brewing beer. Note: For those of you using other pots with this burner, you may need to saw off the three brackets, which hold the aluminum stock pot in place. Great Deal A bunch of you said this was only good for turkeys, but you are wrong. As part of the homebrew community, this has turned out to be a steal of a deal. We need to boil 5 gallons of water and have room for hops and extracts, and this looks like it will work perfectly!!! Amazon ftw!!! one-trick pony First, I'd like to thank everyone who gave this product a low rating. It's because of you (collective) that the price on this great turkey-fryer stays so low. :-) The contents matched the photo, but not the description. This is the commercial-grade unit, not the professional. As such, it comes with the burner-base, pot & lid, injector, thermometer, turkey-holder & handle. It's designed primarily for frying turkeys, as you can tell from the accessories they include. Although I'm sure it can make soups & stews, I'd recommend against it because the aluminum won't hold up well to acidic ingredients. Tomato based soups will discolor the walls and introduce off-flavors. Of course, you could also fill it up with oil and fry whatever else fits in the pot. The more oil you use, the less the temperature drops when you add the cold food. The hotter the oil stays, the less it penetrates into your food, creating crispier & healthier food. But, even at half-full, that's a lot of oil. The burner is fairly powerful. The manufacturer rates it at 65,000 BTUs. That's a pretty meaningless number since the bottom of the pot is so small compared to the total volume, but it sure sounds impressive when you're showing off your shiny new fryer to your neighbors. AB (y'all know who AB is right??) suggests 4 short legs (this clearly has 3 long legs) but I'd recommend otherwise. 4 legs have a tendency to wobble if 1 leg is shorter and a wobbly base is a dangerous base. 3 legs will compensate for themselves. At the end of each leg is a little foot which stabilizes the base a bit, but more important are the 2 holes on each foot. These can be used to stake the base in place on the lawn. That way you can be sure the fryer stays put. AB also recommends that the legs be welded to the base, but as long as you remember to tighten the nine 10mm nuts before each use, I don't see how that's any worse than welds. besides, you'll want the modularity of bolts for this next trick. The pot rests on what can only be described as a claw. You can sort of make them out in the photo. Each "claw" is attached to the base at the same holes as the feet. If you undo the bolts, turn the claws around, and refasten them, you can fit a wok ring over the claws and stir fry outdoors. Wok & ring sold separately. But why would you want to do that? To properly stir-fry, you need a lot of heat. If you've every tried to fry rice in a cheap non-stick aluminum wok indoors, you may have been disappointed with the resulting mush. That's because it wasn't hot enough to drive off the excess water quick enough. Hot & fast is the trick. Food that hits the heat should be fully cooked in a matter of seconds. That's why real Chinese food is not only delicious, but quick. BOTTOM LINE: I love this thing. It can be pretty versatile, but out-of-the-box, only does 1 thing: fries turkeys. To ensure this stays cheap, I'm giving it 1 star although I think it deserves 4. FYI: I bought it at $forty$, and is now selling for $thirty-six$. Get'em while they're hot. UPDATE: I see they've raised the price back up to MSRP, so it's no longer the amazingly good deal it once was. For the money, I'd recommend getting the REAL professional version (Eastman Outdoors 37063). Turkey Fryer I received the product with a dent the pan. Everyhting else was as expected. THe turkey was really good | |
