fat - what to do with it?

[Bethanial]

Okay, so I cooked my monster pork butt I got on awesome sale couple months back (yes, it's been in the freezer). 17 lbs of pork butt is a LOT of meat! Turns out it was two butts in the same package

Anywho, after 18ish hrs in the oven at 250*, I'm now the proud owner of 4 quart bags of meat in the freezer, what I estimate to be 1 quart bags worth in the fridge, little more than 7 cups (love the tupperware mixing bowl with the cups on the side!) of broth + bones to cook down more, 2-1/2 - 3 cups worth of fat scraped off said broth, and 1 great big huge bowl of FAT and icky bits.

So - what do I do with it? Okay, let me rephrase, b/c there's really 2 questions - what do I do with the bowl of approx 3 cups already "cooked" fat? Can I use it in my cooking kinda like I would bacon grease? (I know it doesn't have the bacon flavor, but it is still pork fat....)

What about the big bowl of sheet fat and icky bits? Give it to the cats over the next 2-3 days? Or is there something more productive I can do with it? I know somebody (Tortoise, maybe?) has been experimenting with cooking down lard/tallow, but I'm not ready to tackle making soap yet, and if that's all I could use it for, I'm not interested.

Note: this only has about 1/2 bottle of an wonderful marinade on it - a Key Lime/Orange Cuban-type marinade we found with no added preservatives! So the flavor/smell is not strong at all due to the small amount of marinade and the large quantity of meat. And that's the only seasoning.

 

[tortoise]

Option 1: Melt it and pour it into a jar. Leave it out to cool. Icky bits should sink to the bottom. (Ever do this with bacon grease?) Use the fat down to the icky bits and throw it away.

Option 2: Fill a pot halfway with a few cups of water - 4" deep or so. Put in the fat and icky bits and boil the water (not the fat). Oil rises to the top, icky bits sink AND are separated from the fat (by the water).

You would be getting cooking fat (soft), not tallow (hard).

O, yes. Option 3: Feed it to your cats and get a very, very expensive date with your vet.

Did I ever mention how my tallow rendering project turned up? Into my dog's stomach and later puked out at the vet clinic.

Normally wouldn't be *that* bad, since my fiance is a vet and I'd be spared public humiliation. But no.... he was gone hunting and his boss has to come in after-hours to make my dog puke.

You have no idea how badly I wanted to take my 2-1/2 pounds of puke-slimed tallow and re-render it. I restrained myself. I only have 1-1/4 pounds of tallow now. And probably won't get more until next year. Unless I get mice and cozy with the butcher, lol.

 

[Bethanial]

Option 1: Melt it and pour it into a jar. Leave it out to cool. Icky bits should sink to the bottom. (Ever do this with bacon grease?) Use the fat down to the icky bits and throw it away.

Option 2: Fill a pot halfway with a few cups of water - 4" deep or so. Put in the fat and icky bits and boil the water (not the fat). Oil rises to the top, icky bits sink AND are separated from the fat (by the water).

You would be getting cooking fat (soft), not tallow (hard).

O, yes. Option 3: Feed it to your cats and get a very, very expensive date with your vet.

Did I ever mention how my tallow rendering project turned up? Into my dog's stomach and later puked out at the vet clinic.

Normally wouldn't be *that* bad, since my fiance is a vet and I'd be spared public humiliation. But no.... he was gone hunting and his boss has to come in after-hours to make my dog puke.

You have no idea how badly I wanted to take my 2-1/2 pounds of puke-slimed tallow and re-render it. I restrained myself. I only have 1-1/4 pounds of tallow now. And probably won't get more until next year. Unless I get mice and cozy with the butcher, lol.

Awesome! I know what I'm doing tomorrow evening! (Yes, it's going in the frig until then)

PS - I'm assuming it'll be ok to feed de-greased icky bits to the cats?

 

[littlegorb]

if you can get lye, good luck. make soap. i keep my lard in the freezer for pie crusts. makes the best!

 

[freemotion]

You basically have a slightly flavored lard on your hands...the stuff that is smooth and chunk-and-bit-free. Put that into clean jars, mark the date and what it is, and put it in the fridge. You can use it to grease pans for baking, to cook in (brown meats, cook eggs, stir-fry veggies, anything you want) and it will make a lovely pie crust. Imagine a pork and veggie pie with some of the meat, some of the broth, some diced root veggies, and a nice, flaky crust made with that fat! Yummm!

You can take the rest of the fat and render it some more by dicing or grinding (best) it and simmering it in some water for a couple hours or more, covered. DO NOT LET IT BOIL OVER OR YOU COULD HAVE A GREASE FIRE!!!! You can also use the crock pot so it does not boil over. Then strain it....I use a screen-type strainer....into hot jars (use the drying cycle of your dishwasher) and set hot canning lids on them with rings, and it can be stored at room temp (the ones that seal) until you open them.

I like to use half pint jars because they don't take up too much room in the over-packed fridge and one cup of lard is perfect for a big two crust pie.

I don't feed pork fat to either my dogs or cats, either. But you can feed it to the chickens if you have them, or pour the somewhat melted fat and icky bits over some bird seed in a baking pan, cool it, and cut it to fit into a suet feeder for the wild birds. They go nuts for it. Add a generous amount of powdered cheap cayenne to keep the squirrels out of it. I use shell-free premium seed for this.

 

[freemotion]

For soapmaking purposes, if you run this through a lye calculator, it is lard, not tallow.

 

[Bethanial]

awesome! Thank y'all so much for the tips and advice