How in the heck are you planning on cutting the thing in half? Do you have a chain saw?
Joann

I think you will need a saw......at least to cut through the breast bone.
Before you fry the thing.....put the turkey in the empty fryer pot and fill with water to cover the turkey. Remove the turkey and measure the amount of water in the fryer pot. That's the amount of oil to use for the turkey.\
I also would guess the halves will cook more quickly than a whole of the same weight.....but use your instant read to be sure......pull that bird out of the oil and check the temperature......same with the smoked one.
Be sure to shut off the burner when you put the half bird into the oil then re light the burner.
The smoked bird will take longer....I'll bet the fried bird will cook in about 40 minutes......My family has done that experiment....with the addition of a 3rd bird in the oven.
Tell us your opinion after the fact!!

I think your plan is a good one. If you have heavy poultry shears, you may be able to excise the backbone (i.e., cutting lengthwise maybe an inch or so on either side of the middle of the backbone). Then you can cut the breast down the middle lengthwise, yielding two fairly symmetric halves.

Whenever I smoke turkey I put it on the bottom rack of the smoker. (In this case, skin side up, bony cavity facing the heating element.) On the top rack, put something fatty--spare ribs, Boston Butt pork roast, whatever. The fat will drip down and baste the turkey. And you'll have a delicious future meal of smoked ribs or pork roast. (Be aware that some diners would prefer that to turkey. I sure would.)

Use an electric saw. Takes no time, even with frozen ones.

I have done it many times.

If you don't have a circular hand saw, sabre saw, reciprocating saw, --- your neighbor may have one to lend you.

You must do it outside with a circular saw, the "saw dust" will be everywhere.

dcarch

I have had turkeys cut in half at grocery stores for free before.

dcarch, I will have to disagree with your frozen idea. I have a friend, a navy seal, who couldn't do it last year. With a small bird. He put it in a vice and there were turkey bits everywhere, and it was really hard for him to do. Tough dude who learned how to approach a Claymore and turn them around to use the enemy's mines on them. Tough. If he can't do it, I don't see any of us doing it!

Thaw it first!

I am not sure why he had problem doing it.

Butchers use a band saw to cut huge frozen sections with bones.

I have done it a few times before.

I also saw cut on my 10" table saw, big beef leg bones into small sections for stock and marrow. It really is easy.

dcarch

Dunno, but I sure as heck wouldn't want to find out first hand when it was down to the wire time.

Don't chance it! Thaw it, that was all.

:)

Ummmm....I'd thaw the bird.

I've used a band saw to cut venison ribs, etc. I realize that I'm a small female, but I'm relatively sturdy and I had some problems. Nothing significant, but it did take more muscle than I expected and it wasn't frozen. Yes, it was legal, sheesh. Anyway, your blades have to be sharp. Hopefully you'll use a new one on food anyway, not that one you used to cut the plastic pipe for the bathroom plumbing. (grin)

I think the real problem would be the shape of the turkey, which would not lend itself to sawing all the way through with one pass, especially frozen, so it would be bulky and not easily handled.

I have used kitchen shears to take the backbone out of a turkey, I even have pictures, we just did it as an experient last weekend. Crack the breastbone with a rubber mallet (Elery just used the heel of his hand and pressed down hard, but I couldn't do it), then cut it into halves.

We just flattened the bird out and put it on a rack over a pan full of stuffing, so that the drippings would flavor the stuffing, as instructed on America's Test Kitchen. It didn't work worth a darn, they wanted it high heat roasted and the stuffing on the bottom was hard and black and the turkey wasn't done. PIA process all the way through, so I don't sugggest it and I'm doing the 21 pound bird I have whole and stuffed. In the Nesco.

At any rate, I think it will take less time to cook two halves than it will a whole bird too. I love smoked turkey, never had it deep fried. Mine will be roasted and I don't eat skin anyway, I just peel it off and feed it to Cooper so i don't care about the "high heat roasted crispy skin".

Annie

I'm cooking for one and will do some kinda mini feast over next several days. Will probably pick out the smallest turkey I can find and ask guy behind the glass to cut it down the center... they always do. Then I'll wrapf or vac seal half for some other time.

Sunday night, on Food Network, Alton Brown "spack-cocked a turkey... granted NOT a MASSIVE bird like you're talking about. He cut out back bone with heavy-duty kitchen shears. Thinkin' you COULD haul out power tools?? Or, if you have any "manly men" in house, just say... it can't be done. I KNOW it might ne a little un-PC, but telling a guy (especially strong teen+) that something can't be done... gets it done!

After he removed back bone (set aside with neck to make stock for gravy), he flattened it out on baking sheet. Rest of cooking was a little out there for me. Your dino-turkey would probably need a little more pre-op surgery!?!

On year my Dad made what I now call a deconstructed turkey. He wasn't a fan of dark meat but knew some were. Had TWO whole breasts and a few legs/thighs/wings... all separate. We made little heavy-duty foil "boats" to hold stuffing under breasts to get that "in the bird" effect.

