I answered “totally revolting” although I do know it’s necessary for flavor. But I don’t ever want to see it on my plate. (Unless it’s crispy bacon.) So I deal with it in the kitchen, but hate it on a plate of finished food. I love, say, rack of lamb, but I often don’t get it because it’s such a fight. Ditto prime rib.
You’re like my best friend, who is, like you, very slim. I attribute this in large part to her food preferences, since she comes from people who tend to be chubby.
She can’t tolerate solid butter, either - only completely melted.
Oh, well mind you, I do like bacon – I like it nice and tender and juicy. I don’t eat it alot though. (No offense to those who do!)
I don’t mean any offense to those who DO like the fatty portions of meat, they just really gross me out.
Oh no. Thank you very much. I won’t be able to eat it NOW!
The last time I made chili, I ended up with a layer of grease floating on top. I told my mom about this, and she said “Oh, yeah, you can just skim that off”. I said “Why would I want to do that? I just added some cornstarch to thicken it up, and stirred it back in”.
That said, I wouldn’t eat just a lump of fat straight. It has to be with something else.
Generally, I’ll cut or pull of visible fat before I eat meat. Even ham. I rarely eat bacon, but when I do, I will eat the fat with it. I will also save bacon fat for flavoring. When I roast a whole chicken, I pull the fat from the vent and neck openings, and dice it with herbs, and slip it under the skin of the chicken breast. This makes the bird somewhat self-basting, and the breast is so lean that it needs that fat. I always roast chicken on a bed of peeled and sliced potatoes, so that the taters get flavored with the chicken juices and fat. And they’re wonderful that way.
I usually get ground meat in 85/15 fat to lean proportion. Anything leaner tends to be dry and flavorless, while anything fattier tends to swim in grease. It’s usually hard to find sausage that is that lean, though, so when I cook sausage, I cook it for a while, drain the fat from the pan, cook it a while, drain again.
It has its place and I don’t shy away from it, but trying to eat a chunk of fat would gross me out because of the texture.
I like the fat if it’s like a condiment to the meat. It adds to the flavor but it’s too much if I eat it straight.
Fat, yum yum. I even love a thick slice of bread, spread with lard/chicken schmaltz/goose fat, topped with raw onions and a bit of salt. Or fatback cooked on a stick over a fire. And the chunks of fat in prime rib–yum!
However, I will defat stocks and soups, and am careful to take most of the fat out of drippings for gravy. Even with certain stews, if there’s a big layer of fat, I like to skim some of it off. These things shouldn’t leave you with a big greasy film on your lips.
I do love my fat separator. Now sometimes I use some of the separated fat to make a roux, which I put back into the soup, but most stocks and soups need to be defatted to some degree, especially if I’m starting with an assortment of soup bones.
Crispy fat is good. One of the high points of Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner is pulling the turkey out of the oven, waiting for it to cool just enough, peeling off a piece of that delightful crispy skin, sprinkling a little salt on the non-crispy side, and then, well, my holiday dinner is complete. Y’all can have the rest!
Bacon? Bring it on. Scrapple? Only if it’s thin-sliced and fried in butter (yes, butter; not oil, not margarine, real butter) until it gets that crispy crust. Or try this: take some pepperoni slices. Put a couple layers of paper towels on a dinner plate, cover in pepperoni, cover with more paper towels. Microwave until the slices are crispy/crackly, eat like potato chips! Mmmmm.
Now, if I’m eating a reasonably marbled steak (I don’t care for prime rib, like something a little less fatty, thanks), I’ll eat the fat, too. But if I have a steak or pork chop that has a ‘ridge’ of soft fat along the edge, or a blob of it somewhere, it gets cut off and put with the gristle and/or bone!
On the other hand, my dairy preferences run toward fat, and I’d guess you’d have to call that ‘soft fat’. Butter? Oh my, yes. The only reason I have margarine in the house at all is because my sister buys it! Sour cream, ricotta cheese, cream cheese, any other kinds of cheese? Full-fat, thanks. The only cheese exception I make is that I can’t really tell the difference between full-fat and part-skim mozzarella if I’m cooking with it.
More, please.
I’ll be the first to mention whole milk. I can’t believe how effectively this stuff is demonized. It’s delicious! And of course it has fat; it’s milk! Now I can happily drink 2% and even 1% sometimes, but skim milk is the abomination here. For awhile we were buying a pasteurized organic whole milk that had the cream rise to the top like the farm fresh stuff. Awesome. I guess it was non-homogenized. But I almost lost it when my wife was considering skimming it off and throwing it out. That’s the good stuff! Drink it, whip it, whatever - but don’t toss it.
Ribeyes are also delicious, and while I might not eat each and every bit of fat, I’ll eat most. Tasty. Oh, and medium rare, of course.
The fat that I can’t get into at the moment is what Anthony Bourdain likes to call “the pope’s nose”. It’s the triangular piece of tail and fat off of a turkey or other bird. It’s got the crispy-skin goodness of turkey, but the taste and consistency isn’t on par with my expectations.
My current fat du jour is marrow. My chili improved so much after I started tossing in thick cross sections of cow bone. Also smoked pork shanks.
Cartman?
How do you feel about chocolate-covered hog lard?
While some of the ‘fattier’ parts can be quite delicious, I’d freak out at the notion of eating large volumes of them simply from the disturbing health picture that creates. Sure, I’ll eat a ribeye before most any other steak but I’ll cut all the available fat off beforehand. If I’m eating some KFC I’ll pull one nice, crispy piece of skin off before hand, save it for the last bite and push anything else off to the side. I’d much prefer just a taste, rather than food that’s swimmin’ in it.
I feel like throwing up!
It’s very interesting to see where and how people draw their lines - especially pulykamell! Smearing chicken fat on bread like butter, yet skimming it off soup?? Very interesting…
The difference is that bread coated with lard is supposed to be lardy and salty. That’s the whole point of eating that bread. For soup, a greasy mouthfeel is considered a no-no. I’m not saying skim all the fat off the soup: I am saying, though, that you don’t want an inch of fat floating on top of your broth. When I make chicken broth, I get close to an inch of rendered fat in my pot. I don’t throw this fat away, mind you. I refrigerate it and use it for frying onions for later dishes or in my lardy bread. There’s no good reason to throw good animal fat away.
edit: Here’s the bread I’m talking about. The best versions are the ones topped with some goose liver, like this one.
Well, how about woven bacon?
I can’t tolerate fat on meat or solid butter, either. I wish I were thin, but I’m not.
I have cut fat off my meat before eating it for as long as I can remember. I don’t quite gag if I get some in my mouth, but I do generally spit it out. I might try to swallow it if I were eating in company, but at home it’s going back on the plate.
Butter has to be totally melted. If it’s solid, it’s got a greasy texture that I find revolting.
We very rarely cook with animal fat, since olive or canola oil is so much more convenient and can be used with either meat or dairy.