bacon drippings
I found what looks like a good recipe for jambalaya, yet it calls for four tablespoons of bacon drippings. What can I use as a substitute that will not bastardize the dish? Thanks!!
-
-
Your query got me remembering my great-grandmother, who kept a tin on the stove where she collected bacon grease---and used it in everything. Breakfast eggs and slices of cornmeal mush were fried in it. She used it as the shortening in cornbread. Every vegetable was flavored with it. Corn was cut off the cob and sauteed in it. She could fry potatoes better than anybody I ever knew---in a skillet about half full of bacon grease. She even used it to fry pork chops then in the fat that remained in the pan she would fry slices of white bread. Two more things to say about this: 1) Although I NEVER cook with bacon grease I remember Grandma's cooking as delicious. 2) Eating as she did, Grandma lived to age 99. Go figure.
-
-
-
mamachef
Sep 3, 2011 02:42 PM
If it's a religious/moral objection, and you do not parttake of the swine, you can use any neutral oil, and dice up some turkey bacon and saute it slowly until crispy and when you toss the jambalaya, toss in the crispy bacon to lend flavor. Some smoked turkey cut off the leg and diced would work equally well. But if you don't use any meaty/smoky product and still need to knock out the bacon, it's still going to be delicious, but the roux you create won't be the same.
-
Terrie H.
Sep 3, 2011 02:41 PM
You can use any kind of fat you would prefer, like canola oil, but the final result will taste a bit different than the recipe intended. If using pork is the problem, my local market sells a smoked turkey joint that gives a smoked meat flavor that works well.
-
Obviously nothing tastes like Bacon Fat. But relax, you can use any fat you like as long as you're willing to live with the change in flavor. Chicken fat, lard, olive oil, canola oil, Crisco, whatever you have. Just don't expect it to taste like it would if you used Bacon Fat. But the world won't end.
Or just go out and buy 1/4 pound of supermarket bacon, which is likely to be about 1/2 fat and will render down about 2 oz or 4 TBSP of fat when you cook it. I assume they call for this for the initial saute of the trinity which will be the veg base for the dish. Leave the bacon in the dish -- just makes in mo' betta'.
But I guess I should have asked the purpose of the substitution. Kosher? Just don't keep Bacon drippings? Trying to avoid fat? Vegetarian? Hard to know what to suggest if we don't know why you can't use the original ingredient, I suppose.
