Fryers are fun. Here's an article from my site about tips you WON'T find in the manual...
Know how much oil you’ll need to fry safely. - You need to know how much oil to have hot and ready in the pot before you dunk the turkey. How much will cover your bird? The instruction book will tell you to put the turkey into the dry pot and fill with water until it covers the bird. Remove the bird and the remaining water is the amount of oil you’ll need to start. What the instructions don’t tell you is that cool water and hot oil have different volumes. Cold oil will cover your bird. Hot oil will expand and could flow over your pot when you drop the bird in. I learned this the hard way on my very first fried turkey. I used the right amount of oil based on the instructions in the book, but had a huge mess when I put a large bird into the pot with the hot, expanded oil. When you use the water trick, don’t completely cover the bird. Bring the water level to a couple inches or more from the top of the bird.
Oil will go everywhere - Tired of the oil stains in the driveway? We now start our turkey frys with a bag of kitty litter. The whole bag of kitty litter is dumped on the driveway in a circle to about a 3 foot diameter. The fryer goes in the center. Oil that splatters goes on the kitty litter and is absorbed. When it is time to clean up, simply sweep up the kitty litter into the trash. Turkey Frying is an outdoor sport - Every year some idiot decides to fry his turkey in his basement or in the garage. He usually is looking for a new place to live the next day… if he lives through the fire.
Give the pot a wash - You didn’t hear this from me, but a car wash is a great way to get your pot clean again. Watch for splatter with the high pressure sprayer. Finish the job in the kitchen sink for the final wash and rinse. These are my turkey frying tips that aren’t in the instruction book.
A word of caution - There is a fine line between an undercooked bird and an over cooked bird. Watch your oil temperature and cooking times, using the instruction book as a guide, and you’ll do fine. Keep a meat thermometer on hand to check the meat temperature in the thigh and breast when you think it is ready. And finally, don’t keep a probe in the meat while in the fryer: bad, bad idea.