I am an impatient cook. If I'm going to make a sauce or gravy out of the liquid I just used for braising, I want to do it right now. I don't want to laboriously skim the fat off with a spoon or wait for anything to cool. Fat separators are all well and good, but what about using a tool I already own? Enter the turkey baster.
Here's what I do: squeeze the turkey baster bulb, insert it into the liquid below the fat line, and let go. The liquid we want is sucked up into the baster while the fat is left behind. Squeeze the liquid directly into the pan and start cooking right away.
Depending on how much liquid you have, you might have to repeat this several times. It can be a bit tricky when you start getting down to the bottom. Tilting the bowl helps suction up the last few teaspoons of liquid with a minimal amount of the fat.
It might seem counterintuitive to suction the liquid and not the fat on top. Truthfully, you probably could do it the other way, but I find that plunging the baster right into the liquid ends up being easier and more direct than trying to delicately suction the fat off the surface.
Try it both ways next time and you'll see what I mean!
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While the application might be slightly different, I recently discovered this amazing fat skimmer thing that Chinese folks have apparently been using for a long time. It looks like a ladle with a flat super-fine mesh strainer in place of the bowl.
The fine mesh lets water/broth through, but the mesh is so fine that the fat stays on top. BLEW MY MIND. Best part is, I paid about $2 for it at a local Chinese supermarket.
Ok, I wanted to provide an actual name for the thing, and Google popped up this woman who blogged about the very same thing. Looks like she doesn't know what it's called either.
http://www.thechinesesouplady.com/oil-scooper/
My husband found an even easier way to separate fat this past Christmas. There was a passive-aggressive mother-in-law v mother war brewing over au jus vs. roast potatoes to accompany the roast beef... the liquid was already removed from the pan and in a glass cup.
Hubby took the cup, put it in the freezer for a minute or two, and took out a perfectly separated cup of fat and yumminess. It was magic! Some yumminess was reserved for the jus and the rest went to the potatoes.
Disaster averted, both mothers were happy, and we now have a quick new technique for separating fat.
OK... I *own* one of those and I had no idea it was intended to skim oil. I know I've used it to remove veggies/bones/etc. from stock, but I'm not really sure it removed any oil on its own. Perhaps I need to let it solidify a bit? I'm trying this tomorrow.
Sorry, I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I wanted to offer a few tips for using that oil skimmer thing
@keltrue: wet it first with water. I think filling up the mesh with water helps keep the hydrophobic fats from falling through. Course, that's probably just my way of trying to explain how this magical device works. And you can do it as the pot is boiling. No need to cool anything!
And dry it well. Mine developed a few small rust spots after a few uses. :(