Chefs like to make a fuss about always using the best ingredients.

But I have a different perspective.

As the guy who took on the role of cooking staff meals at many of my restaurant jobs...

I had to make the most of lowly ingredients.

Bits and pieces of:

• salmon scraps

• beef tenderloin trimmings

• unused vegetable mis en place

But with a little skill and creativity…

I transformed those forgotten ingredients into staff meals that my co-workers actually wanted to eat.

Of course, home kitchens and restaurant kitchens operate differently.

Many restaurants buy whole fish and whole sections of meat, trimming off the scraps and cutting the usable bits into portions.

But when you buy trimmed and pre-portioned meat, there's nothing leftover.

Or is there?

Back in the 90s, we had some backwards ideas of what “food waste” was.

Animal fat was “unhealthy” and I remember pouring the rendered fat from cooking ground beef down the drain.

That’s what we did back then.

Looking back, I see 3 things wrong with that:

• Fat can clog up pipes, so it should go in the trash if it's not used

• I lost the rich flavors contained in the natural rendered fat by draining it

• I could have saved fat for cooking, since I cooked with butter and oil anyway

Now that reports have surfaced of food scientists being paid off by the sugar industry to publish studies that demonize animal fat (and vindicate sugar)...

Attitudes have shifted about using animal fat in cooking.

Here's some sensible ways I'd cook with fat rendered from cooked meat:

1. Sweat diced onions in rendered bacon fat, then toss it with boiled potatoes like I did for this salmon dish: https://cooksimpl.beehiiv.com/p/shallotbutter-salmon

2. Pour the fat melted from this slow-roasted lamb into a pan to sweat the garlic flavoring the quinoa (in this week's SIMPL recipe):

This is a lamb-based variation of a beef gyros dish I've served to my customers at Seasoned Catering.

After I mix ground lamb with panko, egg, and spices, I transfer it to a loaf pan to slow-roast in the oven for an hour.

After it's cooled, it's sliced (like gyros) and portioned.

It's accompanied by sweet pickled onions, labneh (extra-thick yogurt) and the quinoa.

If you've ever made quinoa, you know it's nutritious, but a little short on flavor.

So after I cook it with the lamb fat and garlic, I toss it with Mediterranean flavors of fresh sliced mint and sweet golden raisins.

Get the full 5-portion recipe for this, and all my high-protein dishes when you become a SIMPL Insider.

When you upgrade, you'll also:

• Get the full-length step-by-step videos showing how I created each weekly dish

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