Probably you should just dump the whole mix into the nearest window-unit air conditioner and see what happens. Probably.
Really, just use a gravy separator. So much easier.
But if you have to cool it down, use an Anti-Griddle. Very quickly cooled.
I've never had much luck with gravy separators, in part because I'm not really patient enough to wait for the fat to separate. An ice-filled bowl is much faster (and substantially cheaper than an anti-griddle).
You can't use a gravy separator for the large quantities of liquid encountered in stock-making, too.
I just pour it into an old 2-liter soda bottle, let it settle, and squeeze the bottle until all the fat runs off. This inevitably gets grease all over my hands and the outside of the bottle, but it works like a charm.
I never have any luck defatting stock by chilling it, maybe because it's usually chicken stock, and chicken fat freezes at a temperature pretty similar to the temperature gelatin sets at, so it's hard to keep the stock liquid while solidifying the fat.
I chill the stock in the fridge, then move it to the freezer; IME, the fat floats to the top before the gelatin sets, and it's easy to skim off.
Probably the lesson here, more than anything is to avoid making gravy in a time-sensitive manner, if at all possible. If you make the stock ahead, there are lots of ways to separate it.
Having to make a sauce at the last minute is the most stressful thing about cooking dinner, and if I had to defat boiling hot liquid while everything else is going on, I would probably burst into tears and have a cheese sandwich for dinner instead.
The quantity issue in 4 is much more crucial than the patience issue in 3, because if you lack the patience to deal with even the largest quantity of liquid that will fit in the average gravy separator, you shouldn't expect much from your kitchen adventures. The coil you suggest is not a strange variety of still and is in fact a heat exchanger, the same thing used to chill wort in brewing. But who wants to wash the fat off such a thing when you can either extract the non-fatty liquid from under the fat or wait for the fat to congeal by chilling? It doesn't matter if the stock underneath becomes gelatinous; in fact, it's great, as it makes scraping off the fat even easier.
The coil you suggest is not a strange variety of still and is in fact a heat exchanger
I was thinking of the part of a still that is a heat exchanger.
wait for the fat to congeal by chilling
Yeah, but I don't like putting large quantities of hot stuff with a high specific heat in the fridge (possibly for no good reason), and I also don't want to let it cool to room temp out of the fridge, so plunging something cold into it has the advantage in my mind of rapidly cooling the stuff to a reasonable temperature.
I also just now had to deal with a quantity of liquid that was probably too little to work well with the average gravy separator, but I can't be sure, since I don't own one.
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I just saw, for the first time, the "van down by the river" sketch. It's funny!
/parsimon
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9.1: So was I.
9.2: Don't be a pussy. Let it cool outside the fridge.
Being at one of the great engineering universities, I hope you create such a device and post a picture of it.
The anti-griddle is priced at $1200. I officially declare this to be taking the piss, and I still would if I were Warren Buffett.
7 GIER.
OK, so at $1200 I'm unlikely to ever buy one, but it does look like great fun to play with!
Given the right set-up, fat will travel up a wick, burn, light the room, and leave not a trace but a smell and some CO2. I say all you really need is the right kind of oil lamp, one that let's the bottom of the wick rest at a specific level of a pot. When the kitchen goes dark, the fat is gone.
I want a seperatory funnel, the canonical to seperate two inmisicible liquids. For larger batches, a smaller version of a conical bottom fermenter would be useful.
a smaller version of a conical bottom fermenter would be useful.
Diet and exercise, I guess.
I wish I could learn to cook like all of you. Maybe if I keep on reading all the posts here, I'll remember something.
Cook's Illustrated says that putting large hot things in the fridge will warm up the fridge enough that the stuff already stored there doesn't keep as well. Freezer is worse, unless you have a very powerful one. I believe they recommend cooling the hot food, covered, to 140F or 120F before putting it in the fridge.
Twenty-one comments, and not a single suggestion involving liquid nitrogen. Step it up, folks.
I've put relatively hot things in the fridge. I figure that if they're no more hot than they're going to be on a hot summer day, then it's no big deal. On the other hand my freezer occasionally has problems dealing with really hot days, and a partial defreeze/freeze cycle isn't good for stuff even apart from keeping things from spoiling, so I don't put hot items in the freezer. In any case, I rarely have enough room to put a large pot in the freezer.
You could figure out some way to use liquid nitrogen to cool it.
On the important matter of cheese with (not intentionally introduced) mold, how much does Cook's Illustrated say you need to cut away to be safe from whatever bad stuff mold carries? I say about a 1/4 to a half an inch.
I say just cut enough everything that's visible. I'm still alive.
Just cut away enough from the last comment so that it looks comprehensible.
I ... just cut ... everything that's ... alive.
20: It seems that sometimes you (commendably) have not been exposed to as many of the seemingly inescapable, or at least overwhelmingly commonplace, tropes of popular culture. Neb relates that he has only just now watched the sketch from the television program Saturday Night Live, in which the late Chris Farley appears as an absurdly incompetent motivational speaker/pundit, in which he, Farley, relates to the audience that he "lives in a van, down by the river." Since this catchphrase has long-since entered the popular lexicon, Neb deprecates his ignorance by comparing it to your own frequent confusion about references to popular culture (cf. your recent query regarding my comment which referenced the film The Big Lebowski).
Anyway, I remember a Goods Eats episode had a think about how you should cool a hot dish in an ice chest before putting it in the freezer or fridge, but I always ignored it. I leave stuff on the counter until is cold enough to go in the fridge.
30: I figured it was something like that. Thanks for the "commendably."
OT: I was told that I "must be a retard" today. I was walking down the street when I got to a corner with a painted crosswalk. when a woman tried to drive ahead of me (without even coming to a full stop at the stop sign), I pointed my umbrella at her and said "Watch it." She called me a retard and kept calling me a retard. I know the kept calling me a retard because I was running after her as she drove down the street. You could tell she was a little bit surprised that I still running and that I was able to cover so much ground while she waited to get past the corner with the four way stop.
This was probably not my best idea ever, but to be fair to me, I'm getting really sick of people who cut through my area to avoid traffic and drive as fast as you can on a main road.
Anyway, if I come across that situation again, I'll not actually swing the umbrella.
You should point the umbrella at any person who does that again, and open and close it rapidly and repeatedly. Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof! At you! This has a number of benefits: it is extremely insulting, very weird, slightly obscene, and just plain satisfying.
34: Too bad we got a new mouseover text so recently.
34: good plan; umbrellas do make better javelins than cudgels.
38: To many kids around. That's why I yelled at her.
Once you bring out the gun, you have to give each one a turn and I didn't have that kind of ammo on me.
35 reminds me of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
34 Anyway, if I come across that situation again, I'll not actually swing the umbrella.
Instead, use the iPhone atlatl.
Instead use the ricin bullet mode.
You could tell she was a little bit surprised that I still running and that I was able to cover so much ground
Moby then changed shape to resemble a motorbike policeman and strode off purposefully into the night.
The anti-griddle is priced at $1200. I officially declare this to be taking the piss, and I still would if I were Warren Buffett.
For that kind of money, I'd prefer one of these:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/arts/design/makerbot-is-a-new-3-d-printer.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=plastic%203d%20printer&st=cse
