My chef at the restaurant where I work is pretty damn awesome.
She’s a constant supporter of us bartenders furthering our craft, and is always quick to help out in any way she can.
Her encouragement fuels my excitement for stepping up our cocktail game and vice-versa. The two of us can geek out pretty hard over obscure drink recipes, new techniques and vintage barware… So when I started telling her about how some bartenders have fat-washed whiskey with flavors like bacon and duck fat, it was only a matter of time before we had to try it ourselves.
From all that I’ve read about it so far, fat-washing just seems like a fancy name for infusing liquor in a certain way — a process where we add the fat and then later put the booze in the freezer to solidify the fat for removal.
This recipe for a Duck Sazerac was what we followed when making our own bottle of fat-washed rye whiskey, which is pictured below:
So, first and foremost I should say that this was an experiment for ourselves — and not anything we’re serving.
But in terms of the end result, I think we were both pretty impressed with the way the duck fat softened the rye whiskey — sweetening it and smoothing it out.
I’ve seen recipes online using bourbon, but I’m glad we went with rye. So much of the heat and pepper was softened, but the spirit still comes through.
The rye recipes I’ve seen online for this fat-washed duck rye were basic drinks like the Sazerac and the Manhattan. My intent is to do a Smoked Duck Julep (and just in time for the Kentucky Derby no less). I’ve still got to test out making a smoked simple syrup and weigh it against a scotch rinse and other smoke options.
And I hope Jim Beam doesn’t mind my modification of its label in the picture above!
Further Reading:
— Here’s an article entitled The Science Of Fat-Washing.
— Another How To” post, but this one has a video.
— A recipe for a Smoked Duck Manhattan.
Frontier Mixology 