Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1913 — GREASE WORTH SAVING [ARTICLE]

GREASE WORTH SAVING

ALL KITCHEN BY-PRODUCTS SHOULD BE ISOLATED. ” " 5 * .;-,.| ; ,A ; ;..: J?- .-. • - ; : ; -^ r - r A^—: Haying Only One Common Pot Is Poor Economy—Different Meat Product* Enhance the Flavor of Jthe Various Dishea. All housewives have a grease pot, but they should make it plural, instead of singular, and have pots. The greases from various kinds of meats are the most valuable by-products from the kitchen, if isolated from each other. Dumped carelessly into a common pot, they are fit only for the old-fashioned soap pot. Divided and subdivided they will not only enhance the flavor of the kitchen products, but they will largely contribute to the saving of money. Every one knows that pork grease is a fine thing in which to fry sweet potatoes, and that it gives them a better flavor than lard or butter, but does every one know that ham grease is the best of all? Or, that beef drippings make fried potatoes a joy? Or, that lamb fat is the' finest thing in which to warm over lima beans?

What is needed in the kitchen is not a grease pot, but a number of ,them. The drippings from beefsteak should go into one; that is, the fat which is always cut Off from beefsteak, and which the housewife should ask the butcher to give her; it has a flavor which no other part of the beef fat has, and to this should be added the scraplings of the beefsteak platter, too often, alas! consigned to /the garbage pail. The skimmings from beef stews, and from beef roasts should be put into this pot, and the whole reserved for the frying of white potatoes, and for the flavoring of the lard in which “French fried” potatoes are cooked.

Lard is a perfectly wholesome element in which to cook food, provided that some savory flavor be added to it. The grease from sausage and pork chops, kept in a separate pot, can be added to it, ih case one wishes to fry sweet potatoes or parsnips, which are delicious/ with this flavor permeating them. - - Lamb stews, the juice from lamb chops and veal cutlets (scraped from the platter) should be kept in one pot. This is nice to add to lima bean soup or to common bean soup, and also give an unusual flavor to egg omelets and to “French toast,” which is fried in grease, after having been dipped in batter. The grease from chicken, duck and goose well deserves a pot all by itself, for it is the aristocrat of the grease family and its uses should be confined to the more delicate dishes. An enticing variation on the ordinary boiled cauliflower is to take a head Vhich has previously been cooked and "drained, dip it lightly in batter and fry it in chicken or fowl grease. This is the Italian method and is a wholly new dish to American tables. Asparagus lightly fried in a small but deep pot of fowl grease is also new, and'when sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese can be used as an entree.