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Posted on 12/12/2010 8:45:11 AM PST by Red_Devil 232
You WHAT?!" said my friend, making the most disgusted face I've seen someone make in some time. I rendered some lard over the weekend, I repeated. "WHY on EARTH would you want to do THAT?!" she cried.
I wasn't surprised. North American culture is so fat-phobic we demonize some of the very foods that are best for us, and among those foods is homemade lard. The store stuff isn't worth bothering with; it's hydrogenated to make it shelf-stable. What I'm talking about is lard from the fat of well-raised pigs, not factory farmed pigs. To get it, you're going to have to make it yourself. Luckily, that's not hard.
What you don't know about lard
Not only does lard make the best pie crusts, it's lower in saturated fat than butter--if saturated fat bothers you. It doesn't bother me, in fact, the plaque levels in my heart have actually improved since I've started eating good saturated fats. (They've actually gone and looked, so I feel safe in saying this.)
Technically lard isn't even a saturated fat; it's a monounsaturated fat. And it's one of the best dietary sources of vitamin D. It also contains no trans-fats. If there's fat to be avoided, trans-fats are the ones.
Finding fat
The hardest part of making lard is finding a good source of pork fat. You're going to have to do a little digging, and it's important that you not just use any pork fat you find; you want to make sure the pig was properly cared for and fed right. Your average supermarket "butcher," and I use that term loosely, isn't going to have it; that pork is all factory farmed, and very few supermarket butchers cut whole carcasses any more. You may have more luck at a specialty market like Whole Foods, Wild Oats or the like, but be sure to inquire after the feeding practices.
If there is a farmer's market near you, look around and ask questions. That's how we stumbled onto our farmer, who is really in the goat cheese biz; he raises pigs on the leftover whey. We've bought two (incredibly delicious) pigs from him in as many years, and surprised the butcher by asking for all of the fat--and as much of the offal as we could get, but that's another article. Hey, we were paying for it. If you don't have a farmer's market, try EatWild.com where you can find farmers with good growing practices, and not just for meat.
Making it
Once you've found your fat, decide what you want to use it for. If you want it for pastries, try to find and use only the fat from around the kidneys--what's called "leaf" lard. I don't make much pastry, so I don't care about that.
Chop the fat into at least 1" cubes, taking any meat chunks off in the process. Some folks put it through a meat grinder. In any event, you want small pieces; otherwise you won't get as much fat out.
Heat your oven to 225°F. I use my cast iron dutch oven to render lard in. Put about a quarter-inch of water at the bottom of the pot; this keeps the fat from browning too much at the beginning, and it'll burn off in time. Add your chopped-up fat. Pop it in the oven for at least a couple of hours, stirring now and then. Eventually the chunks won't give up any more fat--it'll become obvious, the chunks will look the same after an hour as they did before.
As you're doing all this there will be a distinct smell. Some people like it, some people don't. It's a little too intense for my comfort, frankly, which is why I try to do a bunch of lard at once. If you can do this outside, or in a canning kitchen if you have one, so much the better.
Let the lard cool to lukewarm; while it's cooling is a good time to gather up your jars and lids and make sure they're clean and ready to go. There are various methods to filter out the bits of meat and unrendered fat--the cracklings--from the lard, but what I use is a paper coffee filter and cone. Ladle the still-liquid lard, skipping the bigger chunks, into the filter.
Refrigerate the lard and use it within a month. If you've made more than you can use in a month, it freezes well.
Using it
Use it anywhere you'd use butter or shortening: To pop popcorn (the best!); to make pie crust; to fry eggs. In some cultures it's even spread on bread, topped with onions and salt, and called a sandwich. As for the leftover bits, the cracklings? Salt them and put them on salads or just munch on them. Josie loves them. We got more cracklings than we could eat, so we fed a lot of them to the chickens and used them as doggie and kitty treats.
Can't make Biscochitos (New Mexican Christimas cookies) without it as lard is what gives them their melt in your mouth texture and it's the best thing to season frijolitos pintos (pinto beans) with. When they are done cooking, you make a light roux with lard and flour and add to the beans. It thickens the broth and gives the beans a really good flavor.
When we lived in MN, there were little "mom and pop" meat markets everywhere, so finding good fat was easy. I rendered my own lard and tallow, and used the tallow for soap. The lard was used for cooking. Sometimes, I mixed equal parts of lard and tallow with coconut oil, and made the absolute BEST cooking fat I ever tasted. Unfortunately, this is not so easy to do here in Alaska. :o(
My mother used lard all the time and saved grease in a coffee can on top of the stove. Nobody can cook as good as mom heh.
“I strain and freeze bacon fat, use it for fried potatoes and such.”
My unruly hounds aren’t going to be happy to hear that! They LIVE for the rare day when they get bacon grease on their kibble, LOL! :)
Bacon fat fried chicken....Really!
Try it.
The Chicken Fat Song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFofqe26t-4
You have to be OLD like me to remember this one, LOL!
“Go, You Chicken Fat, Go!” :)
It DOES make the best pie crusts.
I saw and read your earlier post and was going to post this on that thread but decided this needed a seperate thread.
Mine too, I share. :^)
“the recipe given in the article is practical”
I have to correct myself. The recipe given in the article on lard making is not practical if you are directed to go out and buy expensive pigs raised only on certain foods and then have them butchered professionally. That makes a $1 worth of lard more expensive than necessary. My grandmother rendered her own fat in her kitchen and my mother bought it in the supermarket. I have used the supermarket kind and it is fine. Just wanted to clarify this.
We rendered lard in culinary school as a demo project.
/johnny
This is from the blog, "Homesick Texan" and anyone that cooks, bakes, cans, should not find it difficult to make.
"But the best thing about lard is that it’s not bad for you. It has less saturated fat (the bad fat) than butter, while it also has more than twice as much monosaturated fat (the good fat) than butter. And it has none of those pesky trans fats—that is, if it hasn’t been hydrogenated to prolong its shelf life.
And that, my friends, is the problem. Most lard you find at the grocery store has been hydrogenated to make it shelf stable indefinitely, which robs it of its good qualities. Some butchers will sell freshly rendered lard that has not been hydrogenated (clue: if it’s not refrigerated than it’s not the good kind of lard), but it’s also quite simple to render it yourself."
http://homesicktexan.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-render-lard.html
When I was young (ie 40 years or so ago), I remember we used to get small cans of lard that was supposedly purified or something; my mother used to make biscuits and pie crusts with it, and used it for cooking...maybe it was the Crisco brand? Can’t remember. I do remember her complaining about using some other product at one time that didn’t work, the biscuits were too crumbly and didn’t hold their shape.
Very interesting. I’ve learned quite a bit since Mr. trisham developed diabetes, most of which is at odds with what I had accepted as healthy during the last twenty to thirty years. The ongoing interest in and promotion of vegetarianism seems to be warding off any attempt to inject some common sense into the debate.
Most of the nation of Italy would disagree with you. As would Deborah Krasner, whose book “The Flavors of Olive Oil” won a James Beard award a few years ago.
I remember my mother and other relatives using ‘saltback’—big hunks of some salty part of the pig, just using regular salt doesn’t give the same flavoring for some reason—when they made pinto beans. Part of me is drooling remembering how good those beans were with some freshly buttered bread on a cold day! Yum! :-)
sorry, bread should be CORNbread!
Olive oil is fine for cooking. You just have to be aware that it has a lower smoke point than most other common cooking oils, and pay attention to what you’re doing and not overheat it.
I remember my grandmother making that. Used it for doing laundry.
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