Guest Post by Stu Crawford
I've
recently found myself spending a lot of time processing dead animals, and I've
been learning things that I definitely should have already known. I
thought that some of you might be interested, so I took a few pictures and wrote up an article.
One of the dead animals was a deer that I shot, the other was a goat that I was
given to use for an anatomy class with the elementary school in town. So,
I canned, dried, and froze a whole lot of meat. I also had a lot of
non-meat items to deal with. Some things, like spleens, are inherently
tasty and require no special attention. Other things require a bit more
knowledge and effort to transform them into a useable product.
I ended up with 20 lb of extra fat that I had to do something with - the deer
was pretty fat, and the goat was obese. And when I dissected the goat
with the elementary class, we opened up its digestive track to look at all its
stomachs. This reminded me of all the tasty tripe that I can't buy in
Haida Gwaii, so I decided to try processing my own.
There is a lot of information on the internet, but some things are
underrepresented. There was very little reliable information about
rendering fat, and none about processing tripe. So, I've documented my
efforts. I've been contemplating putting together a webpage for ages, and
someday I might actually get around to doing it, but until then, here's my article.
FAT
There are a variety of different types of fat, which I will divide into three
categories.
The hardest fat is the stuff around the kidneys, which is called suet if it is
from a cow, and leaf lard if it is from a pig. Cow suet is rendered into
tallow for making candles and soap, and used for deep frying. Kidney fat
has a higher smoke point than other animal fats, about 200°C, which is really hot.
Suet and leaf lard are often the preferred fats for a lot of baking. The
pot on the rear right burner has goat suet.
 |
| Various kinds of fat ready to be rendered: goat omentum (left), goat suet (rear right), and deer back fat (front right). S Crawford Photo |
The second most preferred fat for cooking is the back fat. I would expand
this to include any subcutaneous or intramuscular fat. This is the bacon
fat, and of course it is pretty tasty. The pot on the front right burner
has deer back fat.
The other significant fat is the abdominal fat, which is sometimes called caul fat. This fat isn't loose in
the abdominal cavity, it is contained within a fatty membrane called the
omentum, which drapes over the organs. This is the least preferred fat
for cooking, although some people suggest wrapping a roast in the omentum
before baking it, which sounds delicious, because it's basically a giant fat
blanket. The pot on the left has the omentum fat from the goat.
In case you are wondering, that's about 80,000 calories of food cooking on the
stove. It's not every day that you can cook a month's worth of food all
at once.
I rendered the fat in water, which meant that I didn't have to watch it as
closely to prevent it from burning. I added 2 cups water per lb of fat,
and then let it simmer for a long time. The pots with 3 lbs of fat in
them took 5 or 6 hours, and the pot with 6 lbs of fat took 9 hours.
Eventually all the water boils off and you are left with little deep-fried
pieces floating in pure fat.
 |
| Early stages. S Crawford Photo |
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| Final stages. S Crawford Photo |
The picture on the left is after it has been boiling for a few hours.
The fat chunks are starting to break down, but there's still water in the pot,
so the temperature is being held at right around 100°C. The picture on
the right is after about 8 hours. The water has all boiled off, so it
looks more like a sizzling deep fryer than a boiling pot of soup, and the
temperature is now starting to increase. I had best results when I boiled
it until it hit 125°C.
 |
| Rendered fat cooling in jars. S Crawford Photo |
The yield was roughly one pint per pound of fat, but it depended on the type of
fat. The back fat had the lowest yield, probably because it had more
impurities. I ended up with a little over a gallon and a half of
product. The jars on the left are still warm and liquid, they will turn
white when they cool. The jars on the far right are the deer back fat,
which ended up being slightly darker in color.
 |
| Ground deer suet. S Crawford Photo |
I didn't render all of my fat, I also ground some of the suet for use in
baking. The bowl on the left is goat suet, the bowl on the right is deer
suet. I froze the chunks first so they could go through the meat
grinder. I baked the biscuits using the ground deer suet instead of
lard. They were delicious! I don't know how different they would
have been if I had used the rendered suet instead of the ground stuff, it's
something that I'll have to test out. I also need to compare the fats
from different locations on the animal, and from different species. Lots
of eating to do.
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| Suet biscuits. S Crawford Photo. |
TRIPE
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| Towel Trip. S Crawford photo |
The first stomach is the rumen, which is the picture on the left. As you
can see, it is substantially larger than all the other stomachs put
together. It is also called towel tripe, but I have never actually seen
it for sale. Apparently it doesn't taste as good as the other
kinds. The second stomach is the reticulum, which is called honeycomb
tripe. This is my favorite type of tripe. There is a common dish at
Chinese restaurants called gnau tou, which is honeycomb tripe in a dark marinade
with ginger and some other spices. It is delicious, and I wish I could
get a recipe for it. The third stomach is the omasum, which is also
called leaf tripe or book tripe. It is hard to tell from the photo, but
those aren't just folds in the stomach, they are actual partitions that stick
into the space. This is the type of tripe that is used for gnau ba yip,
another common dish in Chinese restaurants. It is usually only very
mildly spiced, and is pure white. The fourth stomach is the abomasum,
which is the true stomach. I have never seen this for sale. It has
a very different texture, because it is lined with glandular tissue (it is the
only stomach that secretes digestive juices). Apparently it is called
reed tripe, and isn't very highly regarded.
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| Honeycomb (left 2), leaf (center) and reed (right) tripe. S Crawford photo. |
Obviously it is important to wash the tripe very thoroughly. It actually
washes easier than you might expect, and you can see that my tripe is all quite
clean, no specks of green stuff. However, you also have to remove the
lining. Tripe that you buy in the store is bright white. The brown
lining has been removed to reveal the off-white colored tissue underneath, and
that is chemically bleached to make it pure white. I don't really care
about bleaching it, but it does seem like I should remove the lining. Unfortunately,
there is very little information available on how to do this yourself. A
few people suggested boiling it for a long time, which I did.
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| Boiled trip. S Crawford photo. |
This is the boiled tripe. As you can see, it shrank. However, the
lining has not fallen off. After hours of tedious picking, I succeeded in
pealing half of the omasum (front right). The reticulum has resisted all
attempts at pealing. Obviously there is some trick that I'm
missing. I'm currently trying an acid bath. Any suggestions would
be welcome.
_________________________
Stu Crawford is a Canadian ethnoecologist, lichenologist, and forager who lives on Haida Gwaii.