You Fried Your Thanksgiving Turkey – Now What Do You Do With The Oil?

Every Thanksgiving for quite a few years now people have to make the decision about whether to roast their turkey in an oven or get one of those contraptions that allows you to deep fry it. I'll be honest, the idea of a deep fried turkey seems pretty gross to me, but there are a lot of people who swear by slowly lowering that big bird it a vat of oil on their back porch and cooking it that way. You do you, man, but me, I swear by roasting my Thanksgiving turkey.

The big question after you've had your fried turkey is, what the heck are you going to do with all that oil? From what I gather from reading through the interwebs vast numbers of recipes for deep fried turkey, you need like a gazillion gallons of oil to properly fry that baby. You can't just pour a gazillion gallons of oil down the drain - well, you can, but you'll end up having to move because you will kill your kitchen pipes. You should never pour the cooking fats, oil, or grease down the drain because they can back up the sewer line into your home and storm drains, and then into wastewater treatment plants. Chances are you'll end up with a clogged drain and have to call the plumber. The plumber will be thrilled that you did that because he'll charge you a holiday rate and his kids will have a wonderful Christmas with all the money you had to pay their dad. So, if you can't toss gallons of oil down the drain, what the hell do you do with the dang stuff?

You take the used oil to a City of El Paso Citizen Collection Station. It’s free, but you’ll need a current El Paso Water Utilities bill and ID when you go. Just click here for the locations of the Citizen Collection Stations and make sure you spend your Thanksgiving weekend eating leftovers and not wondering how much the plumber is going to charge you to come unclog your sink.