5 PRESSURE-RENDERED CHICKEN FAT YIELD:
100-200 g/ 0-1 cup, depending on the fat content of the chicken skin
TIME ESTIMATE:
2 hours overall, including 30 minutes ofpreparation and 10 hours unattended keeps for 2 weeks when refrigerated and up to 6 months when frozen
STORAGE NOTES: LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS: USED IN :
moderate meat grinder, pressure cooker, two 500 mL I 16 oz canning jars Home Jus Gras (see page 93), Chicken Noodle Soup (see page 273)
A recipe for fat may strike some as strange, but fat is one of the key flavor elements in food. French cuisine would be unrecognizable without cream and butter. Indian cuisine relies heavily on ghee
meats because it does not distract from the flavor of the other ingredients. We use our Modernist schmaltz to enrich chicken sauce, salad dressing, and garlic, but it has innumerable applications-you
(clarified butter). Chefs in Mediterranean countries turn habitually to olive oil, while those in Tibet always have yak butter on hand. The recipe here is for rendered chicken fat, which is widely used
can even use it to fry eggs! Buy chicken skin from your butcher, or collect scraps of fat and skin from other chicken recipes in the freezer until you have enough
in Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine. (The Yiddish word for it-schmaltzhas taken on a whole other connotation in American English.) As much as we love cream, butter, and olive oil, rendered fat is
to render. Note that the same technique can be used for any animal fat, including turkey, duck, or goose skin, and fatty trimmings from cuts of pork, veal, or beef.
sometimes a better choice for use in a sauce or as a complement to VOLUME
INGREDIENT
WEIGHT
Chicken skin, ground Baking soda (optional)
500 g/ l.llb 2Y.. cups Y:z tsp 2.5 g
SCALING
PROCEDURE
100% 0.5%
CD
Combine, and divide equally into two 500 mL/ 16 oz cann ing jars. Tighten the lids fully, and then unscrew them one-quarter turn so that they do not explode. 0 Place the fil led jars on a rack or trivet in the base of a pressure cooker with 2.5 cm / 1 in of water. ® Pressure-cook at a gauge pressure of1 bar / 15 psi for1 Y2 hours. Start timing as soon as full pressure has been reached. @) Let the cooker coo l, or run tepid water over the rim, to depressurize it. Let the jar contents cool before opening to avoid sp lattering. ® Strain. Discard the so lids. ® Allow the liquid to settle, and then decant the warm fat. Alternatively, refrigerate it until the fat solidifies, at least 4 hours, and then scoop the clear fat off the top. Safety tipsfa r pressure-cooking: see page 33
OTHER WAYS TO RENDER FAT
We use canni ng jars insid e the pressure cooker because it simplifies cleanup, and we aren't usually rendering more fat than will fit in a co upl e jars. But you can render a large batch by putting 2.5 cm / 1 in of water in the pressure cooker, and then adding the ground skin. The pressure cooker shou ld be no more than two-thirds full.
Wet-Rendering Drop the skin or fat into boiling water, and reduce it until all that is left are pieces of meat and tissue floating in bubbling fat. Stra in. Discard the solids. Allow the liquid to separate, and then pour the warm fat off th e top.
OILS AND FAT S
Dry-Rendering Saute the skin or fat ove r low heat unti l the fat melts. The cook ing causes Maillard reactions that enhance the flavor of the rendered fat. Dry-rendered fat keeps for seve ral weeks in the refrigerator. This method works particularly well with fatty bacon.
1 23