Fat for Cooking

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 297, 2 March 1945, Page 22

Fat for Cooking

Dear Aunt Daisy, I wonder if you would remind people how to prepare fat for cooking. To our surprise we have found many people do not know. The butcher receives our surplus with joy, and sniffs it with appreciation (but he pays us just the same as anyone else). Boil up the dripping from mutton and beef, in a pot, for 10 minutes, with about the same quantity of water, to sweeten and clarify it. Pour into a bowl to set. Remove the fat and scrape off any sediment gathered beneath. This is good to use, but, if you have some butter, warm up the fat till it melts (do NOT let it get VERY hot) and then put in the butter. Remove from stove and stir occasionally till it begins to set again. This is splendid for making cakes and biscuits and short pastry. Instead of butter the fat from fowls may be used. A Scots friend told me this is for the finest cakes, It may be clarified in the usual way, and, if boiled sufficiently, even that from stuffed fowls will lose any smell of onions, etc. This looks like yellow oil, and (if clarified) will keep indefinitely. Add a little to your mutton fat, to soften it, and, even if you have no beef dripping on hand, this is a good mixture, What makes fat disliked for baking is that it is not sufficiently clarified. It may be necessary to boil up twice."Barbara,’ Waverley.