In the Kitchen

January 20, 2009, 2:55 pm
updated Jan 20, 2009, 10:03 pm

Skimming Fat

Do you know about skimming fat from homemade soups, beans, and chili’s? It’s amazing how much fat you can remove. Unfortunately I don’t know how to measure the amount of fat, but at least you will know you are consuming less.

When your soup is finished, let it come to room temperature and then place it in the refrigerator, covered overnight. As the soup cools, the fat rises to the top. Note: When we make soups or beans we eat it that day and save the skimming for the next day. So the first meal has all the fat and the leftovers have less. If you don’t want to consume any of the fat, by all means wait until you can skim away the fat.

The next day when you take the lid off you will see that a layer of fat has formed over the top. To remove the fat, we use a hand held sieve but a slotted spoon and even a spatula will work.

Mom recently made black-eyed peas with a ham hock and it proved to be a perfect fat skimming example, so I snapped a few pictures. The top photo shows the layer of fat that rose to the top overnight. The second image is a side view. The last picture shows how it’s done.

Anytime a recipe calls for sautéing an ingredient, there will be fat and it will rise to the top once refrigerated. Therefore, you can cook with real ingredients and skim off the fat the next day.

A little information and a new technique (for some) means you have even more control over what you put in your body. Hurray!

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