Masterbuilt Butterball XXL Digital Electric Turkey Fryer Review

The Masterbuilt Butterball XXL Digital is an indoor countertop turkey fryer. It is an insulated pot with a 1,650-watt element in the base, a basket, a lid, and a digital control panel on the front. It plugs into a normal 120-volt household outlet. There is no propane, no burner stand, no regulator and no yard involved.

Masterbuilt builds it; Butterball licenses the name. That is worth knowing because the Butterball range is not one product line but several Masterbuilt chassis wearing the same badge, which is why the XL, the XXL and the Professional Series behave quite differently. We set the whole range side by side in the Butterball lineup roundup, and against the Masterbuilt-badged models in Masterbuilt vs Butterball.

The three numbers that define it: up to a 22-pound bird, 1,650 watts, and about 2.75 gallons of oil. The oil figure is the one most people underestimate the significance of. An outdoor propane rig on a 30-quart pot wants somewhere around three gallons and a 44-quart pot wants a good deal more; the National Turkey Federation puts a typical outdoor fry at approximately five gallons. Cutting that to under three changes the cost of every fry and the size of the disposal problem afterwards.

On the XL, temperature control is a dial and a light. You turn it up, the element runs, the light goes out when it reaches the set point, and you watch. When you lower a cold 18-pound bird into 350F oil, the temperature drops sharply, and bringing it back is on you.

The XXL holds the set point instead. You tell it 350F, it manages the element, and it brings the oil back up after the bird goes in without you doing anything. The timer runs alongside it. In practice that means the twenty minutes after the bird goes in — which is the part of the process people find most stressful — stop being an active job.

It is not an excuse to walk away. The rule from every fire-safety source we cite is the same: never leave a fryer unattended. The thermostat removes the fiddling, not the supervision. Keep an instant-read thermometer beside the fryer anyway and spot-check the oil, because a thermostat tells you what it thinks the oil is doing and a probe tells you what the oil is actually doing.

The cost of the panel is a failure point. A dial and a mechanical thermostat is a simpler machine than a board and a display. Nothing in our research suggests the XXL panel is unusually fragile, but it is the part that would fail, and it is not user-serviceable.

Twenty-two pounds is a rating, not a promise about your particular bird. Turkeys of the same weight are different shapes, and a broad-breasted 21-pound bird can be a tighter fit than a longer 22-pound one. Two practical checks before the day:

• Dry-fit the bird in the basket. Thawed, out of the wrapper, in the basket, in the empty pot. If the lid will not sit, the bird is too big — and you want to know that on Tuesday, not Thursday morning.
• Check the oil line with water, not oil. Put the bird in the basket, fill with water until it sits an inch or two above the bird, lift the bird out and mark the water level. That is your oil level. Dry the pot completely before you put oil in it. The full method is in how much oil a turkey fryer holds.

If the answer is that your bird does not fit, you have two good options and one bad one. The good ones: buy a smaller turkey, or cook two smaller birds in sequence — two 11-pound turkeys feed the same table as one 22-pound bird and cook faster. The bad one is forcing it. An overfull pot is the most common route to an oil overflow, which is the most common route to a fire.

Two questions settle it.

What should not settle it: the assumption that bigger is safer. It is not. A bigger pot holds more oil, and more hot oil is more risk, not less. The safe fryer is the one sized to the bird you are actually cooking.

Thaw completely. This is not negotiable and it is the one rule that causes the fires people film. Ice in the cavity flashes to steam in 350F oil and throws the oil out of the pot. An indoor fryer does not change that physics. Give it the time — the thawing timetable works backwards from your meal.

Dry the bird, inside and out. Paper towels, then leave it uncovered in the refrigerator for an hour if you have the time. Surface water is the second source of spatter.

Set the fryer where it can stay. On a counter with clear space around it, not under a cupboard, not beside a wall you care about, and not on an extension lead. 1,650 watts on a shared circuit with a microwave will trip the breaker mid-fry.

Lower the bird slowly. Basket in hand, long gloves on, a steady count of ten from the surface to the bottom. Most of the spatter in a fry happens in the first three seconds.

Cook to temperature, not to the timer. The timer tells you when to start checking. The thermometer tells you when the bird is done — 165F in the deepest part of the breast, and our thermometer-placement guide shows exactly where that is. WebstaurantStore puts a whole bird at roughly three and a half to four minutes per pound at 350F; the National Turkey Federation says approximately three. Both are estimates to plan around, not a doneness test.

Buy the XXL if your turkey is over 20 pounds, or if the thing standing between you and frying a turkey is nervousness about holding the oil temperature. The thermostat is worth real money to a first-time fryer and the capacity is worth it to anyone feeding a full table.

Buy the XL if your bird is 20 pounds or under and you are comfortable with a dial. It is the same oil volume, the same indoor convenience and a meaningfully lower price, and it is the model we recommend to most first-time hosts.

Buy the Professional Series if you will use the fryer through the year and you want stainless, a drain valve and a breakaway cord — accepting the 14-pound ceiling in exchange.

Buy none of them if what you actually want is a roast turkey with gravy and a lot of oven space. An electric roaster oven costs less, holds a bigger bird, has no oil in it at all and is useful on more days of the year. We lay that choice out in roaster oven vs turkey fryer.