Help: Animal Fats, Basic Kitchen Techniques Anywhere? (A Dummie's Guided to Lard?)

how-to
(Adam Foard) #1

So, as a child of the '80s, I grew up knowing how to cook hamburger helper, it’s cousin spaghetti, cheerios and sandwiches.

I’m trying to figure out the basic things everyone’s mom would have taught them in the kitchen for dealing with these wonderful fats.

I’ve seen a couple tutorials for clarifying fats, and there are lots of great recipes, but I’m looking for the common sense stuff that no one seems to write down. Storage, handling, re-use, when and HOW to get rid of it…

I do put my bacon grease through a coffee filter and save it when I make a big batch.

I’ve done carnitas in lard on stovetop and I feel like I could be re-using the leftover lard. Lard is cheap at the Latin grocery store chain (Fiesta Mart - Houston).

Basic care and feeding of a deep fat fryer? (don’t have one yet)

(Bunny) #2

Not an expert on this but I usually freeze or refrigerate the lard, suet, tallow, bacon grease etc., too lazy to strain it after each use; then re-use it two or three times… Any more than three times can become too oxidized?

If your a animal fat frying only person like me, don’t buy an electric deep fryer, it will not work good and very laborious to fill it (melting the fat into a liquid in a different pan on the stove?) and drain (will not turn on when fat turns to a solid around heating element?) it after each use; also creates a big gurgling-mess when frying with animal fats?.. i.e. a kitchen appliance nightmare? Some deep fryers have the heating element underneath the frying chamber rather than in it but good luck trying to find one?

Get a stove top deep fryer with a high quality metal basket? Just got mine in the mail yesterday and luving it❣️

#3

I cook in lard when it’s the right fat for the job but don’t try to reuse it as I only use what I need. All my deep frying is in tallow, I use it until it tells me it’s done. I filter it when needed with cooking oil filters, basically looks like a huge cone coffee filter, I get them as BassPro. After I filter I add to get back up to the level I need. Fryer care can depend on what you have, I have the Presto Kitchen Kettle which is just a huge electric bowl with a basket. So I can dump the tallow and either wash it or stick the whole thing in the dishwasher. I’ve had others with digital controls and heating elements that weren’t removable and a little trickier to clean.

(Adam Foard) #4

Uhm, how does it tell you this?

I understand tallow is stable at room temperature, so do you just leave it on the counter?

(Adam Foard) #5

So when I make carnitas, I’ll get this layer of gelatin at the bottom of my pot and the lard on top of it. I thought I might be able to skin the top layer off and store it.

I would assume something like that happens with the deep fryer regardless of the fat used. How do you deal with this?

(Bunny) #6

Also made a post about this here yesterday

#7

Yup! My fryer is a permanent fixture on my counter. When you start beating it up too much it’ll start going thinner on you and smell a little different, you’ll know when it’s had enough. But filtering it every couple times helps a lot and obviously keeping fried pieces out of it so they’re not in there burning on the next cook.

(Troy) #8

Did you by chance get the Tramontina Deep Fryer?:thinking:
Have that on my gadget wishlist😁

(Bunny) #9

The deep fryer I got is from “Denmark Tools For Cooks” comes with a nice well made heavy duty restraunt grade frying basket!

This post by Richard about frying with fats is fascinating: