STUFFED: a food adventure: Rendering of the Fat

I enjoy learning new cooking techniques. After telling a friend that I chose duck as my main dish for my Thanksgiving feast, she promptly told me I "HAD to render the fat." Huh?!?!??? I researched online how to render the fat and after reading pretty much the same thing on each website and in my cookbooks, I went ahead with the process. I documented the process with my camera just for you guys.

Plus, it amuses me to have an entire post dedicated to the rendering of fat. Enjoy.

(Ahhh. It just occured to me why it is so amusing to me to talk about the fat. It springs off of a hysterical episode of "Friends." Go watch it.)

Ingredients:
Duck fat and skin (as much as possible from the bird)
1/2 - 3/4 cup water

1. Remove as much as possible of the skin and fat from a duck. Cut it into smaller pieces. Place it in a skillet or pot.

2. Add water so that it is about halfway up the sides of the fat.

3. Set burner to a low setting and let simmer for 60-90 minutes (mine took the full 90 minutes).

4. When it starts to look as though the simmer is dying down, watch the fat carefully. It should be a warm golden color, with smaller bubbles. As the water evaporates, those bubbles will come closer to a boil and the remaining liquid will turn a darker golden. Eventually, the boiling bubbles will suddenly become much smaller, just back to a bare simmer, which means all the water is gone.

5. Remove it from the heat immediately and pour the fat through a fine mesh strainer. Let cool to room temperature, transfer to a glass jar and place in the refrigerator for 1 month or the freezer for 6 months.

6. Apparently, you can save the cripsy pieces of skin, commonly referred to as "cracklings." You can use them as toppings, an ingredient to breads, and other things. I kinda, sorta, maybe snacked on them plain -- it was a small piece of fried, greasy heaven. I don't know if I'll use the remaining amount in anything, but I'm going to save them until I research recipes before tossing them (but no more snacking!).

1 pound fat = 1 cup rendered fat, roughly