Any FReepers using lard in cooking or baking?
Ping to Gardeners list - Foodie ping
Makes the best pie crusts. For those carrot pies.
Can’t make refried beans or biscuits without it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lard
As you can see, while lard has lower saturated fat than butter, it has higher saturated fat than every other comparable substance. It is also not exactly practical to make your own lard, especially if it is considered so important to monitor the diet of the pig.
Lard itself is available. This article is touting the merits of lard (debatable to say the least) but also suggesting that for the best lard you need to make your own. That’s just not practical.
All the time... Again in pie crusts it’s fantastic.
We use three fats for cooking...all are healthy.
Coconut Oil
Lard
Butter
Coconut Oil is very healthy. We use it for most everything in cooking. We use lard for pie crusts...makes the best and is healthy. Butter is good, a little mixed with coconut oil when frying eggs adds health taste. Butter itself is healthy.
The polyunsaturated fats, vegetable fats from corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil etc should never be used for anything.
Olive oil should not be used for cooking...it is ok for salads, or for dipping bread in.
“I have never used lard in cooking”
Lard absolutely makes the best pie crusts. My grandmother was an excellent baker whose pie crusts were extraordinarily flaky and light. She used only lard in the recipe. Lard has gotten a bad rap for a long time, and I would think that is because when solid shortening people came along, like Crisco, they wanted to make it seem like lard was old fashioned and inconvenient. My grandmother also made her own lard and kept it in a can under the sink. To this day, I pour bacon grease into a coffee can and place it under my sink, but for no apparent reason other than habit! My grandmother used the grease to fry with, but then again that generation was far more active than my own and a little bacon grease did not hurt you.However, solidified bacon grease does not make good lard because of the smoky taste and all the additives that go into bacon making. You could save that kind of grease in the refrigerator to use in frying. In making pot roast , browning the meat in a little bacon fat makes a tasty dish. But lard is a different matter and the recipe given in the article is practical. A good piece of advice I heard was this: Do not eat anything that you would not find in your great grandmother’s kitchen. Lard would qualify as acceptable.
Might as well expand the process and make some Lard Soap, waste not want not.
I strain and freeze bacon fat, use it for fried potatoes and such.
I use rendered duck fat quite a bit. It’s pricey, but you can pick it up at specialty stores and it lasts for quite a long time.
Makes excellent hash browns.
I lost fifteen pounds when I added naturally occurring fats back into my diet and got rid of “low-fat” and “FAT-FREE!!!” products.
My brother has a relationship with an excellent butcher, we might be able to try this.
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(
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.
We rendered lard in culinary school as a demo project.
/johnny
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.