rendering the fat of a duck
To make the seitan confit I had to have duck fat. And since my missions to purchase duck fat proved so unsuccessful (in chinatown they didn’t understand what I was saying, none of the restaurants that serve duck fat fries would sell me any fat, and the only duck things the second largest Whole Foods in the world had were 3 free-range frozen birds).
So I bought a whole duck and pulled off its skin and cooked the fat.
This is not a vegetarian-friendly post.
This was my duck.
This was my flayed duck. It is sort of a difficult process—the skin doesn’t come off as easily as you would hope. But it does tear off in big chunks if you put some muscle into it.
This was the fat being weighed—you add two cups of water for every pound of fat and cook it for a couple of hours.
Until it is golden.
And then you remove it from the heat, filter the rendered fat into glass bottles and save the skin to make cracklings with.
