Cooking With Schmaltz

Schmaltz is chicken fat. You know it as the fat you skim from chicken broth. Maybe you have used lots of chicken fat and skin to render it. I used the skimmed fat from broth.

After I skimmed the fat, I decided to use it to cook. But, what would I cook? Biscuits seemed like the easiest thing--drop biscuits.

I used the correct ratio of flour to fat, but this was the softest biscuit dough I have ever seen. Maybe I should have refrigerated it. Maybe I did. I have forgotten.

The resulting biscuits were okay, just not what I was aiming for. It was probably not the final product anyone wishes for when baking biscuits. I ate them, not unhappy at all with the resulting taste or texture.

While I baked these biscuits months ago, today, I finally read a bit about chicken fat. It appears that this is a popular fat for those who are religious Jews and do not eat pork products. Of course, the cultural Jews use it too, most likely from tradition.

Even though I have only cooked with chicken fat once, I have never wasted it. I put it over Dominique's oats or just over her food.

"Chicken Fat" is a song composed for JFK's youth fitness program in schools. Just a bit of trivia.

Your turn
What do you do with chicken fat? Do you cook with it?