Frugal Fat Fun
I don't eat vegetable oils (with a few exceptions, such as olive and sesame seed oils) for health reasons. (Yes, I know that everything you've heard so far is that vegetable oils are better for you than naturally saturated fats, so maybe it's time you read Know Your Fats, put together by the Weston A. Price Foundation. The whole philosophy of the WAPF is to follow a traditional diet.)
The problem these days is that affordable naturally saturated fat is getting harder to come by. Super Market Al-Madina Al-Riyadiyya used to carry clarified butter from Egypt but they're out of stock now. (I'm not sure if this is permanent or temporary.) All they carry now is European or Australian, which is about 11 JD for 2 kg or less; the Egyptian equivalent was under 6 JD. There is no local clarified cow butter, only clarified sheep butter, which is also pricey.
An alternative is to buy fatty sheep tail (Ar. layyah, or ilyah/alyah if you want to be pedantic), which the butcher shops currently sell at 2 JD/kg. Ask them to get you a bunch of them and grind them up in their meat grinders. You can then melt them down in a pot on low heat. Leave it until you get a pot full of pure, rendered liquid fat with some cracklings floating on top. Scoop off the cracklings with a perforated serving spoon or filter them out using a metal filter. Add salt to the cracklings and enjoy. The liquid fat delivers an extremely nasty burn, so be careful. Be sure to avoid having the fat come into contact with water so it doesn't splatter. Also, if the fat is kept away from moisture, it won't need to be refrigerated for months. Don't pour hot liquids into plastic as it can release unhealthy chemicals. Instead, use metal or glass. Glass will generally not shatter if you put a long metal object in it while pouring a hot liquid into it. Once the fat cools, it will be a solid, white substance called, "tallow." (The equivalent product from pig fat is called, "lard.")
You might wonder how anyone in their right mind would consider using such a substance as a substitute for butter. In fact, gourmet European and American baked goods are often made with lard, so tallow presents a halal substitute.
The problem these days is that affordable naturally saturated fat is getting harder to come by. Super Market Al-Madina Al-Riyadiyya used to carry clarified butter from Egypt but they're out of stock now. (I'm not sure if this is permanent or temporary.) All they carry now is European or Australian, which is about 11 JD for 2 kg or less; the Egyptian equivalent was under 6 JD. There is no local clarified cow butter, only clarified sheep butter, which is also pricey.
An alternative is to buy fatty sheep tail (Ar. layyah, or ilyah/alyah if you want to be pedantic), which the butcher shops currently sell at 2 JD/kg. Ask them to get you a bunch of them and grind them up in their meat grinders. You can then melt them down in a pot on low heat. Leave it until you get a pot full of pure, rendered liquid fat with some cracklings floating on top. Scoop off the cracklings with a perforated serving spoon or filter them out using a metal filter. Add salt to the cracklings and enjoy. The liquid fat delivers an extremely nasty burn, so be careful. Be sure to avoid having the fat come into contact with water so it doesn't splatter. Also, if the fat is kept away from moisture, it won't need to be refrigerated for months. Don't pour hot liquids into plastic as it can release unhealthy chemicals. Instead, use metal or glass. Glass will generally not shatter if you put a long metal object in it while pouring a hot liquid into it. Once the fat cools, it will be a solid, white substance called, "tallow." (The equivalent product from pig fat is called, "lard.")
You might wonder how anyone in their right mind would consider using such a substance as a substitute for butter. In fact, gourmet European and American baked goods are often made with lard, so tallow presents a halal substitute.
posted by Flicken @ 2:45 PM
2 Comments:
At 6:17 PM ,
UmmFarouq said...
Could one lather up with that tallow, too ?
At 6:36 PM ,
Flicken said...
You could indeed, if you had a recipe for homemade soap. Actually, as a Shafi'i, I avoided solid soaps in the West primarily because of this: the primary ingredient is sodium tallowate. (I'm not suggesting that the fatwa according to the Shafi'i school is that it is prohibited, but merely that I preferred to avoid it. It's not problematic in the Hanafi school b/c chemical change changes the ruling of a substance.) In Jordan, it appears that most soaps have the primary ingredient as sodium palmate or sodium cocoate, both of which are plant sources.
Of course, without the chemical perfumes and bleaches, you're probably going to end up smelling like a kabab if you lather up in this stuff.
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