Dear Cooking Friends - Could you please recommend brands, retailers, and the pros and cons of duck fat?
I want duck fat from NOT China. I don’t want to pay an exorbitant amount - but then again I don’t know what an exorbitant price is.
Any other considerations? Thanks, guys.
How much do you need? Buying a couple of whole ducks and rendering it yourself is a good way to guarantee quality, and is much cheaper than buying it rendered (as long as you like to eat the meat). I ended up with 6 cups or so of fat the last time I did this.
Thanks. This is what I usually do, but lately ducks are either non-existent or very expensive in the Phoenix Az grocery stores. Bird flu maybe?
I will not knowingly eat food grown, made, or packaged in China, so this may be limiting my choices.
Got it and totally understand. D’artagnan’s duck fat is a product of USA and very high quality, though correspondingly pricey. That’s the only brand I’ve ever bought personally.
Thanks. Will check it out.
When I buy duck breast frozen from my grocer it claims it is US product, but I guess that I have no way of proving this.
But this is where I get all of my fuck dat. Oops, spoonerishm - duck fat.
Do you have enough room to raise your own ducks?? You could have fresh duck eggs and when the time comes – fresh duck anytime you want…
My uncle raised ducks as a hobby, he kept their wings clipped so they didn’t fly away and I guess he ate the eggs and the ducks when it was time. As a child, I never thought to ask what he did when the ducks got old.
this one
I Really like the duck fat . Fatworks from Amazon.
I was going to suggest EPIC as well. Have been pleasantly surprised to see it on the shelf here in Nowhere, Blandfoodlandia.
Hi Dan. No, I can’t keep ducks. I don’t want to keep any food animals or else I will end up a vegetarian.
I still have that single small duck from Walmart which was the source you suggested. Thanks again. Christmas is a-coming.
Yes… many years ago I had a neighbor who was a single mother. She asked me to make her two rabbit hutches. She told me she wanted to teach her son (who was about 10 years old) some responsibility, make him “tend to the rabbits”. I was working on flipping a house and had way too much scrap wood on hand, so I was easily able to whip together two rabbit hutches in one afternoon.
I later found out when the rabbits matured she processed them into hasenpfeffer. I imagine that little boy went on to become a vegetarian.
I have Epic too. Purchased at a deeply discounted price at Grocery Outlet.
When I was in college many years ago, my mother-in-law gave us enough rabbit to eat every day unrelentingly for over a year. I never wanted to eat it again. It was as if every time I ate it, it became gamier and gamier. Decades later, I had it in a restaurant, and although it was very tasty, I was filled with bad memories of all that rabbit. My very tastebuds rose in horror.
Back to duck fat: I will try several of the suggested brands, as well as save the fat from roasting ducks as usual. Thanks again for the tip about Walmart ducks. I normally never shop there.
I have an acquaintance who comments on a private blog about his home farm. He has 8 kids aged 3-18 and says he involves them in everything from egg harvesting to milking to chicken/pig/cow/game slaughtering and butchering (local to him are deer, elk, wild pigs). I often wonder if his kids will go the other direction once they’re older…
This particular child was more of a sensitive individual. He preferred to read (by himself) rather than play with the other children in the neighborhood. If I was a betting man, I would guess this action profoundly affected him.
Personally, I did assist my grandfather processing game animals, from geese to deer. I also helped him breakdown a domestic steer raised for beef. Today, I’ll eat anything.
anecdotally i don’t know or know of any farm kids who became non-meat eaters by choice. i think it’s overwhelmingly more likely to happen (as it did in my case) to ppl who didn’t grow up observing or participating in the circle of life in the way farm kids do.
