Soup – What are the easy ways to skim off the scum and fat from soup & stocks

Meat can add a lot of good flavor to a stock, but it can cause a lot of "scum" to form, so you have to be more diligent in your skimming, otherwise you get cloudiness. The bigger problem with winglets is that they're mostly skin, which equals fat, which is generally not a good thing for stock. Again, though, there's a way to fix it: refrigerate the stock, then remove the fat that solidifies on top.

Other than that, there are the usual bits of advice-

• Add a whole onion, skin on - the skin provides good color
• Add flavorful vegetables: carrots and carrot-shaped root veggies, celery stalks
• Cook low and slow
• Do add spices (whole peppercorns, whole allspice), but don't go overboard with them
• When scum starts to form, skim it off with a strainer or a spoon, whichever works better for you
• Did I mention cooking low and slow?

The purpose of stock is to dissolve collagen out of the meat and bones into gelatin. The liquid is then not so watery, collects a lot of flavor, and can be reduced for sauces if desired, etc.

The problem with the scrapple is that, while it does have a some gelatin, it also has a ton of fat and starch. The fat would melt and have to be skimmed off again. The starch would gelatinize. This would result is not a stock but a gravy.

The solution would seem to be to find recipes where the starch and fattiness would be desirable. The first thing that would come to mind would be a thick stew. I would cube and sear the scrapple before adding it. It might take some experimentation to figure out how long to let it stew to thicken the stew without turning the crapple to mush.