 A Fat Finding Mission Of all the great discoveries that changed and improved the lot of humans, few compare with the discovery of metal. It is difficult to even imagine how the discovery might have happened. Did a stone melt as someone cooked by an open fire? Did someone then make a connection between the stone, the heat, and the resultant melted mess? I’ve never seen anything remotely similar despite standing around many a bonfire. However I did make my own discovery just after Christmas. It may not have been of the magnitude of the jump from the Stone Age to the Metal Age, but in its own way it too may resonate through history. A couple of weeks ago I returned from visiting relatives during the Christmas holidays and then phoned Doug to see how his holiday season went. We discussed houseguests, and bird-guests, and somewhere in there he casually mentioned reading the suet rendering article I wrote several weeks ago. (If you recall my suet rendering column, I swore never again to undertake the activity. And yet at the same time I extolled the joys of using rendered suet over clumps of raw suet. With a contradiction this obvious something had to give.) “Why don’t you use my method?” Doug asked in the casual manner of the first Iron Age man presenting Stone Age man with a metal skewer on which to roast his pterodactyl (in all likelihood pterodactyls were extinct by the time humans played with fire, so I’m employing this comparison strictly for effect.) “What method is that?” I responded, scarcely realizing that I stood with one foot on the edge of a crumbling epoch, and the other foot on a newer, brighter epoch. Doug replied “We melt the suet in boiling water.” I was dumbfounded. The implications tumbled from darkness and splashed down into the well of my conscious brain. “You melt the suet in boiling water!?!?” Words alone could not describe my ‘eureka’ moment. My old method of rendering suet involved the application of heat to a cold clump of raw suet sitting in the bottom of a pot. Only that part of the suet touching the pot melted, and it was a long, smoky, smelly time before the rest of the suet even grew warm. Doug continued. “We chop the raw suet as fine as possible then immerse it in water and boil it. Next we let it cool and collect the solidified fat.” I hung up the phone, my head still spinning from this revelation. Of all the Christmas gifts I received, this one was surely the best. Luckily my personal stockpile of rendered suet was fast dwindling so I wouldn’t have to wait long before trying the boiling water method. Unluckily the local meat store was closed for a long winter break and I did not have immediate access to my usual high quality suet supply. Then one day, as I peered into the frozen food display at the local supermarket, I happened to spy a nice piece of raw suet neatly wrapped in plastic. Would it be the kind I got at the meat store? I took it home and cut off the plastic wrap. It was just what I needed. Quickly I chopped the suet into small pieces then looked around for a large pot so I could begin the smelting process. According to Doug, suet renders well on the kitchen stove with no smoke or odour problems. So I headed indoors, added some hot water straight from the tap, and breathlessly placed my large enamel pot on the stove element. In no time at all the pot of raw suet and water bubbled merrily away with no smoke, and no noxious odours. I stirred and stirred and finally decided that everything that could melt had melted. I poured the contents of the pot through a wire strainer into margarine containers, and waited for everything to cool down. There was some solid material left behind. I put the solid bits into a smaller pot on the stove, boiled it for awhile, then adding it to the already cooling margarine tubs. Two hours later the fat solidified and I turned out the tubs to see what I had wrought. The first tub contained a thick layer of fat overtop of an equal amount of watery material. The second tub contained less fat and more water. The third tub mostly held water with a thin skim of fat. Most of the fat rose to the top of the cooking pot by the time I poured the boiling liquid into the margarine containers. I already had new questions on refining this very simple and effective of suet rendering method. I called Doug and Karen’s house, and Karen answered. (I imagine Karen is the one who does most of the suet rendering.) I asked her if she ever re-rendered suet after the first initial separation of fat from water. She said she did and suggested that it was possible to attain a quite pure lump of fat. I collected the suet and solids left over from the first rendering and with only a small amount of water in the bottom of a medium sized pot slowly brought the water to a boil. I wanted to drive off most of the water and produce a higher temperature so that some of the unmelted solids would liquefy and whatever remained would be almost pure fat. After 15 minutes of boiling I once more poured the liquid into margarine tubs and strained out the solids. I checked the results next morning and as I hoped, each tub contained almost pure lumps of suet. The solids that refused to melt were reserved for the town crows which suffer from a food shortage when local schools take long winter breaks. And so, a new age of suet rendering is ushered in. As a result I no longer fear the approach of winter, or suffer the indignities of dealing with raw suet dispensers. Woodpeckers that once endured long lineups waiting their turn at a suet dispenser will now be quickly served. The bird feeding world has taken a great leap forward. And now, zealot that I am, I will shine the light of suet rendering into all the dark corners of the world - wherever people lament the messy task of suet rendering. To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
