Shaking it up with Suet

Earlier this month, I found shredded beef suet in the reduced section at Marketplace. It certainly was not on my shopping list, but I was intrigued. So of course I bought it and tried it out in two different ways.

I'm not exactly sure how suet is different from lard, or why it comes "shredded" in little pellets (as shown above). I was also surprised that the package specifically warned not to refrigerate it, but at least it wasn't too hot here yet.

For my first suet dish, I tried dumplings. I don't think I've ever made them before, but I always liked my mom's chicken and dumplings as a kid. 

First I made vegetable soup with turnip, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, celery and onion. Then I prepared the suet dumplings and put them on top to cook. They turned out okay I guess, but they were more sticky than fluffy (like I remember my mom's Bisquick dumplings being). Not sure if that was an ingredient or user error! 

David and I both preferred my second suet experiment more than the first. I used the remaining suet to make the crust for a savory veggie pie. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my rolling pin so the crust didn't look the prettiest, but it tasted good!