Dripping

It is used for cooking, especially in British cuisine, significantly so in the Midlands and Northern England, though towards the end of the 20th century dripping fell out of favour due to it being regarded as less healthy than vegetable oils such as olive or sunflower.

Traditionally fish and chips were fried in beef dripping, and while this practice does continue in some places, including The Fryer's Delight most shops now use vegetable oils.

Preparing dripping can be as simple as collecting and cooling the oil and meat juices from pans and trays after roasting meat, but commercial production achieves a higher yield by combining these with water and a sizeable amount of salt (about 2g per litre), creating a kind of stock.

When the stock pot is chilled a solid lump of dripping (the cake) precipitates out of solution and settles.

The residue can be reprocessed for more dripping and strained through a cheesecloth lined sieve as an ingredient for a beef stock.