Don’t forget to add a thick slice of long white radish to the schmaltz on dark bread.
I still make griebens whenever I have enough saved chicken fat and chicken skin. It is wonderful in a casserole of shredded potatoes held together with an egg and baked slowly for a long time. Google “Lacy Potato Kugel”. For non-Yiddish speakers, kugel means *pudding*, but this is more like a hash brown casserole.
For anyone who cannot/will not make griebens, use crumbled good pork rinds, instead. The stale ones will flavor a gravy well.
For another snack, the old folks would make chick peas (garbanzos), drain them well, fry in chicken fat (you could use lard), drain again, salt heavily and eat cold. The beans soak up as much fat as you have and the result is _very_ heavy.
Chicken wings were cheap, back then. A holiday dish was to use the wings to make chicken soup, then drain the wings and brown them in schmaltz. When they are browned, remove from pan. Saute some onion and garlic in the fat, return the wings to the pan, add tomato sauce with some brown sugar and vinegar (essentially a German sweet and sour) and simmer about an hour. When times became better, meatballs would be added to this dish. In my family it was called chicken fricasee. 3# of wings makes a great soup, especially after adding some onion and carrots, then adding matzah balls (just a dumpling made with a cracker-like meal and an egg)or rice, plus the fricasee. Makes a lot of both dishes.
I was making cracklings the other day and forgot about them. There’s still smokey soot in the oven. I’m more upset about not getting the treat than the mess left behind.