Second question of the day: has anyone rendered beef fat? Post Valentine's Day, I bought

M

marilynfl

Moderator
a HUGE half slab of New York Strip steaks on sale for half price and had the butcher cut it into seven 1" steaks. There was a thick, very white hard slab of fat on top and I trimmed that off, leaving about 3/8" fat for cooking.

Back in the late 80's when I worked at Bern's Steak House in Tampa, Bern had his own drying room for steaks--along with an entire suite of butchers to cut each steak to order. The kitchen staff would render the excess beef fat and fry hand-cut potato chips for bar snacks. THEY WERE AMAZING. I'm still remembering them 30 years later, that's how good they were.

I'm kind of tempted to render all this fat (~2 lb) and try the potato chip thing. But I'm wondering if there was more to this than just melting it. I've rendered pork fat to make lard, but have never had this much beef fat before.

 
I had a huge slab a couple of days ago. At least 1 1/2 pound. I was thrilled because I

could then make the gravy in advance....what a great idea that was, except that browning the flour took a long time without any brownings from the roast..........lots of Yorkshire pudding and I could start the veg in the fat since I knew I was going to run out of oven space later.

I cut it into 2" cubes and just did it slowly. It rendered perfectly. Next time I ask the butcher for fat, I'll ask for this much.

Potatoes in particular, become so much crisper in beef fat.

 
I render my own pork lard for tamales each year. I would think the process would be...

...very similar.

1/2 inch cubes of fat go into a roasting pan and spread out in a single layer. Pan goes into a 275 degree oven until lard is rendered and fat cubes are toasty brown.

Stir every 20 minutes or so to mix the cubes and spread into a single layer again.

Michael

 
Done! 1 lb 11 oz of steak fat rendered to exactly 2 cups of fat. Took about 45 minutes

using two pans on stove top. End result looks like amazing chunks of grilled beef--and that reminded me of a local steak house that served beef tips in gravy. I had ordered it once and noticed every other piece seemed to be chewy and not in a meat way. Now I realize that they must render off the fat and stir these crispies in with actual chunks of beef. No waste on their part, but I won't be getting that again now that I know what I was eating.

Marg, thank you THANK YOU for mentioning using the beef fat for making gravy. I hadn't even thought of that idea as I don't have meat around that much.

My new neighbors are all MEAT EATERS. Literally. Someone introduced me to another neighbor as "she's the one that makes that chocolate sauce" and the guy said: "I could care less about chocolate. I like meat!"

You could actually HEAR the exclamation point.

Now I pick up meat whenever it's on sale for dinners. I have LITERALLY no room left in my freezer because of these:

13 pound turkey
9 pound fresh ham
8 organic chicken thighs
7 NY strip steaks
4 pound rump roast
1 large strip of pork belly.

I feel like I should throw some geese and French hens in there.

And PORK BELLY!! WHERE THE HELL HAVE I MOVED TO!!!!! I'm living somewhere where they don't care about chocolate and I cook mostly vegetarian. I'm not good with meat.

In a week or so I'm have a few couples over for dinner and it's going to be "Cook Your Own Steak" meal. I'll provide the steaks, twice-baked potatoes, mushrooms and onions. They can cook their own steak.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top