What rendered out of my meatloaf, and how can I use it?? page

[elainevdw]

So I love this meatloaf recipe from Epicurious, but a lot of... stuff... renders out of it, and I'd like to know what it is and how I can use it. Right now, while it's hot, I baste the meatloaf with it to keep it moist for reheating. I assume the top layer is... beef or pork fat? What's the bottom layer? Can I use this for cooking, like bacon fat or coconut oil or butter?

The meatloaf contains non-lean ground beef, ground pork, and bacon, along with a mirepoix mix sauteed in butter and worsterchire sauce, vinegar, chopped prunes, etc.

[Misabi]

So I love this meatloaf recipe from Epicurious, but a lot of... stuff... renders out of it, and I'd like to know what it is and how I can use it. Right now, while it's hot, I baste the meatloaf with it to keep it moist for reheating. I assume the top layer is... beef or pork fat? What's the bottom layer? Can I use this for cooking, like bacon fat or coconut oil or butter?

The meatloaf contains non-lean ground beef, ground pork, and bacon, along with a mirepoix mix sauteed in butter and worsterchire sauce, vinegar, chopped prunes, etc.

Hi Elaine,

The top bit will be a mix of pork lard & beef tallow and the bottom will be kind of like dripping I guess, made from the cooked meat juices. Is it jelly like?

The top layer will be great for cooking things (e.g. frying eggs, saute'ing veggies, mushrooms etc.), especially as it will be flavoured with the spices and such from your meatloaf. The bottom (if it's jelly like) will revert to liquid when heated and would be good as a sauce or salad dressing

This is what I had left after rendering 2kg of beef fat last night, a bowl of crispy beef crackling and a jar and a bit of tallow:



After cooling for a while the tallow looked like this:

[elainevdw]

Awesome, thanks Misabi!

I haven't dug into the bottom layer yet, it must be jelly like because it's not a liquid. As a salad dressing, eh? That sounds tasty.

Who knew I had been throwing out tasty cooking fat this entire time. I don't cook bacon often enough to get a lot of bacon grease, but I really like eggs cooked in it... I guess this means I'll have a steady supply of it now since I make this meatloaf around once a month.

[JeffC]

Remember those cheesy commercials for Reeses peanut butter cups (maybe you are not old enough since they are from the 1980s), "two great tastes that go great together" or something like that for peanut butter and chocolate? Here's a primal riff on that, weight out 1.5 oz or so of the tallow and take about 3 to 4 oz of beef jerky. Dip the jerky in the tallow and you have a quick meal. It's close to the Native American food pemmican in which the two components would be more thoroughly blended after the jerky was minced into very tiny pieces. I do this a lot with my home made jerky and a store bought grass fed tallow but you could just as readily do it with rendered tallow like you have here. 3 oz of tallow has about 750 calories so be careful with it if you are trying to lose weight. I had about 800 calories of pemmican yesterday for lunch and felt great.

[Redflame]

certainly useable, but make sure you refrigerate, drippings like that can go rancid very quickly

I would use some of the top layer to fry up some onions and other veggies, add in the broth to simmer......Im thinking cabbage, onions, and broc.....YUM