ISSUE 54, FATS & OILS, Part 5: Duck Fat
Duck Fat
Beginning in 1995 numbers of chefs, particularly on the West Coast, began claiming that duck fat was the “secret ingredient” in their cooking. They began with duck confit, and then let it take over other parts of their cooking repertoire. It was luxurious lipid that took French Fries from fast food to I’m letting every bit linger food. Southern chefs then claimed it “was always ours.” It supplanted bacon fat in southern “kilt” or wilted salads. It was the hot drizzle on a pot of greens. It was the sublime element in a skillet of braised turnips.
With jars of duck fat going $16.40 for a 14 oz. jar, you know that the more aspiring home cooks have bought in hard. Me—I do what you do—buy ducks on a regular basis throughout the year, roast
them, and collect the fat from the bottom of the over pan. It forms a clean white solid mass in the jar. Now some will tell you the fat of certain ducks taste differently than others. I’ve certainly found that the flesh of certain ducks (canvasback, redhead) tastes different, more piquant than others. The fat less so—unless it is cured. So when a Canadian comes asking for an extre $10 an lb over the standard to secure the fat of a Moulard duck, I let the opportunity pass.
I have a jar of bacon fat, a jar of duck fat, and a plastic tub of Mangalitsa lard in my refrigerator. It is fun to experiment with the fat. My favorite vegetable innovation has been lightly steamed broccolini sautéed in duck fat, garlic, and finished with Meyer lemon juice. Sliced porcini mushrooms in duck fat. Spring onions wilted and glazed in duck fat. There is little that is not improved by its unctuous embrace.
One of my favorite aspects of marketing are the claims that duck fat is healthier for you than butter . . . usual some claim about percentage of saturated fat is compared, and butter made to seem like a toxin cake. But let’s be candid about this—nobody has the sort of daily ingestion of duck fat that permits physicians to measure the long term effects. We have a m ountain of date on butter and bacon fat (a dance with the devil it would seem).
One of my favorite culinary lessons came from Native American cooks who combined duck fat with corn meal and salt and boiled the mixture in corn husks. Now THAT is something profound . . . particularly if a flint corn was used for the meal.