With a bird that big, think a little disassembly would help with cookiing time and avoiding serious over/under cooking of parts?

did the spatchcock thing last week, and it relly cut down on cooking time. So sort of disassembling, but flat was the key, I think. Both the dark and light meat were moist. Honestly, I hate white meat, and I cannot stop nibbling on this particular bird's white meat. Really good. Although, what do I know, I love the high heat crispy skin.

;)

I have something to add!

As you probably already know, you must use a good thermometer to know when the bird is done. But here's the important part! You can wrap the bird in foil and place it into a clean ice chest surrounded with towels and let it sit there for hours if need be! It will maintain the bird at a safe temp. I used to cook for a large crowd and travel to the eating site, and this works really well. This way, you don't have to try and time the 2 halves.

We will be doing this ourselves. We are smoking a 20 lb turkey in the electric smoker at 225 for just 2 hours and finishing it in the oven at 350. I have no idea how long this will take! So, we are going to give it 5 hours - expecting that to be way more than necessary, and the Turkey will rest in the cooler until we are ready to carve it at 4:30.

Be sure to let us know which half everyone preferred! :-)

Jeri

Don't know if this would help, but in this video, starting about 2:36 a butcher shows how to spatchcock a turkey. He uses a cleaver to chop through the back. Once you take out the center breast bone, though, I don't see why you couldn't flip it cavity side down on the cutting board and make a careful incision to split the bird in two equal halves.

Here is a link that might be useful: spatchcock a turkey

weedlady said the bird was fresh, not frozen.

I will be waiting anxiously for the follow up post on how it went, cutting and cooking !

Just wrote what I did in case it was ever looked again :) I know what a struggle he had with the frozen one. dcarch is just much stronger? Maybe? It's still a good idea with a fresh one.

May I offer plan C......

Roast the bird in the oven . I don't think you can beat a traditionally roasted bird.

Mine are always 20-25 pounds and no complains so far.

^I would roast it in the oven, whole. Presentation would be much better too.

Don't use a circular saw on a turkey. I can just see someone trying to hold the bird down with a knee and the bird moves and the person tries to push the saw into it and ends up cutting into their leg and bleeding out from the femoral artery.

Thaw the turkey, and debone it. Use a good meat shears or clean bypass pruners or tin snips. Do not use a circular saw. Even if you don't kill yourself you will foul the expensive saw, and probably foul the meat with old sawdust too.

If you don't have a circular hand saw, sabre saw, reciprocating saw, --- your neighbor may have one to lend you.

That's just one reason why I never lend my tools. :)

I just did it.

I used my reciprocating saw and cleanly cut an 18-lb frozen rock-hard bird in half.

It took less than 10 minutes.

Going to get another bird. At $0.49 a lb, worth keep more in the freezer. You wouldn't be able to do it if you thaw the turkey and refreeze.

dcarch

The results are in!
Daughter's DH had no difficulty splitting Tom in half (though I did not ask her what tool he used, sorry).
The smoked turkey was out of the smoker before we put the other half into the fryer (timing a result of the chaos associated with the fetivities!), so we kept the smoked half in a 225 oven until taking it out to "rest" for 15 min a bit before the deep-fried half came out.
Since everyone was more than ready to eat, we sliced up the smoked part to serve first. It was very well received with a lovely smoked flavor. Now, I had not found out until we arrived at our daughter's that not as many people were coming as had originally planned (very rude, if you ask me, since we had made side dishes enough for several more people. I like leftovers but not for 4-5 days afterward...), so we did not need to serve the other half of the turkey -- AND there was plenty left from just the one half, too! But OF COURSE we sampled the other (always room for a smidgen more turkey)!--and found it to be moister as well as more tender & even more flavorful, with the herbs from the brining in evidence. The smoked flavor had masked that of the subtle herbs.

Bottom line: next year, a smaller deep-fried turkey. Though if left up to me, I'd opt still for the old-fashioned roasting in the oven. The lovely smell tantalizing the appetites for hours in advance is worth a lot; but then I will gladly trade that for not having the shindig at MY house! I am much happier cooking all the side dishes myself at home and taking them with me! On Wednesday, I thawed the green beans from the garden (destined for the ubiquitous casserole with mushroom soup topped w/fried onions from a can), pumpkin roll, 2 pumpkin pies, and roasted the summer squash for the squash/corn casserole (the corn also was from my garden).

Thanksgiving morning I made the 2 squash/corn casseroles (one with cheddar for the faint of palate, the other with pepperjack and other spicier ingredients) while our granddaughter, who had spent the night, used MY granny's old hand-cranked grinder to make the apple-orange-cranberry relish.
This year we opted to forego the homemade dinner rolls (my late aunt's traditional recipe) since we really needed no more food! Maybe for Christmas...

Thanks to all of you who offered suggestions!

weedlady, thanks for the follow-up ! sounds like you had an amazing time.

Oh what a wonderful story. Thank you for letting us know how it all turned out. I remember my Mom using the hand grinder to make that same cranberry sauce!!! So glad it all turned out!
Joann

Was the smoked turkey done (160 in the breast) when you removed it from the smoker? At 225, you continued to cook that turkey in the oven. If you left it in the oven at 225 long enough to fry the other half it would surely be very dried out by that time you carved it.

Not trying to start anything here - you may still have preferred the deep fired bird - but I'm not sure the smoked half received a fair trial. :-)