Maine Fats, Maine Flavors

Animal fats are getting their luster back after 70 years of being shunned.

Australian food writer Jennifer McLagan, in her book Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, argues animal fats were a good thing long before they became a bad one. Living off the fat of the land, for example, was certainly honorable when that phrase first appeared in the King James version of the Bible in 1611. Indigenous people like the Inuit and the Maasai have long survived in harsh climates due to high-fat diets. At the beginning of the 20th century, animal fats stored in cupboards across America included butter, schmaltz, lard, and tallow.

Fat started getting a bad rap in the 1950s when Americans started living more sedimentary lives. Animal fats in our diets got linked to the extra fat on our bodies. The causal relationship between fat and heart disease was not clearly proven by science, but the industrialized food system’s nonfat marketing machine pressed on with the bad fat story anyway.

A growing body of research debunks ties between animal fats and heart disease and points to how substances like omega-3 fatty acids, found in them, are good for the human body. The food science is also clear on how animal fats make cooking most foods easier and leave them tasting better.

McLagan places a high value on locally sourced animal fats: products for which cooks can know how the animals were raised, harvested, and processed. To help edible MAINE readers become more comfortably reacquainted with local animal fats, we’ve compiled cooking and storage advice for Maine butters, poultry fat, tallow, and lard.

Butter

No animal dies to make butter. When fresh cream is agitated, solid butter separates from liquid buttermilk. The butter is an emulsion of butterfat (80%), water (18%), and milk solids (2%). Water is what sizzles when butter hits a hot pan, and milk solids will burn if the butter is cooked at sustained temperature too far above 302 degrees. That said, slightly browned milk solids can add a nutty twist to sauces and baked goods. Most local butter tends to be a shade more yellow and a tad stronger in flavor in spring and summer, when the cows are grazing on grassy pasture. Sweet cream butter, made from fresh cream, is widely produced in Maine in unsalted and salted varieties. Cultured butter, more of a specialty item, tastes tangier because it is made from ripened cream into which lactic cultures are added before churning.
Maine options: Butter is a widely available local fat. Two of Maine’s largest producers—Casco Bay Creamery and Kate’s Homemade Butter—make enough to sell at grocery store chains. Livermore Falls–based Maine Country Butter is available at Whole Foods. To find smaller-batch butters, look to independent health food stores as most offer a surprising variety. And if you buy milk or cheese from a farmer, ask if they also churn butter.
Cooking advice: Salted butter and cultured butter are best slathered on toast. Unsalted butter is best for more involved sweet and savory recipes because the cook can control how much salt is in the overall mix.
Storage advice: Butter starts degrading the moment it’s made. Store it in the refrigerator, well wrapped to protect it from light and strong odors. It can be frozen without much change in flavor or texture.
Butter benefits: Butter contains a natural trans fat called conjugated linoleic acid, which behaves like a healthy omega-3 fatty acid to help guard against heart disease, cancer, and weight gain.

Poultry Fat (Schmaltz)

Poultry fat gets under a bird’s skin and forms lumpy sacs in its body cavities rather than being marbled into its muscles like other animals. The fat is rendered when the skin is gently heated. But once rendered, schmaltz is low in polyunsaturated fatty acids, making it great for cooking and frying because it is very stable at high heat.
Maine options: Whole Foods and specialty stores offer jarred chicken, duck, and goose fats in jars from away. Maine-made schmaltz is more of a hunt-and-peck proposition. When you cook a chicken (or a duck or a goose) whole or in parts, pull the globs of fat from its cavity and trim excess skin off the bird. Place those bits in a container in the freezer until you have the volume (about 2 cups) and the time (about 2 hours) to make schmaltz. To do that, first chop the frozen skin and fat into small, uniform pieces so they render at a similar speed. Place them in a nonstick pan with ¼ cup of water to gently start the cooking. Once the water and the moisture in the skin cooks off, the temperature of the fat will rise above 212 degrees and the browning skin bits will turn into poultry crackling. When those are crispy, strain them from the fat. Poultry crackling is a cook’s treat, but if you must share, sprinkle them atop a green salad.
Cooking advice: Use schmaltz wherever you want to elevate the flavor of poultry. If you’re making a chicken stew, sauté the mirepoix in chicken fat. If pan drippings are not available, use a tablespoon to make a roux for gravy. Add a bit to the crust underneath or the biscuits on top of a pot pie.
Storage advice: Store strained schmaltz in the refrigerator for up to two months or in the freezer for up to a year.
Schmaltz’s smarts: Chicken soup is restorative because the glistening dots of golden fat floating on the surface contain palmitoleic acid, an immune-boosting substance.

Lard

Lard is the general term for any rendered pork fat. Back fat, which lies just underneath the skin, is sold in chunks. It’s sometimes sliced thinly and laid on top of leaner roasts to add flavor. When rendered, it’s got a most definitely piggy taste. Belly fat, because it’s layered with meat, is used to make bacon, so its rendered fat is most often called grease. Caul fat is a lacy membrane that encases a pig’s intestines. As a product, it is typically wrapped around lean meats to add moisture and flavor. Leaf lard is fat taken from around the pig’s kidneys. Because of its molecular structure and mild taste, it’s best used to make pastry.
Maine options: Any butcher who sources whole animals from Maine farmers—such as Maine MEat in Kittery, Farmer’s Gate Market in Wales, L&P Bisson and Sons in Topsham, or Riverside Butcher Co. in Damariscotta—can sell you various lard products but call ahead to reserve them. Many pig farmers or sausage makers like Sow Belly Butchery in Jefferson have these fats on offer too.
Cooking advice: Lard is low in polyunsaturated fatty acids, so it’s got a high smoke point and is great for deep frying almost anything. It can be filtered and used multiple times, but it’s best to keep track of what you fried in it last because it takes on foods’ flavors. Nobody wants to eat a fishy-tasting donut.
Storage advice: Store lard in the refrigerator for up to two months or in the freezer for up to a year.
Lard love: Lardo is cured back fat, an Italian specialty that is sliced thinly and drizzled with olive oil.

Tallow

Tallow is fat rendered from cattle and sheep. Anyone who ate at fast food joints before 1990, when chains replaced tallow in their electric friers with vegetable oils, likely knows the taste and texture of really good French fries. A potato cooked in beef tallow gains flavor but absorbs only half as much fat as one cooked in vegetable oil. Tallow fries are crisp, not greasy.
Maine options: Tallow is not widely available commercially, but several beef and lamb farmers are starting to sell it as a byproduct of local meat production. A good source for both beef and lamb tallow is Apple Creek Farm in Bowdoinham.
Cooking advice: For deep or shallow frying, use tallow in a 1:1 ratio with vegetable oil. Use a small amount of pure tallow to sauté meat, potatoes, or vegetables to boost flavor.
Storage advice: Store tallow in your freezer.
Tallow tales: Before soap and candles were made from petroleum-based products, they were made from tallow.