Duck fat from smoked duck?

Cooking Discussions
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Aldi has frozen ducks at $3.29/lb (includes some wastage, up to 12% brine they say). I bought several. Last week I just cut out the spine and roasted in a hot pan according to Maple Leaf Farm’s web instructions and it turned out fine.

Today I broke the duck down into parts and am grilling/smoking it with apple. Before I started smoking I rendered down the trim fats and added that fat to the pan I’m smoking in.

So my question is (never having done this before) will the leftover fat once all is said and done be horribly smokey?

Do I need to keep this fat separate from my other duck fat repositories? I’m sorry if this seems like an elementary question but before today I’d always just cooked duck (and stored fat from) oven or pan cooking.

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no

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How long will it smoke for? You’ll have to see how intense it is, but I’d definitely keep it separate from other duck fat.

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I agree with @Babette. Usually, the smoke does not penetrate that deep. However, it depends on a case by case basis. I would initially separate it just to be safe and then combine it after you have confirm

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Thanks All for your thoughts and comments. I’ll keep it separated and do a test tater cookoff with this one and older (oven cooked) stuff. I can’t really smell any smoke on the solidified product but I’m concentrating the broth now and there’s a bit of smoke in it.

A sort of related P.S. I had to run to the store for more apple wood bits because I left my previous half-full bag open, laying on its side atop the box holding a “turkey air fryer” also on the deck. When I went to grab the woodchips I found a sparrow peeking at me from inside - s/he’d built a nest atop the woodchips. So I set it back in place gently and decided to let that one run its course.

The funny thing is my dog trots outside past the bird 5+ times a day and has never noticed it. He is getting old.

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Always good to be safe than sorry.

But there’s no way the “smoke” could penetrate into the fat; otherwise, marketers would have a field day with things like “smoked duck fat” or “hickory smoked duck fat” … which you just don’t see.

So if there’s even a slight chance of it happening, marketers would have latched on to it. The fact that they haven’t says quite a bit.

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Now you’ve got me wondering. Maybe it takes a long time to get the smoke in there (days vs. the couple of hours I smoked the duck) or maybe it’s just a heavy concentration on the surfaces? I’m thinking about the times I’ve bought smoked pork back fat that seemed to have a lot of smoky flavor.

These guys are selling what they claim to be smoked duck fat. Not sure how much smoke is actually in it. Maybe I’ll have to experiment with a longer-term cold smoke of just the fat and render it and see how it goes. Or I could test the next back fat I buy - cut off all 6 surfaces and then cook surface/interior separately. I’m guessing I’d find that the surface pieces were smoky but the interior was not.

And here’s rendered smoked pork fat (old advertisement, website looks it now only sells hot sauce varieties).

But again, I’m guessing it’s just a heavy surface accumulation of particles, which then end up in the rendered product.

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Why not? It’s getting into the rest of the duck …

Can smoke only flavor water molecules, not fat? If the fat is not yet rendered, doesn’t it still have some water content? Think of all the delicious fatty smoked foods - cheese, fish, bacon :yum:

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The Fat from smoking your Duck will be “smoky”.
Think of it like Bacon Fat.

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I think it depends how lightly/deeply the duck is smoked.

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totally

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Apparently, smoke consists of three fractions, one of which is described as ‘oily or waxy’ and a second which is ‘tarry’ So it is possible for either of these to contribute flavor to the fat. The third fraction is water-based with flavanoids. So this part, which sounds aromatic, will not transfer to your fat.

So taste. If a little acrid, try heating it to remove all the water and pour off the clear fat leaving behind any sediment. You could try passing the fat thru cheese cloth or a coffee filter {not my preferred way to do it}.

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Interesting, and thanks.

I’ve had bacon fat that I wanted to keep but was too overcooked. My wife has this nutty idea that bacon should be crisp to the point of nearly scorched, so I usually do hers last and save the previously accumulated fat for storage but sometimes forget. I’ve run fat like that (and also gunky rendered beef tallow) through 3 or 4 water boiling episodes and gotten a cleaner product. I got the idea from a lady who uses beef fat in her home-made cosmetics.

I’ve tried but never been able to get more than a tiny bit of fat through a coffee filter before it gets clogged enough to stop. I miss the old chem lab days of having a suction/filter apparatus.

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Bacon fat is like the nectar of the culinary gods.

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