Crushing Seed to Fry the Turkey - DIY Thanksgiving Extreme
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA 
on 12. 2.08
How Much Canola Does it Take to Fry a Turkey?
From moving toward vegetarianism to buying local, organic or free range for the Thanksgiving table, TreeHugger and Planet Green are both full of examples of how we can enhance our celebrations by nurturing a more intimate relationship with our food and where it comes from. But my friends Lyle Estill and Matt Rudolf over at Piedmont Biofuels, both advocates of the 100 mile diet, may just have taken this concept a step further than most of us could (or should!) – crushing over 55 gallons of their own canola seed to produce oil for deep frying the turkey (click below the fold for video footage of the results):
I spent a night crushing seed. A night filtering oil. A night washing oil and bringing Summer Shop up to “Food Grade,” and I spent some time getting a burner working.After which Melissa says to Tami, “Where do normal people get their oil?”
I am assuming that what she meant by this is that she was thrown off by our use of the little known canola. Normal people crush, filter, degum and wash soy.
Congrats to Matt and Lyle for taking DIY culture to the next level – though we’re not quite sure of Lyle’s culinary suggestion of following up the feast with deep fried gnocchi and garden salad, but what do we know? Matt even managed to grab time to shoot the footage below of Lyle explaining their escapades. (Disclaimer: Piedmont Biofuels are known more for their skills with grease than they are for their video production expertise...)
Note: You can also check out my interview with Lyle Estill of Piedmont Biofuels - part two here, part three here - from back before I was accustomed to his greasecentric ways.
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- 7 Essential Green Beauty Items For Under $7
- Cooking on a Budget: Use Everything
- How to Use a Solar Oven: Beans and Rice Recipe
- Stop Buying Packaged Cereal! 5 Awesome Granola Recipes to Try Instead
- Feed 8 Friends for Under $100 with this Green Frugal Feast: Sustainable Fish Fry
- Feed 8 For Under $100 With This Green Frugal Feast: Father's Day Brunch
At least the camera man can do basic math.
Melissa really had the insight on this. This blog seems to get increasingly bizarre with time. A hundred pounds of seed to cook, not feed, one turkey. The ultimate in green, I presume. But, let's face it, deep frying turkey is not green wherever the oil came from. It's just a modern fad that will die in time, like all fads. It certainly has no historical position in Thanksgiving.
--------
Author's comment:
To be fair, the video does explain that the other (and main) output of this process is a tonne of meal, which is used to feed poultry. And I can bet that after Lyle has finished frying anything else he can find, he'll be converting the oil to biodiesel to run his car.
Deep frying certainly isn't the greenest cooking method out there - but Lyle and Matt, with their escapades, help illustrate just what goes into so many of the prodycts that most of us take for granted.
Yes...55 gallons of seed to make 5 gallons of oil is a lot...that is how our vegetable oil is made...after this bird was cooked, the oil was filtered (to get the turkey chunks out) and bottled up to be used again and again and again. That is the key to green and sustainability. I think everyone should try this exercise. We would all go to raw food.