Purveyor of kidney suet?

I'm not entirely sure of what kidney suet even really IS, but a recipe for my favorite chili from back home calls for it (scroll down to the Texas chili recipe):

http://www.hardtimes.com/recipes.htm

SURELY I can find this in Chicago. Any suggestions?

Kidney suet is the hard fat that exists around the kidney of an animal. I'm guessing your recipe calls for beef kidney suet. I'm sure any good butcher like Paulina will be able to provide it for you if they're butchering and trimming the organs themselves. I'd call around, any butcher will know what it is.

As a side note, there is a great essay in Steingarten's "The Man Who Ate Everything" about frying frites in horse kidney suet. A great read.

Best,
Michael

Paulina Meat Market
3501 N. Lincoln
(773) 248-6272

Hi,

Another name for this lard wrapped around the kidneys is (pork) leaf lard. Mike G found some in the freezer case at Paulina's which he rendered himself.

Regards,

But if it's calling it suet, and it's chili, that sure suggests it needs to be beef fat, not pork or anything else.

Interesting to see suet used for the chili recipe. I was under the impression that the lard was best suited (or maybe applied) towards pastry (and puddings). For chili, rendered beef fat could be substituted I suppose.

Here's an interesting page on lard and tallow (especially scroll down to the "Rendering and Pressing Lard and Tallow" section)

Hm...so it's just fat? So this recipe is just calling for meat, spice and additional fat? No wonder I liked it so much.

Does suet have any kind of amazing flavor properties that other fats don't have? While it was a bit on the greasy side, what I remember most about this chili was the very fine texture of the beef...almost sandy. Could the suet have influenced this?

I can't answer to the food science, but I can attest that suet is a required ingredient in a traditional pasty. Compared to lard, suet is much firmer (you can dice it at room temperature) and has a higher melting point. In a dish with beef, of course, it also has the advantage of adding more beefy flavor.

How soon we forget -- check out this post on suet at Sunset Foods. (The quote from me is in regards to my favorite application for suet, plum pudding.)

NG,

I've been twice graced with the Smith and Wollensky kitchen tour, both times tagging along as Evil Ronnie was extended professional courtesy. Just before each dry-age beauty of a steak leaves the kitchen it's painted with melted caul fat, which adds a subtle subtext of rich silkiness. The dry-age meat locker is amazing, I occasionally have a dream where I'm trapped in there with just a book of matches, Weber grill and plenty of lump charcoal. (I didn't say it was a bad dream. )

Far as places to buy suet go, I'd agree Paulina is a good place to start. I do suggest checking to make sure the packages are marked correctly, I bought a frozen package of caul fat at Paulina to use for wrapping sausages. When I got around to the caul fat portion of the recipe it was about 10pm, I had been making sausage for hours and what was marked Caul Fat turned out to be leaf lard. I'm still ticked off and holding a (very minor) grudge.

Enjoy,
Gary

JimInLoganSquare wrote:How soon we forget -- check out this post on suet at Sunset Foods. (The quote from me is in regards to my favorite application for suet, plum pudding.)

Yea, that was my first thought. The OP wanted to make Chrismas pudding.

Vital Information wrote:Yea, that was my first thought. The OP wanted to make Chrismas pudding.

In which case the OP may want to try my family recipe for plum pudding. As the follow-up from Cathy2 makes clear, this is by no means an easy or "fail safe" recipe -- definitely the kind of thing it helps to have seen your parents do a few times growing up. But as I indicate in the recipe, the biggest risk -- torn or crumbling pudding -- can be remedied with a spatula and a bit of refrigeration.

NOTE: The question marks ("?") appearing in the recipe are the result of the big font wipe-out that occurred when LTH changed its software configuration. The question marks are SUPPOSED to say "1/2" (I think ...).

Gary, your tours of S&W rank up there with my very favorite posts. Pure steak porn.

Hi,

In a post on Galway Bakers I learned the following:

Their plum puddings are made in two variants: suet or margarine for vegetarians. I remembered JiminLoganSquare commenting on the challenges of grating the suet on his own because nobody would prepare it for him. I learned there is a specially prepared suet for making plum puddings called atora. It is available frozen from October through December at Irish imports.

Irish Imports Teahan
2505 North Harlem Avenue
Chicago, IL 60707
773-637-3800

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

In a post on Galway Bakers I learned the following:

Their plum puddings are made in two variants: suet or margarine for vegetarians. I remembered JiminLoganSquare commenting on the challenges of grating the suet on his own because nobody would prepare it for him. I learned there is a specially prepared suet for making plum puddings called atora. It is available frozen from October through December at Irish imports.

Irish Imports Teahan
2505 North Harlem Avenue
Chicago, IL 60707
773-637-3800

Regards,

That's really great news, and quite a timesaver (unless your butcher is more kind to you than mine was last year, and will grind fresh suet for you). I may check out this possibility.

You know there's a well known type of kabob found in delhi called a kakori kebab, famous for its melt-in the mouth quality which calls specifically for this kidney fat to be used to give the kabob is luscious texture.

a little more discussion of kakori can be found here