My husband Murray loves to make Schmaltz and Gribenes.
He has been doing it for many years, using the chicken skin and fat that I so diligently removed from the chicken so that our kids would have a healthy chicken dinner!!
I am not sure what got him started on this but I think it was remembering his Baba Glick whom he had a wonderful loving relationship with.
He says she always had some schmaltz in the fridge. He remembers her putting it in mashed potatoes and frying everything in it instead of oil. Except of course if she was making a dairy dish!!
Making gribenes isn't difficult it just takes patience and attention. Murray doesn't use a recipe he just ‘wings it’
These are his instructions
Once the chicken skin and excess fat has been removed from the chicken,
Clean really well if needed and leave the fat attached.
Cut it into small bits about 1/2 inch big.
Depending on how much skin you have, dice some onions. Much more onion to skin, Murray uses a ratio of 2-1, double the amt of onion to skin
Put the skin, fat and onions into a frying pan on a medium heat and stir often. Once it starts to brown it can burn quickly so be careful!!
When the skin and fat are rendered and the onions nice and brown, remove from heat.
Separate the onions from the fat putting the onions on paper towel to drain and the hot fat into a glass jar to cool
And there you have it!!!
Murray likes to fry his eggs in schmaltz and I like to add the onions to mashed potatoes with a bit of schmaltz for flavour. My Zaida used to put some schmaltz on a piece of challah, then top with the onions and a generous shake of salt! He lived to 93 so maybe he knew something!!