If you’ve ever heard the word “schmaltz” before, you likely know someone who’s Jewish. It’s a Yiddish word that actually means “excessive sentimentality in art or music,” which can be applied here but the word is more commonly known in the kitchen as “rendered chicken fat,” or, more simply, chicken grease. Similar to bacon grease, it solidifies when stored in the fridge and melts once heated. It is a very flavorful fat to use in place of vegetable or canola oil and even butter with a medium-high smoke point, but it’s more traditionally used in Jewish dishes such as matzo balls, chicken soup, and kasha varnishkes (bow ties with buckwheat). It only takes two ingredients to make this Jewish delight, making schmaltz easier than learning how to waltz!
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Get Fat
Sauté The Skins/Fat For Rendering
Adding Onion For Flavor
Vaultz Your Schmaltz
The Leftover Goodies!
Schmaltz (Rendered Chicken fat)
If you've ever heard the word "schmaltz" before, you likely know someone who's Jewish. It's a Yiddish word that actually means "excessive sentimentality in art or music," which can be applied here but the word is more commonly known in the kitchen as "rendered chicken fat," or, more simply, chicken grease. Similar to bacon grease, it solidifies when stored in the fridge and melts once heated. It is a very flavorful fat to use in place of vegetable or canola oil and even butter with a medium-high smoke point, but it's more traditionally used in Jewish dishes such as matzo balls, chicken soup, and kasha varnishkes (bow ties with buckwheat). It only takes two ingredients to make this Jewish delight, making schmaltz easier than learning how to waltz!
Ingredients
- Skins and/or fat from a chicken (see Jeff's Tips)
- 1 sweet (Vidalia) onion, quartered longways into wedges and then separated
Instructions
- Set a non-stick skillet, frying pan, or sauté pan to medium-low heat and add the chicken skins and/or fat. Spread it out so it's covering as much as the pan as possible. Allow it to cook for about 20 minutes, stirring every so often and flipping the skins as they begin to shrivel.
- After 20 minutes of letting the chicken fat produce it's liquid, rendered fat (aka "schmaltz") add the onion and increase the heat to medium-high. Allow it to cook for about 15 more minutes, stirring every so often so the onions begins to really soften and brown and the skin begins to get very crispy and browned.
- Using tongs, remove the onion and skins to a bowl and set aside (see Jeff's Tips). Let the schmaltz cool in the pan for 10-20 minutes and then pour it into a small mason jar. (NOTE: If there are lots of small browned bits in the schmaltz, you can lay some cheese cloth over the jar to catch any particles from going into the jar).
- Place the jarred schmaltz the fridge for up to 1 week or the freezer for up to 6 months. Use it in my matzo balls, chicken soup, kasha varnishkes, or any other recipe that requires oil or butter but where you want a richer flavor!
Jeffrey's Tips
Obtaining your chicken skins and/or fat can be done through a variety of ways. You can peel the skins and trim the fat off a whole chicken, thighs and/or legs for immediate use or you can store them in a Ziploc freezer bag to be frozen for the future (just thaw before you cook - you can do this by running the skins/fat under cold water in the sink). You can also likely buy the skins and fat from a butcher for cheap.
I generally find that 2 loosely packed cups of skin/fat will produce about 1/4 cup of schmaltz. So the more you add to the pan, the more schmaltz you'll end up with! Regardless, use 1 onion unless you're using more than 4 cups of fat - which in that case use 2 onions and a larger pan. You'll also obviously likely need to sauté longer since there will be more in the pot to cook. Just keep an eye on it as all stoves and pans vary.
You can also use the skin/fat from any fowl you wish - be it chicken, Cornish hens, duck, turkey, etc.
Feel free to salt the cooked chicken skins and syrupy onions and enjoy as a crispy and outrageously flavorful snack!
Bonnie Peterson
Wow! Thank you for this Jeffrey. I haven’t been able to find shmaltz locally and was using Crisco in my matzo balls. I will totally make this from now on.
I remember my Grandma Lily giving us the Gribenes [fried Skin] and calling it Jewish bacon!
Alexandra
Schmaltz (or in German Schmalz) is known as animal derived fat in German speaking countries. I did not know that this came from Yiddish though. Learned something new today, thank you!