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Omaha Magazine

Duck Call

Feb 21, 2017 02:06PM ● By Anthony Flott
To hear Omahan Dennis Schuett tell it, he has launched a new product that really is … all it’s quacked up to be.

It’s actually an old product—duck fat. The French have used the versatile, golden, subcutaneous deposit for ages, treasuring it for a dense, savory flavor and the crispy coat it adds to meats and vegetables.

What Schuett has done, though, is new. Until now, chefs scooped solid duck fat out of containers. Schuett has put it into a canister that delivers duck fat as a spray.

As far as Schuett can tell, no one else has done that.

“We have the only duck fat spray, we think, in the world,” Schuett says. “It’s pretty cool.”

Their thought is correct. This is not Schuett’s first foray into food. A Grand Island native who moved to Omaha 27 years ago, he once had a career as a food broker. He also has part ownership in the Coney Stop restaurant at Millard’s Boulder Creek Amusement Park, a couple of pizza joints around the metro, and (until this summer) Jackson Street Tavern in the Old Market.

Such experience gave the 54-year-old, self-described foodie a good idea he was onto something with his duck fat spray.

Vegetables sprayed with it, then roasted, “taste like candy,” Schuett says. It also “floats an egg across a frying pan.” Its high smoke point (meaning it doesn’t burn as easily as butter or olive oil), makes it a great searing agent. Schuett says he also has heard from meat smokers who say it creates great “bark” when used as a rub base.

Schuett touts benefits beyond taste. Duck fat has 20 percent less saturated fat than butter and contains unsaturated Omega 3 and Omega 6, two body-essential fatty acids. It’s also high in monounsaturated fat, which can help lower cholesterol, and vitamin E.

To get such wonders into a can as a spray, Schuett bought state-of-the-art packing equipment that forces the fat into a bag sealed inside a canister. Compressed air evacuates 99 percent of the product and precludes the use of fluorocarbon or additives. “Keeping it simple yet as pure as possible,” Schuett says.

This article was printed in the Spring 2017 edition of B2B.

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