Which came first, the gribenes or the schmaltz?
Many an attempt has been made to elevate some of the peasant fare we Jews call food to the level of haute cuisine. I’ve personally heard some of my more uppity suburban friends trying to pass off chopped liver as pâté… kreplach as gnocchi… and mandelbread as biscotti. But there are certain things that absolutely defy all efforts at gastronomic gentrification. Among them are two lowly (and related) delicacies; gribenes and schmaltz. Gribenes, which I’m told means ‘scraps’ in Yiddish, is simply fried chicken skin. This is the Jewish equivalent (l’havdil) of that redneck staple; fried pork rinds. Gribenes is a crispy, salty treat that is prepared by simply taking the scraps of chicken skin that the butcher trims off when cutting up your whole fresh chicken (or when preparing chicken breasts for schnitzel), and cooking them up in a frying pan. I usually call ahead and ask the butcher to start putting aside the chicken skin scraps for me since the few pieces from the one or two chickens
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