Foods Preserved in Fat

Appears in
Professional Garde Manger: A Comprehensive Guide to Cold Food Preparation

By Jaclyn Pestka, Wayne Gisslen and Lou Sackett

Published 2010

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In addition to curing and smoking, another time-honored method of food preservation is to protect foods from contamination by sealing them in a layer of fat. This method is still in use today because of the unusual and delicious products that result from it.

Fats traditionally used for this process are animal fats that have been melted and released from their surrounding connective tissue by a process called rendering. This process converts the solid fat of animal tissue to semisolid fat, which is solid when chilled, soft at room temperature, and liquid when heated.