Specifically, you have a piece of meat, something with a fat cap. Do you leave it on or does it depend on how you plan to cook the meat? If you remove or trim it at all, do you save it for later use or just throw it out? Maybe its a bit of fat you trim off a steak before cooking because you decided last minute you didn’t want that fat tonight.
In my mind, it’s almost wrong to just throw that out. “SAVE IT! Put it in a soup/stew(I hear my grandparents in the back of my head saying) don’t waste all that food and flavor!”
Yeah, Gma and Gpa were a big influence on me in the gustatory arts🥴
A friend and I made some beef plate ribs sous vide when he was in town and staying at his sister’s place. We trimmed off a lot of fat and the sister made bird feeders from the suet. The ribs were amazing.
If I’m roasting, I’ll lay the excess fat pieces on top of the roast (or sometimes on the potatoes, if we’re having them). If I’m frying or broiling, I cook them first to grease up the pan. The dogs usually get whatever’s left of them once they cool.
If you’re making pinto beans, most any kind of beef or pork fat goes well in the mix.
It also depends on what it looks like. If it doesn’t look good, or is dry, I trim it off. If it’s excessive I will trim some off. But it does help with flavor, so I don’t get rid of it entirely.
Something like a chuck roast or pork shoulder has enough fat in the marbling without adding more from a big cap of hard fat. Plus, unless you really like eating grease, you will need to remove all that fat afterwards, which is a pain. I trim off all the hard fat I can do easily and toss it.
I’d rather skim than trim . At least in the context of stews and the like when skimming is possible. I will remove large, solid, easily removable chunks at times. But I don’t like getting too fastidious about it when it comes to chuck/pork shoulder.
I also occasionally give a small amount of trimmed fatty meat to our dog. Before someone leaps in to warn of alleged dangers (as a variety of clickbaity and even semi-professional websites claim, due to supposed risk of canine pancreatitis), there doesn’t seem to be good evidence that a small amount of fatty meat is harmful as a dog treat. Pancreatitis risk factors instead include factors like obesity, breed of dog i.e. terriers, hormonal disorders and maybe eating dumb things:
“Ingestion of unusual food items or garbage is linked to the development of pancreatitis (i.e., inappropriate food rather than the fat/protein content of food).”
Most of the foods I cook don’t have a true fat cap - since I rarely do most beef roasts (too expensive when cooking for one). The exceptions are the occasional brisket, which I split with my FiL after using his smoker, in which case, the fat stays on for best smoked brisket.
On occasion though, they’ll be more fat on a different cut than I want for the cooking method. Such as when I buy a cryovac’d pork loin from Costco. If I’m roasting, or doing chops, the fat stays on, although I’ll normally position it so that it gets seared and the excess is cooked off.
But if I’m then cutting it down to do a stir-fry, or a slow cook, or the like, then it all gets trimmed. Up until a few years back I set aside all the fat and trim for homemade sausage making, but stopped when my wife stopped eating meat. Again, homemade sausage are amazing, but too much work for just one person.
I do miss the habanero and hatch chiles with cotija smoked sausage though.
When I have a roast with a fat cap, I absolutely leave the fat on and roast it fat side up, on a rack with foil underneath to collect the drippings. By the time it’s done most or all of the fat has melted off.
The collected fat in the foil might be considered flavourful and useful for various purposes, but I just wait for it to congeal, stuff it into a used plastic vegetable bag (the kind you get at grocery stores for buying fresh veggies), seal it up, and throw it in the garbage.
Same with fat on steaks or chops that I grill. The melting fat creates flame and smoke that adds wonderful flavour. You just have to watch your timing and flipping if there are a lot of flames so it’s not overdone or charred.
. At least in the context of stews and the like when skimming is possible. I will remove large, solid, easily removable chunks at times. But I don’t like getting too fastidious about it when it comes to chuck/pork shoulder.