How To Make Schmaltz

Written Recipe: https://pressureluckcooking.com/schmaltz

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!

#Schmaltz #RenderedChickenFat #JewishRecipes

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Hey guys it’s Jeff from pressure luck and banjo what do you want all right I couldn’t not let banjo say hello because he was pawing at me when I started the video so you want to say hi to everybody hi everybody it’s me banjo the norwi teria all right perfect how are you

Sweetheart good good all right now let Daddy do his intro okay perfect so today I want to share a recipe with you that is super Jewish in fact it’s so Jewish that I have to wear my junicorn shirt to share it with you isn’t this such a fun

Shirt I love it so much so there’s this thing you might have heard called schmalz right and it sounds like a Yiddish word almost actually I think it is a Yiddish word is it let me look it up it is a Yiddish word it means excessive sentimentality in art or music

But that’s not really what this is oh there’s another definition drippiness moish mushiness sentimentality sloppiness soup falsely emotional in a mlin way okay okay well there’s got to be a different one than that oh and Yiddish the word is used that way however the original meaning is rendered

Chicken fat or melted fat and that’s what schaltz is it takes two ingredients to make schaltz which is literally the skins of some chicken and a sweet onion that’s it nothing else that is it and then when you’re done you’re going to liquefy it into what you see here

Schaltz schaltz now how much schaltz you’re going to produce depends on how much chicken skin you’re going to be using or chicken fat that’s how much you’re going to get and this is actually a really good amount because you’re not going to use a ton of Schmaltz when you

Cook now what would you use schals for it’s essentially something that’s very very common in matah balls and in something called Kasha vesas which are for or bow tiai pasta with Buckwheat Groats and onions and sometimes mushrooms and they’re delicious they’re in my new possibilities book check that

Out but we typically use the schaltz in place of vegetable oil or margarine or something like that because it just gives it this extra flavor and an edge to everything else that’s going on in there it is truly a delicious wonderful Rich fat to add to these dishes that

Does make a bit of a difference now you can sometimes buy schmalz at a butcher or specifically a kosher butcher or even sometimes in the market in like the oil section you’ll see sometimes it’s already sold jar the shoppr is the big supermarket chain that I go to and they

Actually have a duck schals in there which I found to be very interesting you see this right here seasoned duck fat rendered cooking fat that’s exactly what schaltz is except this one is from a duck and schaltz seems to have more of a yellow tinge to it when you render it

Which I think is lovely so like I said two ingredients one Skillet and then you’re going to have endless possibilities with the schmalz schmol I just I love the you got to really this is where my Long Island accent comes in really handy when you get the thickness

Schal you’re going to see how easy it is making schal is easier than learning how to Walt so let’s go right to the pan and make some fantastic schalt in 1 two 3 one two 3 one two 3 one two 3 enough of that I’m a terrible dancer all right I’m

Going to stop yapping we’re going to go we going to make some schmalz let’s do it so there’s only two ingredients in this recipe and the first thing the obvious one is going to be some chicken skin or fat any part of that chicken that looks like you know this okay now

How I obtain this can be done in a multitude of ways I can either have saved it from peeling it off of some thighs or some even breasts or legs or wings or even a whole chicken when I was doing other things with the chicken and I

Didn’t want the skin involved or I could even go to a butcher I could buy some chicken skin from them or I can just you know make some chicken right now and then just save the skins and do this separately you know what I mean there’s

A lot of different ways you could obtain this either way when you save your skin you could almost think of it like it’s like a collection you can put it in a Ziploc bag and then freeze it and it’ll be perfect for when you want to use it

In this case this is from about 4 lbs worth of chicken thighs that were bone in you’re usually only going to find the skin on bone in thighs when they’re boneless they’re usually skinless and boneless at the same time anyway I’m talking a lot about this but you get the

Point you want to use between two to four cups worth and when I say that I mean you literally put it in a measuring cup and you don’t have to pack it in or anything like that between 2 to four cups is perfect for this but you can

Really use as much or as little as you want we’re going to now add our chicken skin and fat to a Skillet or frying pan and set it over low heat now you’re going to notice I didn’t add any oil any butter none of those things because we

Don’t need them here it’s all about the chicken fat here when Once heated it’s going to release its own juices and fats creating its own amazingness in there so we need nothing else to eat it alone we want it to be pure chicken fat and by

The way you can totally do this with any type of foul you want to use turkey skin great duck skin fabulous whatever you want Cornish hens that works too we’re going to just stir this around we’re going to let it sweat itself out so we’re going to mostly let it just rest

Here like this and then we’re going to come back every so often and stir it around give it a little sauté I’m going to do this between 10 and 20 minutes closer to 20 minutes and by the way if the skin was frozen just let it thaw out

Before we add it to the pan to heat up and render speed that along all you have to do is run that under some cold water in the sink it’ll be thaw in no time and we’re going to leave this on a medium

Low to a low heat we don’t want it to be anything higher than that because if we do it can burn and we don’t really want it to burn we wanted to give it a nice like render situation where the skin will actually become crispy you’ll see

