Cheap Masterbuilt Butterball Professional Series Indoor Electric Turkey

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List Price: $219.95
Sale Price: $179.99
Today's Bonus: 18% Off

I bought this fryer for my thanksgiving turkey, and have used it once successfully. I fried a 13 pound bird with 2 gallons of oil for 4 minutes a pound, and got a delicious, moist, and decidedly not greasy turkey. Set up took around 10 minutes, mainly to familiarize myself with the few parts, and clean up was fairly easy as the spigot on the bottom of the fryer made draining the oil pretty simple, and everything pretty much wiped clean.

Living in an urban area, where flaming mishaps are a really bad idea, I appreciate the safety of this fryer over an open vat of oil over an open flame. And plugging in is much easier than hauling propane tanks around. The outside of the fryer remained cool to touch at all times. It is obvious that a good amount of thought went into making it safe to use in an indoor environment.

Some limitations:

The fryer only holds two gallons of oil. Actually, the "max fill" line is at around 1.6 or 1.7 gallons. I added the full two gallons with no problems (with a 13 pound turkey). The less oil, and the larger the turkey, the more the oil will be cooled down when the turkey is added. This is less a problem with a propane fire which can crank out the BTUs than it is with an electric heating element, which produces a more modest amount of heat. So a major limitation of this fryer is that once you add the turkey, the oil will not again achieve the desired 375 degree temperature. To minimize this, I would recommend using a modest size turkey, and I also recommend allowing the turkey to come as close to room temperature as safety allows before adding it into the oil.

The fryer is labeled for indoor use only, presumably due to limited weatherproofing of electric parts. Unfortunately, frying with this much oil in your house will produce a significant greasy odor. One solution might be to use a garage or other outbuilding. I used it in my back yard, on a table with a large patio umbrella covering it. Technically, this is a violation of the labeling, but it worked for me.

The fryer has a digital timer, but for some odd reason, the timer is not connected to the heating element. So while it may beep that your food is cooked, it still keeps cooking it. It seems to me that an automatic shutoff would be worthwhile for safety.

In summary, this fryer will safely fry a turkey, producing a moist and tasty (though maybe not so crispy) bird. It is useful for those people who are uncomfortable with the safety of the standard techniques of frying a turkey. I recommend keeping the size of the turkey on the smallish side, to that the oil will stay hot during frying.

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I started using this Indoor Fryer 2 days ago. Best catfish ever! I also fried turkey wings and a whole chicken the same day. I had no trouble at all with a 4 lb chicken and bought some small turkeys to fry later. Imagine frying a whole chicken in 17 minutes! No need to imagine it, you can do it!

Easy to use even for a beginner. Cleanup is a breeze! The oil drains perfectly clean if you want to use it again. I was able to drain it all back into the bottles without using a strainer.

The Masterbuilt company has answered every question in a very timely fashion. I would recommend this Indoor Fryer to anyone looking to have fun frying foods.

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Received this as Xmas gift and finally got around to using it today (took me awhile to get all the oil, marinades, and accessories, and to find an excuse to fry a Turkey, and to get over my "fear of frying"). Overall I have to say it's a great piece of equipment, and now that I have taken the plunge, I will likely be using it for frying other foods.

It heated up quickly and my oil thermometer confirmed the temp was spot on, (although my green ready light did not light up as I thought it should). It cooked a 10.5oz Turkey to perfection in exactly 45 minutes. It is recommended to cook 3.5 minutes/pound which would have been 36.75 minutes. I decided I'd rather slightly over than under cook so I set timer for 40 mins. At 40 I checked internal temp and it wasn't quite there so I gave it another 5 and then it was definitely done. Clean up was no worse than the usual Turkey roasting pan, et al, The drainer worked perfectly and I was surprised to get back nearly as much oil as I had started with, thinking that certainly the turkey would "drink" some of the oil..not so apparently. The turkey was juicy, not greasy at all. It did not heat up the kitchen, nor smell up house, and the greasy mess was confined to the internal washable parts. The only problem I had was getting the bird out of the basket, and that might be because I had a bird from a local farm, not as refined as say a Butterball, and the skin was looser in places, and it stuck to the basket. So it didn't come out as "pretty" as in the advertising, but we don't eat the skin anyway. I wish it had a longer cord, although I understand why it's so short, it made it a little harder for me since I have a very small kitchen and had to use it on a separate cart pulled up to the counter, so it just barely was long enough. I took the manual at face value and did not use an extension cord, although I may try that in the future when a turkey isn't at stake. One last comment: Since I had not used it and wanted to test it before buying an expensive bird, I plugged it in empty for about 1 minute a few days ago only long enough to see that it came on and started to heated up. Apparently that was long enough to "overheat" and shut off the unit, which I did not realize until I plugged it in today and the power light did not light. After a few frantic moments I discovered the reset "button" on the control panel. If I had read the entire manual first I would have known about it. So...lesson #1-don't turn it on empty lesson #2, read your manual and be aware of "reset" before you have a near heart attack.

Honest reviews on Masterbuilt Butterball Professional Series Indoor Electric Turkey

Successor to company's earlier kettle-style units.

Worked very well first time out of the gate.

Cooked a 13.7lb turkey in the minium time.

Seems well built and thought out.

I prefer an electric fryer to a gas one for reasons of safety and that it can be used inside.

I owned an earlier Masterbuilt that worked well but failed after only a few Thanksgivings.

The main reason I gave this one a 4 instead of 5 star is that, to me, the jury's out on the reliability.

Still, the first one worked well enough to give them a second chance.

Right now, this one's working great.

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I have just recently used my Indoor Electric Turkey Fryer and the instructions were fine but my first turkey did not cook all the way using the instructions. Also a small black piece, that help hold the cover door attachment on, which has the compartment on it broke off. I haven't had time to see what can be done about it. My second turkey turned out much better but what I did was to use my outdoor turkey fryer temperature gauge to check the oil temperature and found out that it was only 280 degrees while cooking and it would only get up to 360 degrees when it says it's 375 degrees with no turkey in it. So I made adjustments to my cooking time and was able to get a better outcome the second time around.