Celebrating Heritage British Food & Cooking
Toast and dripping is one of the snacks I remember from my childhood days in the 1960s. Basically, it is toast or bread with a liberal spread of soft fat and meat jelly, the dripping.
Unlike the stuff you buy in the shops, you make proper dripping by rendering down the hard fat from around the organs of cow carcasses. It contains bits and pieces of other tissue which separate out and form a layer of jelly beneath the fat which floats to the top.
Don’t confuse dripping with lard. You get dripping from cows and lard from rendered pork fat.
The dripping you buy in the supermarket is a refined, filtered product containing only the fat. Perfect for cooking roast potatoes and chips but not so good for eating.
Historically it was food for the poor but became popular in Britain again during World War II when meat was rationed but by-products from meat production were not.
Toast and dripping is high in fat and cholesterol so in our modern healthy eating regimes, it’s probably best to only have toast and dripping occasionally.
If you spread only the jelly layer of the dripping, you have yourself what in Yorkshire is known as “a mucky sandwich”.
Other Recipes You Maybe Interested in …..
Beef Dripping
Ingredients
- 500 g Hard beef fat
Conversions
Instructions
- Remove any gristle or sinew from the fat.
- Place the pieces of fat in a frying pan and begin frying slowly. The fat will begin to melt away into the pan. This process is called rendering. Don’t forget to use a splatter guard when frying to avoid the fat being spat over you and your stove top.
- Pour this hot fat into the container you will be using to store it in. This can be a bowl or a jar but not a plastic container or it will melt as you pour the hot fat into it. A glass jar such as Pyrex is best. Continue slowly frying and pouring off the fat. If you have a gas stove, don’t let the fat drip onto the flame, you’ll get a flare up!
- When the fat has cooked out as much as possible you will be left with some pieces of crisp fat. Chop these into small pieces and also put into the mixture. This will be adding flavor and crunchiness to your dripping. This is optional, you can leave it out if you prefer a smooth mixture.
- Leave your dripping to cool and then cover with plastic wrap. Once cooled, this can go in refrigerator.
You may also like one of my other favourite recipes …
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For info, someone has copied this exact recipe word for word on their website: https://delishably.com/meat-dishes/bread-and-dripping.
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