Fat is Flavor (Within Reason) + How To Make Ghee

By Dean E. on Jun 26, 2010

Thanks a million for the ghee lesson! I enjoyed that you packed it with info … more than just a "how-to."

Some consider it a food sin but there are times when I enjoy using lard, especially when making an olla of black beans. Boccalone is a great source. I also like to have some grapeseed oil on hand for times when you want an "invisible" oil with a high smoke point. Admittedly it's flavorless, but it can be useful.

By Rona Conti on Jun 27, 2010

Oh lard, how un pc and how delicious. It has not graced my refrigerator in eons, but it is missed, especially for browning Italian meatballs when making a huge pot of tomato sauce. And chopped liver is simply not authentic and delicious without using rendered chicken fat with onions (schmaltz). Time to reassess and return to flavors in moderation. Thank you for all. Wonderful video, delicious approach to cooking with enthusiasm, knowledge, panache, the zest of life beautifully rendered.

By wangston on Jun 27, 2010

here's another shout out for lard. it's a pantry essential, with a healthier fat profile than butter. usually bacon drippings, but if i happen to have a nice chunk of pork fat lying around, i'll render it properly, and enjoy the cracklings too.

i use peanut oil instead of walnut oil in the exact same slot, and i keep some canola around as a backup oil for deep-frying or high-heat sautee if i don't have enough lard or schmaltz to do the job.

By Dean E. on Jun 28, 2010

Until recently I always bought lard from the Mexican/Latin tiendas. I'm in SF so I like La Palma Mexicatessan and Casa Lucas Market, both on 24th Street in the Mission.

Eric, where do you buy duck? I only know of a couple of so-so sources because I'm new to the fowl.

By lynninthekitchen on Jun 28, 2010

Fat is not only taste it is also texture.

Unexpectedly to me, my new favorite solid fat for biscuits and hearty pie crusts is Crisco. Now that the trans fats are mostly out (I know they say zero but zero is really quite zero.)

Butter doesn't work for biscuits in my opinion and I'm not using lard, even though it works.

Intriguingly, the consistency of the "new" Crisco is more lard like (harder)
and doesn't liquify at as low a temperature as "old" Crisco. The result is using vegetable fat an getting a product that has the consistency of animal fat. Yeah.

The biscuits (and pie crusts) are better than ever.

Hydrogenation is not very mysterious actually, just hydrogen atoms doing what their told to do (most of the time). Just as in real life its the few errant ones that cause all the problems.

The real problem for health concerns is the solid fat alternatives. Butter and duck or pork fat have cholesterol and some pastries simply don't work well without solid fat. Painfully, the world without butter would probably be a world without croissants.

Inuits have evolved genetic changes to help them be healthy with incredibly high fat, low vegetable diets.

Humans don't make vitamin C even though most animals can. The residues of our genes indicate that accidental deletions (mutations) have occurred multiple times in evolution — presumably because its easy for us to get enough vitamin C in our diet and thus the gene is not essential.

My view, is eat healthily (to the degree that we know what that means) but don't make a fetish of it.
My personal approach is to eat with great diversity. This approach has the additional advantage of sending you exploring to diverse cultures of the world in day to day life.
(I had a biscuit for breakfast and tabouleh for lunch)

Although there might be a personal (health or medical) reason to change a diet in a personal way, demanding that everyone in the world eat a particular way is nonsense. (I can remember a world without McDonalds)

By Mary asella on Jun 30, 2010

Eric Dear, I'm loving listening and learning from you as I boat and cope with 2 propane burners…You're program is so excellent, fun to listen to, REAL, very informative, and I'm passing it to all my friends.
xxxxxxxx Mary xxxxxxxxx

By Kitchen M on Jun 30, 2010

I think Crisco is made from soybean and cottenseed oil, etc.
Both saturated and trans fat turn into solid and whitish color at room temperature or colder. (And that's exactly how it cloggs arteries in people with high cholesterol, btw.) Even though dietary cholesterol is listed in the food labels, dietary cholesterol doesn't necessarily become cholesterol in our body. Saturated fat and trans fat are the ones that really influence your cholesterol levels. Most liquid fats like vegetable oil, canola oil, olive oil, etc are poly and mono unsaturated fat which means that there are less hydrogen atoms attached to the carbon. When the carbon atom is "saturated" fully with hydrogens, creating double bonds, it becomes more solid, stablized form of fat. So the trans fat really is an artificial form of saturated fat made cheaply by pumping hydrogen atoms into vegetable oil to create the similar mouthfeel.

I agree with Lynn. People should enjoy eating a variety of things in moderation. Anything in extreme or excessive amount is never good.

BTW, I can't wait to try making ghee!

By Deana Gunn on Jul 18, 2010

Hi Eric,
Another great video! I'm catching up on a few I missed. Extra virgin olive oil is always my go-to fat, but I really like toasted sesame oil for flavor, grapeseed oil for certain things like making homemade granola. Growing up, my family used ghee but I don't ever use it myself – I might try rotating a little in.

What about extra virgin coconut oil? That's another one I have that I use occasionally. It used to get bad press because of the saturated fat content but I guess it's the "not so bad for you & your body needs some" medium chain fatty acids. I like the flavor. Even stir-frying something like plain tofu in it results in some nice flavor.

Your mention of organic butter reminded me of how I've read in several places that butter is, surprisingly, among the top foods that should be bought organic due to high pesticide contamination.
For example:
"According to the Pesticide Action Network of North America, nonorganic butter was ranked first as the food most contaminated with persistent organic pollutants, a class of toxic chemicals that are some of the most dangerous produced. “POPs are toxic chemicals that stay in the environment and our bodies for months, years, sometimes even decades. They are passed from link to link in the food chain, and from one generation to the next through fetal exposure and breast milk,” says Kristin Schafer, program coordinator at PAANA."

take care,
Deana

By octopuscarwash on Aug 22, 2010

Coconut oil is great, I agree– especially drizzled over baked sweet potato or winter squash.
Another oil I use for stir-frying is Sichuan peppercorn oil– I'm pretty sure it's just vegetable oil infused with Sichuan peppercorns, but it definitely adds that kind of "numbing" spiciness to vegetables.