Skimming Fat

[kurl]

Often, when making certain types of pan sauces/gravies (e.g. for turkey), I'll skim most of the fat off the drippings (which are often like 50% fat).

Does anyone have an easy way of doing this? I've tried one of those things that looks like a watering can, but it didn't work all that well. Using a spoon is tedious and doesn't allow you to get the last centimeter or so. Obviously it would be easy to refrigerate it and then remove it later, but obviously when making turkey gravy or something, one doesn't have enough time to do that.

Any tips?

[rlibkind]

Why would you WANT to get the last drop of fat out? If you're making gravy for a turkey dinner, I would think you'd want to retain one tablespoon of fat. Otherwise, you've just got colored water.

[BettyK]

Why would you WANT to get the last drop of fat out? If you're making gravy for a turkey dinner, I would think you'd want to retain one tablespoon of fat. Otherwise, you've just got colored water.

Besides a little fat would never hurt anybody

[kurl]

I'm not trying to get rid of all of the fat, but sometimes there's quite a lot of fat in there -- definitely more than one tablespoon (I try to leave about one or two).

I've seen some recipes that say to skim off all of the fat and use it at a different point in making the gravy than the fat-less drippings -- assuming I wanted to do something like that, would you have any tips?

[Fat Guy]

When chilling is not an option: first skim most of the fat with a spoon; then strain the product through a colander lined with a double or triple layer of cold, damp paper towels -- this should pick up most of the remaining fat.

[woodburner]

Does anyone have an easy way of doing this? I've tried one of those things that looks like a watering can, but it didn't work all that well.

Any tips?

What trouble are you having? The fat, does seperate, and rise to the top.

woodburner

[kurl]

I've only used one of those things once (we don't have one at home) so it's possible I was using it incorrectly, but it seemed hard to get pure fat off towards the end -- I was getting a mix of fat and juices. I was probably doing something wrong though...

[Fat Guy]

My issue with defatting pitchers (aside from the fact that they're usually too small) is that you often have to leave too much product behind for them to be effective.

[woodburner]

My issue with defatting pitchers (aside from the fact that they're usually too small) is that you often have to leave too much product behind for them to be effective.

Your right, as far as my experience goes. But it does keep the fat out.

woodburner

[project]

One reason to remove nearly all of the fat from a stock is so that the stock can remain fairly clear with a subsequent reduction. E.g., yesterday I had 4 quarts of fairly strong chicken stock, removed the fat, and reduced the stock to 3 C.

Traditional separation technology consists of a sequence of simple separators. So, suppose we have separators k = -n, ..., -1, 0, 1, 2, ..., n in a line in this order.

Each separator has one input and two outputs. One output is for, say, the water and the other is for the fat.

The separators are not perfect. So the water output may contain only slightly higher fraction of water than the input; similarly for the fat output.

We feed the mixture of fat and water into the input of separator 0. We get our most pure fat from the fat output of separator -n and get our most pure water from the water output of separator n.

Otherwise, the water output of separator k goes to the input of separator k + 1, and the fat output of separator k goes to the input of separator k - 1.

With n sufficiently large, this approach works really well, even for some things that are really, really difficult to separate. Hint: There is a really large such separating system in a really big building in Oak Ridge, TN, and they are not separating fat and water.

Of course, such a system of 2n + 1 separators is intended for operating continuously where the large total volume of the material in process is not a concern.

But, for separating fat from stocks, I borrow the principle of this approach of 2n + 1 separators.

I start with a large kitchen spoon and some of the common 2 C Pyrex glass measuring cups with a pour spout.

First I use the spoon to get essentially all the fat from the stock into glass cup A. In this, I may well get four times as much stock (say, in volume) as fat, but I do get essentially all of the fat.

If for some reason I want the very last traces of fat, then I blot the surface of the stock with towels. Paper towels -- discard. Cloth towels -- toss in washing machine.

This first step is progress because now all the fat is in cup A with maybe 1 C of stock, and the main volume of stock, possibly several quarts, is free of fat.

For the second step, I pour the fat from the top of cup A into cup B. I pour slowly and carefully to move essentially only fat. When nearly all the fat has moved, I use a soup spoon to scrape the surface of the liquid in tilted cup A to encourage the last of the fat to move to cup B.

It is possible to continue following the general approach of 2n + 1 separators above, but in kitchen practice at this point cup A is essentially free of fat and can have its contents added back to the main supply of stock.

Also usually cup B has so little stock that I don't mind discarding it.