Tallow, chicken fat and coconut oil

[NourishingTraditions]

I had not cooked with saturated fat in my life as a mother, until recently. How I wished I followed the traditional way of cooking meals. I've always wondered why my aunts saved the fats and made drippings of them. The crispy chicken skin were fantastic! At some stage 10 years ago, I avoided saturated fat and vegetable oils; but cooked and fried with first cold pressed olive oil.

But I learned that olive oil burns quickly, and is only safe for eating in its raw state. They say that coconut oil, tallow and chicken fat are stable even in extreme heat. While, vegetable oils, canola and cotton seed oils-- I learned, contain free radicals and transform into trans-fatty acids, called omega 6, when cooked. That poses a big problem in the body, if not, stored as fat in various places in the body-- cannot be properly used.

Saturated fats are a source of omega 3. They add to the flavor, more satisfying, and energizing process of eating when added into the cooking lifestyle. Food does taste better, like my mother's and aunts' traditional meals.

 

[Berties]

to me there are lots of oils and fats to use,duck fat,goose fat ,dripping,lists veg and nut oils ,and they all have there uses,
i find olive oil great to cook with and very stable,the practice of maintaining heat in a pan is always hard to achieve with any oil,
i love cooking with clarified butter or gee,but it will burn if to high,rape seed oil is a local staple for me and i am a fan,stable at heat and moderatly good for you,
but all oils have to be used carefully
when i was young all the fat was kept after roasting and chilled from the meat and the stock kept for gravies ,and the fat used next time for potatoes

 

[NourishingTraditions]

Looks good to me. I have been using saturated fat such as: tallow, coconut oil, duck fat (quite pricey) in all my cooking and frying.

 

[Pat]

When I was young the fat from bacon was saved to fry other foods later. Once I became an adult and realized the bacon fat was not good for our health I started to use vegetable oils to cook with, I do not fry food anymore, we eat baked or grilled meat when we eat meat.

 

[OhioTom76]

I've tried reserving chicken fat when I make large batches of broth, but I really prefer to leave it in the jars to act as an air tight seal to keep my home made broth fresh. However when I tried reserving it, I went the whole 9 yards and strained it out really well with cheese cloth, until it was very pure looking. The first thing I fried up with it was some home fries, I did a few batches over the course of a few days. It definitely imparted a unique flavor to them, but I wouldn't say it was my favorite way to cook them. The chicken fat had absorbed many other flavors during the course of cooking in the stock it came from. I really didn't care for the chicken-y, carrot-y, and celery-like flavors in my fried potatoes - they just didn't seem breakfast like.

Coconut oil I used to be very sensitive to the smell of it, as I was with peanut oil, but these days they are practically like neutral oils to me and I don't notice their odors at all. The main thing that keeps me away from using coconut oil is the cost of it.