This was an interesting and informative recipe book. The recipes are interesting and the photos are great.

The Fat Kitchen advocates and brings back the use of animal fats, lard and tallow to make your dishes much tastier and it would seem healthier. I can think back to the 70s and early 80s, seeing my grandparents and parents use animals fats, often saved from the Sunday roast and used throughout the week. Unfortunately, we were informed and re-educated that these fats weren't good for us and moved onto plant oils, so these animal fats went out of fashion, along with a depth of flavour - though some companies cheat by adding beef flavouring to their french fries to counter that missing taste! Plus, now it appears that animal fats aren't as bad as we were led to believe.

The book starts with a lengthy introduction to understand animal fats, including a little chemistry and biology and the history of the change from animal fats to oils. It also provides pie charts that compares the saturated, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated between the different oil and animal fats - it's quite an eye opener to see what you think is a good healthy oil actually has low levels of the healthiest fat, monounsaturated.

It then moves onto how to buy, render and cure animal fats. It explains where lard and tallow come from in an animal and its different names. Buying for rendering yourself seems to involve getting to know your butcher or a local farmer or you can buy ready made jars from the supermarket. It provides details on how to render your own fats, be it collecting the fat from the inside of your chicken, collecting fats after you have cooked your meat or using what you got from the butcher. Once you have your fat, it explains how to store it and how to cook with it.

There are 5 chapters of recipes including Snacks, Street Foods & Starters, Main Dishes, Side Dishes, Baked Goods & Desserts and Basics. As you can see its not just savoury dishes that use these fats, included are recipes for duck fat popcorn, jam thumbprint cookies using lard, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies or blueberry muffins made with animal fat - there are many recipes to choose from.

This book has most of its measurements in cups and uses Fahrenheit temperatures, though there is a conversion table towards to end to assist. The recipes are easy to follow, but there is very limited colour photography to accompany the recipes. There are useful tips throughout the book such as supermarkets lard not being recommended as it contains preservatives and harmful trans fats along with fat smoke points.

So bring on the flavour of the past, reinvigorate your palettes and get cooking with proper fats again! As always, it's all about moderation. Before I had even read this book I'd already seen a couple of articles that animal fats were being used again, so I already had my pot of saved cooked duck fat in the fridge waiting to be reused on my next batch of roast pot and a jar of goose fat in the cupboard.

I received this book from netgalley & Storey Publishing in return for a honest review.

My review has been posted to Goodreads.

Review has also been tweeted as usual.

Thank you! :c)

Chockful of helpful hints, information, pictures, and some very appetizing looking recipes. I can't wait to try some of them.

Thank you for the opportunity I can't wait to try all of the recipes that are offered in this book! Very easy to follow too.

#TheFatKitchen #NetGalley

From the last century, the wrong message circulated about the fat as the worst enemy of the heart. However, recent studies are against this myth and show the difference between good fats and bad fats. The author takes this approach to teach with good recipes, historical facts and scientific information.

More than "just" a cookbook, "The Fat Kitchen" provides an in-depth guide to all manners of animal fat - offering instructions on how to render the fats into goodness that will add an extra level of deliciousness to your cooking and baking. The information and recipes in this book provide a great reference for taking the leap into using more animal fat within your kitchen.

Free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Book is available November 13th.

This is an informative cookbook about cooking and preparing lard and other fat products. It has a wide variety of recipes to pair with this. The recipes have detailed and easy to follow instructions and mouth watering pictures.

Well I have to start out saying this book was not! what I thought it was. I learned as much as I will ever need to know about fat, rendering, butchering animals to get fat and on and on. I soldered on and it was worth it the recipes are awesome and even though I don’t have any plans to make my own fat I will use the recipes with Crisco!