Dumb question about animal fat.......

[Blue Sky]

Do you cut the white portion, being the fat, off of meat? I made a good lamb stew and later scraped the congealed fat off the top when it cooled. It just seems lke overkill and kinda turns my stomach. Just checking about this cause everyone here seems so crazy about their animal fat!

Thanks!

[Tom Denham]

It depends. If your meat was raised in the factory farming system where animals are crowded together, have an unnatural diet, and spend their last days in a crowded feed lot, you should trim all visible fat and avoid as much of it as possible. The reason for avoiding the fat in these cases is that environmental toxins move to the fat and you want to eat as little of it as possible. On the other hand, if your meat was raised well under healthy conditions, eating a natural diet, and spent their last days under relatively good conditions, you can eat the fat and you don't need to trim it off. Of course, if you just don't like the taste of fat, you could trim it.

Having spent most of my life trimming fat because I thought fat made me fat, it took a while for me to become comfortable eating it. However, nowadays, I don't mind having a bite of fat with my roast or steak, at least when I know how the animal was raised.

[Susan W]

What Tom said. However, as much as I love crispy fat, I don't care for fat on top of soups and stews.

[Blue Sky]

Thanks for the feedback you guys.

This diet is coming to me reasonably easily enough and pretty intuitively (after having a hard time with other diets, this just feels natural).

[SpinSpin]

When I make stock I save the fat, scoop it into a container and keep it in the freezer. Then when I am sauteing veg I will often use that reserved fat--yummy stuff!