Lamb tail fat ✦

Graisse de queue de mouton

What it is

Fat-tailed sheep store energy in the tail the way a camel stores it in the hump, and the tail alone runs to two or five kilos on a grown animal. It carries its own name at every stop along the caravan routes — liyya in Arabic, dumba or kurdyuk from the Caucasus to Uzbekistan — and in plov it is the cooking medium, not a trimming.

In the kitchen

Dice it small and render it slowly from cold, then fry the onions in the fat and return the crisp scraps at the end. It sets soft rather than hard, so a plov made with it does not go waxy as it cools — which is exactly what beef or pork fat cannot do.

Goes with

Lamb Rice Onion Cumin Carrot Bulgur

Same species

Pauillac lamb Salt marsh lamb Sisteron lamb Lamb fries Lamb brain Leg of lamb

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