Chicken Fat, how to get it, process it and its uses2006: Chickens are on sale now for 39c* an lb in L.A.CALIF and the 14 cats seem to like the stuff, if I peel the skin off and get all the fat out of the meat. THEY HATE fatty skin and slimey fat. (NOTE: By 2007, sale price was 69c an lb!)
So I get huge l0 lb bags on sale, boil it, pull the meat out, let soup cool. Then I fridge the broth. Next day, I skim fat off the broth. The hard crust of fat goes in old coffee cans. The clear broth once jellied gets mixed into their kibble. They eat the soft jelly first. PROBLEM: I sure have a lot of cans of chicken fat!
Now, I remember when I was a kid, during WWII, we took collected fat to the butcher. Don't know what he did with it, but that's what we did. Canned it up, carried it in. All the wartime mommies did it. The government must have done something with that fat, but what?
I always wondered what the secret use for chicken fat was! So I Googled "uses for chicken fat" found that you put it on seeds and crusts you give birds in winter but that BEEF FAT is better as it's much harder. You need a high up shelf in a tree where cats can not go without being seen by the birds.You do a kind of rolled fudge thing with it, so the seeds dot the brick of fat. I'll assume you use a shelf lining that you can lift and change occasionally or that piece of bird furniture would get reeking, drippy and ugly. Hate to put plates up in the air. Waxed paper or Saran wrap maybe. Was the government doing that? NAHHHH.
I read of Another USE: BIO DIESEL! If you get a hundred cans in the freezer, take it to your local bio-diesel maker and get credit! Yep, it says so on the internet! Gas is costly. I can't drive to a diesel factory.
Traditional JEWISH COOKING is yet a third use, not the healthiest. They call it "schmaltz" and, as there was no olive oil in colder parts of Europe, it was used for frying. I'll bet they were not mystified by those autopsies where all that yellow fat was collected in lumps all around the heart! They must have figured out SCHMALTZ was lethal, no? Actually the word has come to mean sickening sentimentality. Go figure.
Thinking back to medieval Europe, Even if the housewife was just going to heat toast in a fry pan, you need to lay a layer of OIL on that skillet so the bread wouldn't stick. So I imagine medieval Jews cut themselves a little slack and used fat on IRON PANS before heating bread.
Next I read that no recipe for that famed appetizer, "chicken livers" was any good without actual chicken fat in the blend!
http://www.clock.org/~jss/recipes/appetizer/ccl.html is some recipes for this appetizer but maybe once a year is all the chicken livers you want to down!
Some Googling revealed that Chicken and Duck Fat are both used by Chinese chefs as a flavoring for stir-fries. It is often poured over a dish just before serving to give an appetizing glaze and taste accent. Didn't say if in CHINA or USA though I surely hope it's not HERE at my local GREAT WALL OF CHINA cafe.
LAST, SOAPMAKERS tell us that Chicken fat, which is not a hard fat, is considered an oil. The best soap is made from a mixture of fat and oil. So amazingly enough, part of your SOAP can be rendered chicken fat! Its saponification index " 0.138 " The page warns us SCHMALTZ makes soft soap, spongy soap, but if we have
a huge, future Depression or it's PERPETUAL MUSLIM wartime, who cares? SO I can see myself keeping a hundred cans of fat around in the garage freezer. SOAP IS SOAP. And if I cannot buy TALLOW FAT, and have to do CHICKEN SOAP, I can see keeping the finished soap in a ballpark catsup or mustard pump spigot jar. One on each sink in the house. What kid would even realize it was leftover dinner!SOAPMAKERS? CALL ME!