Home › D › Dripping, to Clarify
Dripping, to Clarify
Good and fresh dripping answers very well for basting everything except game and poultry, and, when well clarified, serves for frying nearly as well as lard; it should be kept in a cool place, and will remain good some time. To clarify it put the dripping into a basin, pour over it boiling water, and keep stirring the whole to wash away the impurities. Let it stand to cool, when the water and dirty sediment will settle at the bottom of the basin. Remove the dripping, and put it away in jars or basins for use.
A method rather than a dish: washing the meat juices and burnt particles out of the fat that collects under a roast, so it keeps longer and fries cleanly. Two things the original leaves unsaid matter most — the fat must be fully melted when the boiling water hits it, and any water left behind will shorten its life.
- What dripping isThe fat that runs from roasting meat, chiefly beef or mutton, poured off and set aside. Beef dripping is the standard here; mutton dripping carries a strong flavour and was often put to other uses, rushlights among them, rather than to general frying.
- The fat must be liquidThe fat is best liquid -- Boiling water poured over a cold, solid cake of dripping will only partly melt it, and the interior can stay untouched. Melting the fat gently first, then pouring in the boiling water and stirring, lets the water take up the dissolved meat juices and carry the sediment down.
- Dry it afterwardsThe cake of fat lifted off the water will hold droplets underneath. Scrape the murky underside clean, then remelt the fat and let it bubble quietly until the hissing stops. Trapped water is what turns stored dripping sour.
- Frying temperatureWell-clarified beef dripping is usually given a smoke point of around 390-400F, much the same range as lard, which fits the text's judgement that it serves 'nearly as well as lard'. Unclarified dripping smokes and blackens at a lower temperature because of the meat solids left in it.
- Why not game or poultryBeef fat is assertive and would mask the delicate flesh; those birds were basted with butter or their own fat. The rule still holds if you are roasting pheasant or a good chicken.
- "A cool place" and "some time"That means a larder at perhaps 50F, and a few weeks at best. Refrigerated in a covered jar, clarified dripping keeps several months; frozen, close to a year. Discard it if it smells crayon-like or paint-like, the signature of rancid animal fat.
- VesselsThe "basin" is a deep mixing bowl. Glass, china or stainless steel all serve, and packing the finished fat into small jars saves repeatedly warming and cooling the whole batch.
- YieldA large beef roast gives perhaps half a cup to a cup of usable fat; washing costs you a little of it. Strain through muslin as you pot it to catch anything the water missed.
Dripping was one of the quiet economies that made Victorian roasting worthwhile: the joint fed the family, the fat under it fed the frying pan for the rest of the week, and the brown jelly beneath the fat was spread on bread as a treat in its own right. In many households the cook was allowed to sell the surplus dripping, a recognised perquisite of the kitchen and a frequent subject of complaint in domestic manuals. The washing technique here is the same principle used to clarify butter or render suet — hot water dissolves the water-soluble meat juices and gravity separates them from the fat. Dripping's decline in the twentieth century owed less to cooking than to the arrival of cheap vegetable shortenings and, later, to advice on saturated fat; it has come back into some favour with roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, where its flavour is the whole point.