Perhaps this belongs in Kitchen Talk, but I thought perhaps I would get a better response here.

I have about half a pound of fat scraps from the 'chain' of a beef tenderloin. It seems like a waste to just throw it away. Is there any good use for this?

I've tried google and a forum search, not turning up much.

i spose you could met it down and freeze it for stock in stews in the future etc otherwise im not sure

I use animal fats for cooking in. They're really tasty. Normally for roasts and what not I don't trim them. I eat them fat and all.

Make pemmican.

You can render it into clean fat, just like you would do with a pork fat to make lard.

It'll make great french fries, though they are not paleo.

It can be used to grease grilling utensils etc.

It might taste good when raw and combined with beef/liver.

You can dry some lean beef into jerky, render the fat and make some delicious, nutritious Pemmican. There's a good how-to here.

We've stopped making Pemmican but I'm interested in charcuterie. My feeling is that the true nature of Pemmican has been forgotten and it was really just another kind of sausage. You could certainly use your trim in making beef sausage.

I'm not sure what you mean about "the true nature of Pemmican"? I've never found a more perfect, portable food. It lasts practically forever, tastes great and supplies everything the body needs. If I was given a choice of a single food to survive on for an extended period of time, Pemmican is the only food I can think of that would fit the bill and keep one vital and healthy. Certainly in Canada, the natives and voyageurs felt the same, many would travel with nothing other than a pouch of pemmican for food. Charcuterie, from my understanding, is a broader term used to describe all manner of deli-like meat concoctions, many of them using brines, salts and nitrates as preservatives, Pemmican needs nothing other than meat and fat.

Well, you're obviously getting it right then. I made Pemmican a few times from the recipe in Nourishing Traditions and I liked it OK, but the last time I made it I got pretty sick from it and I haven't been interested in repeating that. I know all the claims about it, but from some discussions on other forums I've begun to believe that Pemmican was formerly fermented. That would have improved both the flavor and the longevity of it, and explained the use of dried fruit in it. Plus, it was made from venison and I only have access to beef and bison.

In practical terms, I was not able to make a useful quantity of pemmican. I was using tallow skimmed off of my beef stock, and for the meat I was cutting up a roast into strips and drying it (raw) in the oven. It was very time consuming, and the end product was less than a pint of pemmican, which I could eat in a couple of days if nothing else were ready when I felt like snacking.

You sound a little skeptical of brines, salts, and nitrates. I too am skeptical of nitrates, but from my vegetable-fermenting experience I have come to love brine and salt. I am not interested in killing myself with bad sausage, so when I attempt it, I will probably use the nitrates too. Maybe one day I will achieve the ancient expertise that allowed people to cure meat without nitrates, but I fear that it took a lot of fatal accidents before anyone really understood it.

Pemmican made with only beef and fat can last indefinitely; people have supposedly eaten 20 year old Pemmican. I myself have made big batches that I kept in my cupboard and eaten it over several months old; without any cooking and it was fine. It never smelled like it was becoming even slightly rancid and was as delicious as the day I made it. I eat lots of venison, but I've never tried making it into pemmican, so I don't know about that. Supposedly natives in Canada made many forms of Pemmican, including ones using fish fat.



I'll hear you... but what your describing is just how nutrient dense and concentrated it is, which is an upside if you ask me. Still it's hard to keep pemmican on hand... it's so easy to snack on, you whittle away your stash in no time. It is time consuming, but not too labour intensive... the slicing is the biggest PITA for me... I've often thought about investing in a deli style slicer to make this part go easier.
I just ask the butcher for beef fat, as much as I can have (sometimes I'll score a couple of pounds for free) and freeze my extra scraps, then I start to render the fat around the same time I begin dehydrating the lean beef. I use a dehydrator instead of the oven but find I have to let it cool down from time to time as it starts to run a little too hot.



You'll have to post the results of some of your experiments. I have an older italian friend who pays a friend of his to process much of his game meat from hunting; he makes all manner of preserved "prosciutto" versions of venison and moose, ditto sausages and salami's... they're all delicious. Yes, I try to avoid salt and nitrates, but I seem to recall reading in one of these threads that perhaps nitrates weren't _all_ bad; it was interesting... I'll have to dig it up again.

i rendered about 5-7 lbs of beef/lamb fat earlier this year by cutting it up in small pieces and cooking slowly on a cookie sheet and pouring into a bowl to cool.. i rendered about 2 quarts of fat.
i use that fat for everything.
it adds wonderful flavour to most everything I cook.
i'm down to my last quart of fat.

it's wonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnderful!!!

Try goose fat next. It is delcious!