The Liquid Gold in Your Skillet

[elleng]

Alison Roman tosses lemons, kale and beans into the pan with chicken thighs to soak up the flavorful fat.

'I am not a patient cook. I use lettuces without washing them because it takes too long, peek into the oven more times than I should when I’m roasting a chicken, and slice into cakes before they’re properly cooled, even when I know better.

But if there is something I am going to take my sweet time with, it’s rendering chicken fat, because that stuff is worth its weight in gold.

And yes, there are lots of fats for cooking — with so many to choose from, who can play favorites? Well, I can play favorites, and chicken fat is my favorite.

It’s not just the deeply savory flavor you get from rendered chicken fat, although that is reason enough to make the effort. The idea that you can extract your own cooking fat from an ingredient as simple as a chicken thigh is something I take great pleasure in; to me, it’s one of the finest D.I.Y. moments in cooking. As a bonus, you end up with excellent, crispy-skinned chicken — a true luxury.

Thighs will consistently yield the greatest amount of fat, but bone-in, skin-on breasts will also give you plenty to work with. Maybe it’s counterintuitive, but the chicken must not be seared hot and fast, as you would cook a steak or skin-on fish fillet. Rendering fat takes time, and the fat is what we want, so time we must give it. This means medium heat for a longer period, but your patience will be rewarded with an unscorched pool of impossibly flavorful fat at the bottom of your skillet that nothing from a bottle can compete with.

All this extra time on the stove also suggests that you will not have to finish your chicken in the oven — that it can and should be cooked entirely on the stovetop.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/dining/skillet-chicken-recipe.html?

Skillet Chicken With White Beans and Caramelized Lemon
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019382-skillet-chicken-with-white-beans-and-caramelized-lemon

[sprinkleeninow]

1. Got a can of white beans hanging around. We prefer chicken thighs to bosoms.

I would swap out the kale with mb chard leaf,
but this recipe is👍.
Caramelized lemon, 😋.
Thanks much!

[flamin lib]

2. A cook after my own heart. I grew up on a small farm in S Texas

and until I was about 10 EVERYTHING that went into my mouth came off that farm. Mom rendered pork fat, beef lard and saved any chicken or bacon fat. Yeah, Dad cured and smoked that bacon!

I don't eat much bacon now but you can bet i save any fat rendered. When I make chicken stock from scraps I save all that fat as well.

I try to NEVER lose any flavor. Using bacon fat or smaltz adds a subtle something to gumbos, gravies and anything that needs to be browned. it's one of those, "Hmm, what is that . . . " kind of flavors.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. What I miss from country living is having bones.

Beef bones, enough water to cover, cooked in crock pot over night, then liquid strained.
the bones get soft enough for the dogs to safely eat, the broth makes soup the way it used to taste, with some of the fat left in it, the rest of the fat skimmed off for other dishes, esp. gravy.

hard to find beef bones in stores, even 'soup bones" stores used to sell.

[Saviolo]

3. We definitely use chicken fat in our house, but I have a funny story about it.

Hubby and I were visiting his family in Houston, TX one time. His aunt and uncle wanted to take us to this TexMex place they loved and ate at all the time. It was all pretty standard TexMex fare, enchiladas, burritos, taco salad bowls, all that sort of thing. Now keep in mind, hubby's a trained chef, so out eating out standards are pretty high.

I ordered some generic cheese-covered enchilada or burrito kind of dish, and he ordered the mole enchiladas. Now, I'm not sure what everyone here knows about mole sauce, but a traditional mole has a ton of ingredients, including dark cocoa for a bitter, earthy accent. It's a rich dark red sauce based on chili peppers. Well, when this dish came out, the sauce was the colour of chocolate milk, and tasted like Hersey syrup. He took a few bites of the rather sickly sweet dish and sent it back, and asked for just a simple bowl of tortilla soup.

He got his bowl of soup and we all remarked at how CLEAR the broth was! You could see all the way down to the fried tortilla strips at the bottom of the bowl! He took a spoonful of it to his lips and immediately spit it out. The reason it was so clear was because it was just a bowl of chicken fat with a tiny bit of soup at the bottom. Whoever had served it had not skimmed nor stirred the soup, and just ladled a big ol' bowl of schmaltz.

Well, that was the end of his appetite for that meal!

[elleng]

5. 'Funny!'

I assume his reaction didn't ruin the place for his family's future there!

[Saviolo]

6. I'm sure his aunt and uncle kept eating there.

Until it closed a couple of years after that.