View source for Dripping

{{Short description|Animal fat}}
{{other uses}}
{{More citations needed|date=August 2009}}
[[File:Mucky fat (dripping).jpg|thumb|right|A type of dripping from [[Yorkshire]], United Kingdom, where it is known as "mucky fat"]]

'''Dripping''', also known usually as '''pork dripping''' or '''beef dripping''', is an [[animal fat]] produced from the fatty or otherwise unusable parts of [[cow]] or [[pig]] carcasses. It is similar to [[lard]], [[tallow]] and [[schmaltz]].

==History==
It is used for [[cooking]], especially in [[British cuisine]], significantly so in [[the Midlands]] and [[Northern England]], though towards the end of the 20th century dripping fell out of favour due to it being regarded as less healthy than [[vegetable oil]]s such as [[olive oil|olive]] or [[sunflower oil|sunflower]].

Traditionally [[fish and chips]] were fried in beef dripping, and while this practice does continue in some places, most shops now use vegetable oils.

Preparing dripping can be as simple as collecting and cooling the oil and meat juices from pans and trays after roasting meat, but commercial production achieves a higher yield by combining these with water and a sizeable amount of salt (about 2g per litre), creating a kind of [[Stock (food)|stock]]. When the stock pot is chilled a solid lump of dripping (the cake) precipitates out of solution and settles. The stock pot should be scraped clean and re-chilled for future use. The residue can be reprocessed for more dripping and strained through a cheesecloth lined sieve as an ingredient for a beef stock. Dripping can be clarified by adding a sliced raw potato and cooking until potato turns brown. The cake will be the colour and texture of [[ghee]].

Pork or beef dripping can be served cold, spread on bread and sprinkled with salt and pepper (''bread and dripping''). If the flavoursome brown sediment and stock from the roast has settled to the bottom of the dripping and coloured it brown, then in parts of [[Yorkshire]] it is known colloquially as a "mucky fat sarnie".

==Pastry==
Dripping can be used to make pastry, for [[Cornish Pasty|pasties]] and other foods.<ref>[http://leitesculinaria.com/1681/recipes-cornish-pasties.html Cornish Pasties Recipe | Leite's Culinaria<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>

==See also==
{{Wiktionary}}
{{portal|Food}}
*[[Dripping cake]]
*[[Leeds dripping riot]]

==References==
<references />

{{fatsandoils}}

[[Category:Animal fat products]]
[[Category:British cuisine]]
[[Category:Cooking fats]]