This Grandma Tip for Degreasing Stews and Soups Truly Works Like Magic

We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.

It is late January as I write this and I am deep in the throes of winter cookery. That means tons of soups, warming porridges, and cozy stews. As an omnivore, I often cook meaty stews with tougher cuts of meat that are cooked low and slow to tenderize them and infuse their flavor throughout the dish. The unfortunate byproduct of that process however is a slick layer of fat that inevitably floats to the surface of the stew. Stew recipes typically say something like “skim the fat from the surface of the stew,” which is all well and good, but…how?

Trying to “skim” the liquid grease from the top of another liquid is a fool’s errand, in my opinion. It’s messy, I can never quite manage to scoop up just the fat without getting some of the delicious stew at the same time, and I’m never able to get all of it. There’s always what feels conservatively like 1/3 of the fat that I just can’t manage to “skim” or scoop out of the pot.

As a result of all this frustration for years I just…skipped it. I just let the fat hang out in the stew and then — once the leftovers had been in the refrigerator for a few hours — threw the solid fat out. It was the only easy way I knew of to easily discard the greasy fat layer. That is, until I found the trick that changed everything for me: degreasing with a ladle filled with ice.

I know filling a ladle with ice sounds a little silly — when I first heard this trick I was skeptical too, but hear me out. It works really well. Just like the leftovers in the fridge, when the fat in the stew gets cold it solidifies. The ice-filled ladle works like a tiny fridge on the surface of the pot, sliding over the surface and rapidly cooling and solidifying the fat floating on top of the stew. The fat clings to the ladle, so all you have to do is move the ladle over the surface of the stew, collect the grease on the back of the ladle, and then wipe it down. No muss, no fuss.

• Use a metal ladle. This trick unfortunately will not work with a wooden, plastic, or silicone ladle.
• Wipe the ladle well before repeating. Once the surface of the ladle is covered, it can’t grab any more fat, and if you leave fat on the ladle, it will not be as effective at grabbing up the remaining fat in the pot. Wipe the back of the ladle down with a damp paper towel to remove as much residual fat as possible before going in for round 2.
• Keep the ladle on the surface. Don’t dunk the whole thing in, then you’re just adding ice to your stew. Just dip the back of the ladle into the stew and move it slowly around the surface to collect the grease.