I made beef short ribs for dinner last night. While we like them, they are terribly fatty.
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| rendered and saved beef fat from last night's cooking, will add more today |
I hate to waste all of that fat, though, especially with the high price of other cooking fats right now. So I saved as much of the beef fat as I could.
I browned the meat slowly in the early afternoon, rendering as much of the fat as I could before the meat developed too thick of a crust from browning. I poured off that fat to freeze. After simmering the meat with onions, garlic, and herbs for a few hours, I poured off all of the liquid and allowed the fat to rise. I scooped that fat off and into a container, too.
For yesterday's dinner I pulled the meat apart and shredded it most of it, made a gravy with the skimmed liquid. I had a whole rib and the fattier parts of the other ribs remaining to use in a pot of soup for tonights dinner. Before cooking the soup I rendered the fatty pieces once more, pouring off that fat to save. Then I simmered the remaining pieces in liquid to soften it all up for the soup. After that liquid cooled I skimmed off more fat. My total skimmed and rendered fat for this day was 2 plus custard cups.
This afternoon, my daughter is pulled the remaining meat and fat apart (the bones were discarded last night after shredding meat) to make a beef and vegetable soup for us. While she separated meat from fat, I chopped fat and rendered that further. There was an additional custard cup of rendered fat from today's cooking, giving me over 3 custard cups of beef fat in total.
From about a three pound package of short ribs, I have about 1 3/4 cups of usable cooking fat now stored in the freezer. I use this saved fat when sautéing veggies or lean meats, when oven-frying potato wedges or making hash browns, in bean dishes, and melted then added to drop biscuit dough. In a pinch, rendered meat fat can be clarified (remove the meat flavor) and used in baking. I haven't done that in about 20 years. But it's there as an option, if need be.
My husband especially likes to cook with meat fat. He enjoys the meaty flavor it adds to simple dishes. We surprisingly go through almost all of the rendered fat that I save. When any meat fat has been sitting in the freezer for too long, I then use it as an aid in starting charcoal briquets for barbecuing. It all gets used one way or another.
As for the health impact of using rendered meat fat, I'm of the everything-in-moderation camp. I figure if we balance our use of meat fat with vegetable/olive oil, coconut oil, and butter, we won't overdo any one source of fat and will still reap the benefits of each type.
It's a running joke in our household that I plan on using rendered beef fat to make Christmas gifts -- some man and dog-pleasing chapstick (needs to stay refrigerated) and hand cream for the ladies. I suppose I could make mandles (beef-scented candles) for the men on my list. Oh the possibilities are endless . . .
