No, seriously, why do people skim this stuff off soup? I mean, I keep doing it, and dripping some all over the counter between the stove and the sink, but I know if I were to just mix it back into the soup, I’d never know the difference. Or would I? What’s the point of skimming it off when it can be dissolved?
And if your answer is “It can’t be dissolved,” why bother doing it continually? Why not just wait untiol the soup is fully cooked, and skim it ALL off, instead of making this into a repeated ritualistic soup-scum-skim thing?
IOW, why am I wasting my morning skimming scum off soup?
I skim the scum from the top of the soups I’m cooking so that the broth is not cloudy. I skim-as-I-go but, to be quite frank with you, I’m not sure why.
To avoid drips on the counter, transfer the scum to a bowl kept on the stove.
Well, there’s two soup scums, aren’t there? There’s fat scum and protien-sediment/herb scum. If I want a clear broth but it has a lot of fat, I’ll refrigerate it in a metal bowl when it’s done cooking. By the next morning, the fat floats to the top and hardens in a frisbee-disk o’ cholesterol. I can then lift it off and put however much of it back in I want for richness. The protien/herb sediment is on the bottom of the refridgerated broth. I can either scoop off the clear stuff I want or (if it’s a gelatinous broth) dip the metal bowl in hot water, invert the jello-soup onto a plate and scrape off the sediment from the top.
If you don’t have time to skim the soup or to use the refrigerator method of Whynot you could always use a fat separator (that’s the little pitcher with the spout that comes out of the bottom).