Rendering Meat Fat in Pictures

I cooked a large fatty piece of beef on Monday. I used the meat portion in both Monday's and Tuesday's dinners, reserving the fat to deal with Tuesday afternoon. I mention rendering fat often here. So I thought this time I'd take some photos so you can see what this task looks like.

The day after simmering the beef, I cut the chilled fat chunks into 1/4-inch dices. This is about 3/4 to 1 cup of fat dices in the saucepan. As you can see, some bits are meatier than others. But mostly these are dices of fat. The tiny amount of meat will add flavor to the finished pieces.

I cook the dices on Low heat, stirring from time to time to prevent sticking and then scorching. I'm usually doing something else in the kitchen while the fat renders. But I can also leave it to render for periods, just coming back to stir every 15 minutes or so.

It's important to keep the stove on Low. You don't want the fat to smoke and scorch. You want the fat to slowly liquify and render almost all of the fat out of each piece. Cooking over a higher temperature would cause the outside of the dices to cook but leave large amounts of fat on the insides.

after pouring off most of the liquid fat

After a couple of hours of rendering on Low, the fat was mostly cooked out. I pour off the bulk of the fat into a small dish, so the last bits can render more thoroughly. Otherwise, the dices are just sort of frying in a pool of their own fat. Any large pieces at the bottom of the saucepan I cut into smaller bits with the edge of a spoon.

When I think all of the fat is rendered, I pour the remaining fat and the browned dices into a mesh sieve over the dish. 

I use the back of a spoon to press out as much fat as I can.

The 1 cup of fat dices rendered into about 1/3 cup of liquid fat. I keep the rendered fat in the freezer and use in small amounts in cooking. Beef fat is particularly good for oven-frying potato wedges or sautéing onions to make French onion soup or vegetables such as zucchini, tomatoes, and garlic to serve as a vegetable side dish or tossed with cooked pasta.

The cooked dices are known as cracklings. I keep these in a container in the freezer. I top baked beans and soups with cracklings in fall and winter. They add a nice richness to both dishes.

"Use it up" is a motto I follow. Using all parts of meat feels respectful to the animal that gave its life to feed my family. And that's what rendering fat looks like in my kitchen.

I also render ham fat. The cracklings from rendered ham fat are salty and tasty, almost like bacon bits. I use those in salads, for topping bean soup, and stirred into cornbread batter before baking. I use the rendered ham fat any place I want to add smokey/salty flavor, such as for cooking greens or frying eggs or to add some ham flavor to bean soup or baked beans, just a spoonful or two of the fat.