I'll be honest, this is a great appliance for frying turkeys, but it's only going to be used once a year at most. It fried a 17lb bird for Thanksgiving just as advertised and everyone loved it. But where I really take off stars is for both the practicality of owning it, and the clean up hassle. First the practicality. Even though the manufacturer makes it look like it has multiple uses, I'm not going to boil seafood in it, or fry a batch of chicken wings. That beast of a machine would be a pain in the neck to use for those purposes. I can do all that in a stock pot that is ten times easier to clean up. As for cleaning, again, they make it look like cleanup is a breeze. Sure the oil drains out as advertised, but you're still left with about an inch in the bottom that falls below the drain spout. And it has to stay somewhat warm so it pours out easily. So timing is important. Let it sit and cool too long and it's too viscous. Drain it too early and you risk burning yourself. Still, that's not my main complaint. The biggest problem, as least for me, is washing it. Oil mixes with steam as it cooks and it gets in every crack and crevasse on the unit itself. And since you can't really submerge the whole thing, you spend a lot of time with pieces of paper towel and grease cutter in all the little recesses. The main metal pan that holds the oil is gigantic and will not fit in most kitchen sinks. The same goes for the basket. So I had to wash all of the parts in a bathtub! It took a lot of hot water and dish soap before I didn't feel an oily residue on everything. Anyway, I'm nitpicking. I gave it three stars (which means it's pretty good) because it does it's main job and that's to fry a turkey safely. But took off two stars for clean up and the knowledge I'll never use it for anything but a Thanksgiving turkey.

TIP: Once you place a turkey in the oil, it will lower the oils temperature considerably and take quite a while bringing it back up. I had to cook an extra 15 minutes on top of the 4 minutes per pound.

I was skeptical about an electric unit being able to keep the oil hot like my propane unit does, but the sheer terror I go through every time I cook, wondering if this is going to be the time this thing is going to blow up, made me have to try it. Long story short, turkey came out great, a 18# turkey in 65 minutes cooked to 167 degrees. Oil came back to 300ish, which isn't much different than the propane when your outside in 10 degrees. Oh, and that too... Now I can do this in the warmth of my garage, instead of freezing outside. They say it's safe for inside, which it probably actually is, but I didn't want the house to smell like a grill for a month. Hope this helps.

Paid 87 on a lightning deal a week before thanksgiving!! Wife seen one in the local mart flyer for $99 so I checked Amazon for reviews and just happened to hit it in the lightning deal window and even though there was only a couple reviews at that time we purchased it. I'll have to say that the oil reservoir is quite cheaply enameled as a little was already chipped off and I found another ding in the outside from the slight jostling around in our giant single bowl kitchen sink (if you are still using the double bowl ones and have a dishwasher then ditch that junk and get a large single bowl, sooooo much more space for pots and pans). Practiced frying a turkey breast carcass (packaged to look just like a regular turkey, which we wanted a small one to try and only when I opened the bag up after defrosting and noticed legs and wings missing did we realize the mistake). Also did a full #14 turkey on our thanksgiving on monday (wife worked thanksgiving day) and I'll recommend using an injectable marinade because we didn't on the breasts and they were just okay, but I used an entire 17 oz bottle of the tony chachere butter marinade and that made the turkey much much better!!! We were at a friend's cabin and didn't have enough counter space so it was fried on the dining room table and because of that I had to use an extension cord, thankfully I had a 14/3 15' cord in the trunk of the car for the block heater plug that I ended up using, the cord got slightly warm to the touch but the oil heated up in around 50 minutes and the turkey was cooked at the 4min/pound mark. I wouldn't use any extension cord that's lighter than 14 guage (the lower the number the heavier duty the cord is) and longer than 15 feet for certain!! Also while frying there's quite a bit of steam coming off the turkey so ventilation is needed unless you want your house to smell of oil and fried turkey. And a little bit of oil splatter while lowering the turkey was experienced and once the basket was low enough I set the lid down and held the turkey up via having the handle leaned over and resting on the front edge of the reservoir for support.

Cleanup involves letting the oil cool off quite a bit then draining via the spout back into the jugs from whence it came, pull the reservoir out of the unit once the oil gets low enough and then tip it up to drain the rest out of the spout. The oil that doesn't go out the spout is pretty dirty anyway so that gets wiped out with paper towels and thrown away. Wipe the rest of the hopper and fill with hot soapy water and rinse a few times and mine was ready to get put back in the box (we're military so we keep the original boxes quite often as it saves trying to stuff items in packing boxes every few years).

This thing works AWESOME and it's quiet... i was literally in the next room watching tv and had to check to see if it was still on...THE ONLY thing thats a problem is that the Plug comes over very easily but it's a safety feature but you'll get over it GREAT PRODUCT GREAT BUY EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE ONE

Only used it once but it worked great . A 15 lb turkey only took about 1 hour .
I would discourage using inject-able seasoning because the water causes extreme splattering when the turkey
is submersed in 375 degree oil . I'd suggest using a dry rub instead .
Patting the turkey completely dry is extremely important .
It also steams allot so you need a well ventilated place to use it .
I did it on the washer in the washroom with a small fan on low blowing air over the top to help distribute the steam .
Other than that is appears to be well made and allot of thought put into it .
Definitely not sorry I bought it .
Highly recommend .