At Django, duck fat gives the frites a rich flavor and crispy crunch. They’re served with served with ketchup, Harissa aioli, curry ketchup and Beanaise sauce. (Photo: Django)
By Mary Jane Miller
As you may know, Mardi Gras means “Fat Tuesday” in French. For Catholics and others who observe the Christian calendar, it’s traditionally the last chance to enjoy fatty foods and red meat before the 40 days of Lent that lead to Easter.
Since this year’s Mardi Gras arrives next week, on March 4, let’s take a closer look at the holiday’s key ingredient.
In any dish, fats carry the flavors of other ingredients. When the flavors of garlic, onions and spices are suspended in fat, they hang out on your tongue in a splendid, unctuous sort of way. But the fats themselves have a wonderful, subtle flavor of their own — and each kind is different.
Cultured butter, for example, is flavorful, expensive and hard to find. Making my own had never occurred to me until my brother once brought me seven quarts of soon-to-expire heavy cream he’d purchased for 99 cents each. Here’s how you do it: Add two tablespoons of cultured buttermilk to the quart right in the carton, give it a shake and leave it at room temperature for at least 24 hours and up to a week. (The longer you leave it, the tangier it gets.) Pour the cream into a food processor or a stand mixer and whip it until grainy bits start swirling around in buttermilk. Then dump the whole thing into a strainer and catch the buttermilk in a bowl. It’s great for cooking. Rinse the butter with cold water, knead it to push out any remaining milk, and when the water runs clear, you’re done. You can knead a quarter-teaspoon of salt into it, if you like. I shape mine into quarter-pound balls and wrap them in plastic. Butter keeps about two months in the refrigerator or a year in the freezer.
Schmaltz comes from chicken and duck fats. They’re both luscious. I keep a Ziploc bag in the freezer to collect the fatty gobs and unneeded skin I pull off when I’m preparing chicken. (My husband calls this “the bag of carnage.”) A pound of fat and skin will make about one and a half cups of schmaltz. To render the fat, place the trimmings in a saucepan and barely cover it with cold water. Bring it to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, until the fat is clear and the skins are golden brown. The water evaporates. This can take about an hour, so I finish it in a 400-degree oven. The crispy bits, called “gribenes,” are a tasty snack when salted and good on salads. Strain the fat into jars and keep it up to six months in the fridge or a year in the freezer. Duck fat can be made the same way, but duck is a rare treat at my house, so I usually just save the rendered fat from the pan of a roast duck.
Tallow is beef fat, and lard is pork fat. We often buy pork and beef from local farmers and say “yes” to the fat. I also buy raw fats from the meat locker in Milo. Many people have good luck rendering the trimmed fat from briskets, too, and both are rendered the same way. Cube or grind the cold raw fat. Spread it in a roasting pan and roast it, uncovered, for about 2 hours at 325 degrees. You want the fat to fully render but not brown. Browning gives the fat a savory toasted flavor. It’s not bad, but it’s less desirable for baked goods. You can make cracklings by returning the strained bits to the oven to bake until they’re brown and crispy. Strain the lard or tallow into jars and refrigerate it for up to six months or freeze it for up to a year. Technically, rendered fats are shelf stable, but they stay in better condition at cooler temperatures.
So now what? All of these fats make stellar fried potatoes. McDonald’s fried its french fries in tallow until 1990; now the company uses 19 ingredients to replicate that flavor. I like to use half lard and half butter in my pie crust and biscuits. Schmaltz is wonderful for roasting vegetables. Using hot schmaltz to make mayonnaise in place of oil cooks the eggs a bit, making the emulsification last longer and taste better. Also, you can fry a slice of bread in chicken fat for the best ever toast under a fried egg.
Of course, if this is all too much, you can always just buy it. Skip the shelf-stable hydrogenated lard; it’s just not the same. Gateway Market has nice jars of duck fat and tallow. And you can buy lard from the meat counter at most Mexican grocery stores; ask for “mateca de cerdo.”
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