William Shatner Raps About How to Not Kill Yourself Deep Frying a Turkey

Like many oth­ers on Thanks­giv­ing, William Shat­ner sought a “moister, tasti­er” turkey expe­ri­ence. The for­mer Star Trek star had pur­chased a siz­able fry­er and, turned brash by pangs of hunger, threw cau­tion to the wind; despite know­ing Archimedes’ prin­ci­ple full well, Shat­ner bold­ly went where no cook should go and deposit­ed the turkey into a vat brim­ming with oil. Oh, woe­ful day! The oil, dis­placed by the turkey, ran over the fryer’s sides and onto the open flame. Flames then shot up, burn­ing Shatner’s arms.

In 2011, Shat­ner joined forces with the insur­ance com­pa­ny State Farm to cre­ate a cau­tion­ary video warn­ing would-be Thanks­giv­ing turkey fry­ers about the per­ils of engag­ing in such a gas­tro­nom­ic enter­prise. Accord­ing to State Farm, insur­ance claims relat­ed to Thanks­giv­ing grease & cook­ing-acci­dents dropped by half after this pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment came out.

In what can only be inter­pret­ed as an attempt to tam­per with per­fec­tion, in 2012, State Farm decid­ed to have YouTube’s melodysheep remix Shatner’s orig­i­nal video, giv­ing it a glis­ten­ing new coat of Inter­net viral­i­ty. We are pleased to say that the endeav­or proved to be a resound­ing suc­cess. Please enjoy the video, above, and remem­ber the fol­low­ing fry­ing tips:

1: Avoid oil spillover–don’t over­fill the pot.

2: Turn off the flame when low­er­ing the turkey into oil.

3: Fry out­side, away from the house.

4: Prop­er­ly thaw the turkey before fry­ing.

5: Keep a grease-fire-approved extin­guish­er near­by.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.


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Comments (10)
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  • babydoc says:

    Seems like a dan­ger­ous, waste­ful, greasy way to make a rel­a­tive­ly healthy meat high­er in fat!

    • Dixie Boy says:

      Actu­al­ly, fry­ing a turkey in peanut oil isn’t unhealthy or dan­ger­ous — if done cor­rect­ly. I’ve been doing it for years with­out a hitch. Then again, I’m not an idiot.

      • babydoc says:

        What do you do with the big pot of dirty peanut oil after­wards? How can immer­sion fry­ing any­thing not increase its fat con­tent?

  • This is the great­est thing I’ve ever seen William Shat­ner do. And that’s say­ing a lot, because…well: Shat­ner.

  • mbshus@gmail.com says:

    Had a crush on William Shat­ner as a child when he was Cap­tain Kirk, and now it has been revived in real­iz­ing he tries to cook. “Beam me up, Scot­ty, before he tries to make strudel.”

  • Gabriel Hackney says:

    Lis­ten to your cap­tain!

  • Jake Kline says:

    You mis­ap­ply Archimedes prin­ci­ple. The prin­ci­ple is NOT that flu­id gets dis­placed when you put some­thing in it. That part is obvi­ous, and would not have caused a “Eure­ka” moment for Archimedes. The prin­ci­ple is about the upward buoy­ant force on an immersed object. An object immersed in a flu­id feels an upward buoy­ant force equal to the weight f the flu­id dis­placed.

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