So maybe not the fryer.
I have fat in my crockpot now and it seems to be doing it's thing just fine. I've been wiping the collected steam from the lid from time to time as I notice. I figure that will help eliminate moisture from the finished product. That's more for me than anything. I suspect I can just leave the top off after it's rendered and let the steam cook off. I just can't resist checking on it and seeing what it's doing. I'll post tomorrow with more results.
Sig

Sig,

Why don't you leave the lid OFF the whole time? If the heat is on as low as you say, it CANNOT boil over the top of the crock pot by any means, if you only filled the crock pot half full of fat cubes. To truly render this fat, it needs to be able to get rid of all the moisture. That won't happen with the lid on.

The water will also probably separate from the fat when it cools, you could just pour it off then.

I doubt it. Your goal is no moisture at all. This is key for preservation. The signal that you have reached this is the lack of small gas bubbles coming up from the bottom. This is moisture converting to steam. You really have no other way of removing all the moisture from the fat. That is the whole point of "rendering" fat using very low heat (lower than the boiling point of water is ideal).

Hey PD,
Well, crockpots work best if the lid is on because of the way that they're designed. They lose a lot of heat when you remove the lid and it takes some time for them to recover. I have found that after wiping the lid just three or four times during the six hours I had it on yesterday that it removed the lions share of the moisture. There really isn't that much to begin with. I intend to leave the lid off for a few hours at the end of the rendering to remove any final moisture. I just couldn't resist playing with it and checking on it so that's why I took to wiping off the lid. But even so, I did not notice that the fat dropped any heat from my taking the lid off. Crockpot manufacturers tell you to leave the lid on and not mess with it but I don't know that it matters with fat of not. I'll be able to give you a better report on this latter this evening when the rendering is completed.


Hi Nancy,
There isn't any real moisture to pour off. I didn't need to add water to the fat (as some recipes call for) to keep the fat from burning. The only moisture is from the fat itself and there just isn't a lot. Any moisture will separate from the fat but I don't think that you could remove it completely from the fat by only pouring it off. I've cleaned fat for soap making by boiling it in water. After the fat cools and becomes somewhat solid you can lift the fat off off the water but moisture still remains on the underside of the fat. Deano is correct. If there is any moisture left with the final product it will spoil so it's important to heat it out of the fat completely for best storage.

I'll let you all know
Signey

Just rendered 7 lbs. of pork fat in a crock pot. Is not as good as traditional methods, but does work. You have to leave the lid off so all moisture will be eliminated. If the lid is on the water vapour will reincorperate with the lard and it will turn rancid within a couple of weeks.

As a note, pork fat makes lard, beef fat makes tallow and buffalo fat is excellent for making suet. If you want to cook and/or fry food use lard. If you want to taste the best french fries ever, cut up your fries and soak in salt water for 1 hour, fry in lard until light brown, remove and drain on brown paper sacks until cool, then refry in same lard until golden brown.

I don't know why this process works, but it does. If you don't have home rendered lard, you can use cooking oil or shortening and the results will still be amazing.

Wayne

Refried french fries.

Say, what I really wanted to ask is - what would you say is the difference, if any, in taste, consistency, color (and how you feel after having it) - between pork lard and beef tallow?

(I think by definition unless I'm understanding it wrong, suet is unrendered fat around the kidneys and other organs of beef and some other meats. Is it used in some other parlance here and if so ... what exactly is it?!)

Oooh! Didn't realize moisture would make it go rancid. That's probably why one cooks butter to make ghee until it stops spluttering.

Make that earlier post of mine to read, "buffalo fat makes excellent suet pie". I'll do a better preview next time.

Growing up, we only used beef fat for making suet (mincemeat) pie and candles, except in an emergency when we were out of lard. To me, tallow kind of leaves a taste that sticks to the roof of your mouth.

Help - can you restate YOUR definitions of tallow and suet for me? Thanks!

Lard is rendered pork fat and tallow is rendered beef fat.

Suet is extra-hard (saturated) fat from around organs like the heart and kidneys, and a strip along the spine. From ruminents only, as far as I know.

Wyv

Thanks to all of you who pointed out what lard is and what tallow is. I wholey concur. Suet is a little bit harder to define, as its been mentioned in the Lewis & Clark journals and elsewhere, as coming from various "critters".

Most wild game, such as, deer, elk, buffalo and antelope, and coincidentially, longhorn cows, store their excess fat around the internal organs. Conversely, most domesticated animals such as beef and mutton store most of their fat in an external layer, much like humans do.

I would submit that the properties of organ fat (suet) in all warm blooded animals are essentially the same, and therefore, could be used in a like manner. A case in point is that the Sioux Indians of the Dakota plains would mix the organ fat from prairie chickens and grouse with that of the buffalo.

One of their favorite uses of this organ fat mixture was to make Indian Fry Bread. My wife is a southern girl, born and bred in Mobile, Alabama, but she thinks that stuff is to die for. Guess good eats know no boundaries.

Wayne

No boundaries? In the South, saturated fats are a main food group!

Thanks for the historical view - very interesting!

By the way, I went browsing and found this wonderful practical article written around 1904 - on how to fry, what fats to use in combination and what not to:
http://www.oldandsold.com/articles07/foods-66.shtml

I can't wait to read that article.

I have my fat rendering as we speak. I live at a high altitude with a gas stove, so I've chosen to go with the oven rendering method rather than risk my flame going out.

At the moment, it's beef fat, or it might be a mix of beef and pork. It's whatever my local high end market gave me for free. WooHoo.

But I checked my yellow pages and there are a couple meat processing places within a reasonable drive, so I'm going to look into getting some pork fat or even better fat from wild game next season. I also have a Whole Foods, and I'm going to look into getting them to save scrap for me the next time I know I can get up there.