Aren’t you worried about high cholesterol?
So what do you do with it?
Where should I store it?
For more useful skills, continue reading the blogs on the Mama Prepper Channel.
Aren’t you worried about high cholesterol?
One of the huge myths the pharmaceutical and “health” industry has pushed on us is to limit animal products. That lie has been around for decades. When I was nursing my second child, my doctor told me that when I weaned him, I should wean him on skim milk. But babies’ brains need extra fat in order to grow properly. I’m glad I didn’t listen to him.
Fat fills you up when you’re dieting. During this year, I decided to lose a significant amount of weight. So far (it’s now October) I’ve lost over 20 pounds, but I never once limited my fat. I just chose safe fats. What I limited was my use of partially and fully hydrogenated vegetable oils and seed oils, which are the real cause for high cholesterol and heart disease. I completely eliminated any peanut butter with those specific oils. I chose coconut oil for frying and olive oil for salads, completely eliminating store-bought salad dressings. (We’ll have to share recipes someday.) My blood levels are excellent.
How Do You Use It?
Well, you don’t throw it down the sink. No fat is good for the household plumbing.
Besides, animal fat is one of the most useful by-products in the world. In history, aside from being calorically dense in a time when people’s lives were so physical they needed the extra calories, fat was used for many other things: soap, candles, lubricants, waterproofing, cosmetics and medicines, even as a fire starter in wet weather.
As a food, native Americans and woodsmen used it in pemmican. Pemmican made an excellent traveling food, high in protein, rich in omega 3 fatty acids and vitamins. You can still make your own. Take a peek at this link and give it a try.
So what do I plan to do with my rendered fat? This year I plan to make soap and candles as Christmas gifts. I have some lavender growing in the garden. I may add some aster flowers as accents. The purple aster blossoms with the heavenly scented lavender will make delightful gifts.
Unless you’re going to use it right away, you need to find a way to keep it. That means you need to render it. Rendering is the process of removing the impurities, resulting in a storable product that can be used for far more than just cooking. I have a friend who turns her grass-fed cattle’s tallow into amazing body lotions.
The Wet Rendering Method
Fat that has already been cooked has bits of meat and other solids in it. It has water with it when you drain it from hamburger. To keep it, put it in a clean jar and store it in the fridge until you’re ready for the rendering process. The white substance (the fat) that comes to the top is the part you want. Cut fat off your meat before you cook it. Then you can put the fat into a pan with some water and bring it to a slow boil.
You can do this with chunks of other fats as well. You boil your chunks of uncooked fat in water until you get a nice layer of oil on top. This is your tallow, if it’s beef fat. Pork fat is called lard, and chicken fat is called schmaltz.
Now, put your pan in the fridge overnight. In the morning separate the chunks of white tallow from the broth and water and you have fresh tallow for cooking, making soap, candles, etc. My friend who makes cosmetics with tallow renders her fat several times before using the product.
The broth and water, of course, can be used for soup stock. Nothing needs to go to waste.
Dry Rendering Method 1
Depending on where you get your meat, please wash it first. You don’t want bits of waste, dirt, hair or other impurities in your end product.
Dry rendering really isn’t dry. Nothing about rendering fat is dry, but it doesn’t use water, which is why it’s called the dry rendering method.
There are two ways to render fat using this method. The first is the crock pot method. You can also use a large soup pot on top of the stove. The idea is to cook everything very slowly.
Start with trimmed fat, kept in the fridge overnight. Cold fat is MUCH easier to work with. By trimmed fat, I mean you trim off the bone, meat and gristle and use the rest. If the trimmed bits are clean, they can be used in a wet rendering method instead, if you want.
Run the chunks of fat through a food processor so that it’s all ground up before you begin. Then set your crock pot to the low setting, or your stock pot onto the lowest setting on your stove, and let it cook. The fat will melt, and the top will be filled with impurities. When the top layer is filled with crispy bits, ladle them off. The result is rendered fat.
By the way, the crispy bits are great in soups, salads and as a tasty snack once it’s seasoned.
Run the remainder through a cheesecloth to further remove the impurities. You can place your cheesecloth directly over clean, wide-mouth canning jars and slowly pour the fat through the cheesecloth into the jars. When you seal the jars, just as if you were canning vegetables, the fat will keep for years.
Remember, the more air that gets to the tallow, the faster it can become rancid.
Dry Rendering Method 2
A second dry rendering method is to fry it, much like you would fry bacon. If you cut your fat into one-inch pieces or strips, all relatively in uniform size, you will have some nice cracklings for munching or adding to other food. The problem with this method is that you need to watch so that you do not burn your cracklings. That will add an unsavory flavor to your finished rendered fat.
Storing Rendered Fat
The problem with rendered fat is that it must either be used, sealed or frozen. Canned fats can keep for years. They will keep in the fridge for months. Fresh, of course, must be used right away.
Aren’t you worried about high cholesterol?
So what do you do with it?
Where should I store it?
For more useful skills, continue reading the blogs on the Mama Prepper Channel.
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