Masterbuilt Butterball XL Electric Turkey Fryer Review

The Butterball XL is a sealed stainless countertop fryer with an integrated heating element, a thermostat, a drain valve and a basket. You fill it with about 2.75 gallons of oil, set it to 350F, and it brings itself up and holds there while you get on with the sides.

It exists for one reason: to let people fry a turkey without standing over an open propane flame with five gallons of hot oil on a stand. If you have read our safety guide and quietly decided frying might not be for you, this is the machine that changes that calculation.

The oil volume is the headline

Roughly 2.75 gallons against four to five for a 30-quart propane pot. That is less oil to buy, less to heat, less to cool and far less to dispose of. It also means a smaller spill if anything goes wrong, which matters more than the cost saving.

Temperature recovery

A smaller volume of oil under thermostatic control recovers faster after the bird goes in. Faster recovery is the whole game in frying: oil that drops and stays low soaks into the skin instead of sealing it.

It gets used again

The boil and steam functions are not marketing. A pot that will hold a rolling boil for seafood or corn earns its storage space in a way a 30-quart outdoor rig never does.

Twenty pounds is a hard ceiling. Not a conservative rating — a physical one. Measure your bird. If you are feeding a crowd, two 12-pound turkeys cooked in sequence beat one 22-pound bird you cannot fit, and they cook more evenly besides.

It is genuinely large. Full of oil it is heavy and you will not want to move it. Decide where it is going to stand before the day, with a clear path and nothing above it.

The electrical load is real. At around 1,650 watts it takes most of a 15-amp circuit. Share that circuit with a microwave and you will trip the breaker mid-cook. Give it its own outlet and skip the extension cord.

Masterbuilt’s fryer line has had patchy availability. It is worth checking stock early rather than assuming it will be there in the third week of November.

We did not bench-test this fryer, and we are not going to imply otherwise. We have not measured its oil recovery curve, timed it against a propane pot, or run it for a season to see how the element holds up.

What this review is built on is the manufacturer’s published capacity and oil volume, owner feedback read at scale for repeated problems rather than isolated complaints, and how the design measures against the published safety guidance from the National Turkey Federation and State Farm. That is the whole basis, and it is set out on how we pick.

Want it to do more? The Masterbuilt MB20012420 is the same idea with boiling and steaming built in.

Want no oil at all? The Char-Broil Big Easy cooks with infrared heat and no oil whatsoever — see our oil-less guide.

Bird over 20 pounds? You need an outdoor propane pot, or the better answer for most people: an electric roaster oven, which takes a 26-pound bird with no oil at all.