Griddle/Pan Fried: potato pancakes for lunch in turkey fat

Subject: potato pancakes for lunch in turkey fat
Newsgroups: rec.food.cooking
From: Julia Altshuler (jaltshuler at comcast.net)
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 19:05:28 GMT
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A short while ago I was asking about roasting a turkey back for stock. That yielded a nice tasting stock and about half a cup of turkey fat. We just used some of the turkey fat as the frying oil for potato pancakes. Wonderful! I'd never gotten potato pancakes quite right before. They were always raw in the middle of a little burnt on the outside. These were perfect, a real improvement on butter which never got hot enough without burning or oil which which was O.K. but had a slight oily mouth feel. The turkey fat got hot and had no off taste or feel. I did nothing special to get the fat, just stuck the stock in the fridge and used the inch of fat on the top of the container for frying.

--Lia
From: Dimitri (Dimitri_C at prodigy.net)
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 00:35:40 GMT
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Congratulations you've discovered SCHMALTZ!

:-)

schmaltz also schmalz ( P ) Pronunciation Key (shmälts)
n.
Informal.
Excessively sentimental art or music.
Maudlin sentimentality.
Liquid fat, especially chicken fat.

[Yiddish shmalts, animal fat, sentimentality, from Middle High German smalz, animal fat, from Old High German. See mel-1 in Indo-European Roots.]
From: Julia Altshuler (jaltshuler at comcast.net)
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 02:59:01 GMT
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Dimitri wrote:
> Congratulations you've discovered SCHMALTZ!

I thought schmaltz was exclusively chicken fat (and melodrama) or I would have used the term. In that case, I've made latkes. I should mention the other improvement on potato pancakes. I'd never gotten the liquid out properly in the past. If you try to drain out all the excess liquid from the grated potatoes, they turn brown from exposure to the air. If you don't squeeze out any, the pancakes don't have the right texture. This time we grated, squeezed and combined with egg and flour practically all one right after the other.

--Lia
From: Ken Davey (WDUAVUJLDSDU at spammotel.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 08:35:45 -0600
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Julia Altshuler wrote:
> I'd never gotten
> the liquid out properly in the past. If you try to drain out all the
> excess liquid from the grated potatoes, they turn brown from exposure
> to the air. If you don't squeeze out any, the pancakes don't have
> the right texture. This time we grated, squeezed and combined with
> egg and flour practically all one right after the other.

I have found that a thorough rinse with running water really brightens up the flavour of potato pancakes.