Toast and Dripping
beef dripping on toast

Toast and Dripping

Total time: 45 minutes
Servings: 8 servings
servings
beef dripping in a bowl
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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.

beef dripping in a bowl
Bowl of Beef Dripping

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.

Britannia beef dripping
Available in most supermarkets
pot of beef dripping
Get this one from Amazon

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”.

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beef dripping in a bowl

Beef Dripping

Proper beef dripping
4.50 from 2 votes
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Course: Snack
Cuisine: 🇬🇧 British
Keyword: beef, fat
Difficulty: Very Easy
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes
Servings: 8 servings
Calories: 349kcal
Author: Richard

Ingredients

  • 500 g Hard beef fat

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.

Nutrition

Calories: 349kcal | Fat: 45g

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Grandads Cookbook may reference or include sections of text and images reproduced courtesy of:

2 Comments

  1. Pingback: What Is Dripping And How Did It Become England's Go-To Ingredient? – Tasting Table - Sephari United Kingdom

  2. 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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