General Chat Thread II

thats a pity, Im rarely over that way and not sure its worth the trek especially given the traffic I faced around town yesterday, it was horrific. Think Im gonna have to find a way to buy specialty food items either online or outside of the city

I was looking for dripping or lard at a good price and was about to ask here, but found it showing in supervalu. It is not 100% beef fat but close

Beef Fat (94%), Vegetable Oil (Rapeseed) (6%)

https://shop.supervalu.ie/sm/delivery/rsid/5550/product/supervalu-cooking-fat-250-g-id-1021676000

I know it is in Dunnes in James Whelans but is €10 per kilo, while tesco uk have lard at £2 per kilo.

I could not find it on any other supermarket websites and suspected it might be going under a different name, so googled beef fat site:.ie

yeah, I found it on the uk site while searching.

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/300346570

tesco here have 2 types of duck fat, and 2 goose fat. I would have thought beef dripping and lard would have been more in demand these days. They might have the other 4 mainly for christmas but I am pretty sure they have at least 1 all year round.

In the uk the have a blended goose and beef fat. https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/312834671

On the topic of fat and lard, I recently bought a hunk of Parma ham in Lidl. There was a lot of fat to be cut off which I didn't want to waste so I rendered it down. I have a ramekin of lovely looking pure white fat for cooking with.

I'll often render down chicken or pork fat if I have it to get rid of. It has reduced the amount of cooking oil we buy considerably.

I have been doing similar. I was getting cheap high fat mince and cooking at 80C in an airfryer in a foil container. It is only €2 for 500g, the fat comes off very clear at that low a temperature. Pork belly can often have a lot too, I have a container in the freezer that I put fat offcuts into to save up to get a reasonable amount.

Loads of really cheap food this week, albeit quite a lot of work.

I got over 2kg of beef tendons for half nothing which I cooked and trimmed. Most will go in noodle soup, the rest kept for slicing and marinating like this

https://www.seriouseats.com/the-nasty-bits-beef-tendon-offal-recipe.

For the soup I got some chicken carcasses for free and some pork bones and along with whatever bones I had in the freezer, I made a stock. After straining, I realised there was loads of pork meat that still tasted good! So, Mrs beer picked off all the soft pork and I seasoned it, added a few bits, made patties and breadcrumbed them to make rissoles! Got 8 decent sized rissoles.

I didn't have room in the stock pot for the vegetables so I ended up straining the stock, then adding my spices and vegetables afterwards . As a result, the veg wasn't completely overcooked so they were kept and Mrs beer will use them up in her breakfast concoctions.

If you buy a full set they are often the same size as the largest or second largest pot and can use it's lid. But you'd want to verify that first.

Random Christmas food related thoughts...

Brandy cream - seems like it should be a year round product.

Spiced beef curiosity - split in the curing mix used. Some recipes use allspice. Some use clove, pimento, and pepper. I wonder is it a regional thing.

A 1.8 turkey crown v a 3.6kg whole turkey... which has more white meat?

It wasn't me, honestly.

This is kinda funny.

https://cuberule.com/

It's never lasted long enough for me to have to worry about that! It's addictive as crack especially with dukka in it I imagine it's even better.

But yeah, I guess airtight jar. I used an old takeaway sauce container.

Fuckin' expensive when you're giving them away as gifts mind you. Thankfully my family have cottoned on to this and are saving them and giving them back to me in the knowledge they'll be getting stuff back in them later in the year.