what can I substitute for suet?

[SenoraPostrophe]

..in mincemeat?

You cannot buy either proper suet or the veggie stuff here, and nor can you buy beef fat (which i presume you could just cut up to make suet). can I just use oil do you think?

It needs to be saturated fat. Can you get crisco? Or similar?

Or some sort of butter/magarine, I guess?

what is crisco? that funny vegetable lard stuff? I could just use lard I spose.

Lard would do the job, I think.

I think you want a saturated fat that's fairly flavourless ... butter isn't ideal, but lard would be fine.

Duh, just remembered. I have McGee's.

What is interesting about suet is, it is the hardest culinary fat. So you want something that's as saturated as possible. (Fats stored just under the skin are less saturated and therefore softer than fats stored in the body core. Beef suet comes from around the kidneys.)

Leaf lard is your best bet, if you can get it. It's from around the pig's kidneys, then lard from back and belly fat.

I know, you can probably just get "lard", but it's always good to know, isn't it?

Chicken, duck and goose fat are still less saturated, and so semiliquid at room temperature.

Fats from ruminant cattle and sheep are more saturated and therefore harder than pig or bird fats (due to their rumen microbes).

Damn I love this book.

At any rate, if you can get any sort of beef fat, or sheep fat, that's best. Then leaf lard, then regular lard.

Or any sort of saturated vegetarian fat, although proper vegetarian "suet" seems to be hydrogenated palm oil, mixed with rice flour, dunno why. Maybe to make it harder?

NQC - that's fascinating

sorry, really I thought I was quite up on my fats. You can either buy normal soft lard here or "tocino" which is hard pork fat (I THINK it's just belly fat with the meat cut off). presumably that's the stuff I should use.

actually saying that I might be able to get a bit of beef rib and then cut the fat off. beef in general is not widely available though - you can buy steak, dunno what they do with the rest of the cow.

don't trust hydrogenated oil!

If you're not veggie, nicer to have fat that's naturally hard, I think.

Yeah, you want the hard pig fat. It might be leaf lard, who knows.

McGee is your book, if you want this sort of detail.

NQC, what a mine of interesting information you are I think it has to be something that will be more or less solid at room temperature, doesn't it; it would be too runny with oil I would guess. Much less educated response though

I will add that book to my list of things to buy if anyone sends me an amazon voucher.

It's not so much an "educated" thing, as a book-obsessed one.

McGee is nearly a thousand close-typed spaces of incredible food detail. Costs £30. I don't use it that much, but it seems like the sort of thing you (ok, I) have to have ...