Afterwards you’re going to be able to eat that skin like a snack and about 10 minutes have gone by on about a medium low to a low depending on your stove as every stove top is going to vary whether it’s induction like this one is or

Electric or gas and then I’m just going to kind of just you know sauté and stir and you see that my chicken fat and skin is beginning to render and release this delicious fat liquid or liquid fat called schmalz we want to make it so the Skins are a bit

Golden brown just beginning to crisp and you can give the skin a little flip if you want not a bad idea to do that all right so about 20 minutes have passed and you’ll see that our chicken skin has really rendered out some really nice fat

Or small here and the next thing I want to do now is I want to add in a sweet or videlia onion a mediumsized one I just cut into quarters and then you know wedges just like this add that to the pot increase the heat to a medium high and then we’re

Going to sauté everything together the onions and the chicken skins and the schals for about another 15 minutes until these onions begin to soften up and brown a bit and when our skin becomes nice and crispy the onion is going to not only add a really really

Nice flavor tone to the SM but it’s also going to relase additional juices into the schmal and they’re going to combine together really nicely and I am telling you as soon as you add the onions to the pan with the chicken skin with the fat rendering out it smells like a classic

Boobies Jewish Kitchen in here it smells amazing just keep going we want to make sure those onions become nice and browned and softened and our skin to get nice and crispy the more we let our chicken skin and onions cook in the pan the more salt we’ll get and the more

Rich and flavorful it’ll be okay and after about another 15 minutes of sautéing with our onions when we’re looking like this we are perfect we are nice and crispy and brown with those skins our onions are looking Brown this is exactly what we want so all in all

We’re looking at about a 35 minute sauté time but believe me it is well worth the wait and the proof in that is how amazing your kitchen’s going to smell right now all right let’s kill the heat now I’m going to take some tongs and I’m going to remove my chicken skins and

Onions to a bowl leaving the rendered fat or schals in the pan and letting it cool for about 20 minutes really try to shake off all the onions and the skin so that schaltz stays in the pan and after about 20 or so minutes of our oil

Cooling we want to now take a mason jar of any size that you feel like is appropriate you can get these really anywhere in the market and then we’re going to just take our pan and you could also put a seeve by the way over this like a piece of

Cheesecloth or something if you feel like there’s a lot of particles that are inside of your pan after making the chicken fat but if you feel like there aren’t many like there’s really not a whole lot going on here you don’t need to I’m going to now just pour this

Carefully into my little mason jar here really get it on the sides since you spent all that time get as much of that smalz out of the pan as possible you’ve earned it and here is my schmalz in my little mason jar how perfect now I can just use this immediately for something

Whether it’s Kasha varesz or matzah balls or I can use it for later this will keep up to about a week in the fridge when it solidifies or about 6 months in the freezer it’s up to you and then as schaltz cools down it’s going to go from a liquid-like consistency to one

That solidifies into a kind of a yellowish color especially when it’s in the fridge but once you’re heated up it’s going to just liquefy again oh and I almost forgot as for the chicken skins and the onion well if you want to have a little snack feel free to just take some

Salt salt up those crispy chicken skins and onions and you have yourself now a nice snack crispy and delicious I’ll do that in the taste test so you can hear it and here it is my schmalz in my little mason jar so cute I probably have based on

That about I use about two cups is worth of chicken skin and I probably got myself uh I want to say about a/4 of a cup worth it’s a good amount frankly and if you want to use more skin use more skin you’ll get more Schmaltz the onion

Level can stay the same but here I said I would give it a little try and I’m going to taste some of the schmalz on here and if you want a little bit of a of a I just hiccuped if you want a little bit of a h a cheat snack with the

Fried skin it’s basically like a like a almost like a pork Ryme but chicken let’s try it out That is really good especially seasoned with the salt so guys there you have it schaltz which you can add to your kitchen vaults all right sounds good kich good all mixing everything in there I always say about Jews and Italians same behavior different savior guys in case you didn’t

Know I’ve written four cookbooks for the instant pot this is not an instant pot recipe although you can technically make it in there if you just do it on the sauté function and I actually show you in this book The Green Book and the cocko van recipe how to make schalt is a

Written recipe there was an extra and in my upcoming book past abilities you’re going to have schalt in there as well on how to make that specifically for my Kasha vaneska recipe which is the ultimate Jewish pasta alongside cougal which is also a noodle pudding which

Will also be in the book I got to represent my Jewish roots here junicorn let me bring some of that into your kitchen thank you so much again for watching if you want to follow me on Facebook facebook.com/ pressur cooking make sure you check that out I always

Give you really really good tips and ideas for the dinner in the kitchen fun stuff there it’s all about fun fluffy stuff it’s keeping it light but also real in this crazy world we live in and at uh pressure luck cooking on all the other socials uh which is I guess

YouTube subscribe there Instagram all that stuff thank you so much again for watching my friends and the next time you want to make yourself the most ultimate fantastic fat to add to any dish really not even just m balls or kishkas and you want to really make sure

It schols well all it takes is some chicken skin and onions and you’re going to have yourself no Faults making the schmalz Enjoy