Why Lard?

I had a couple of readers ask about the purpose of lard and how we would use it. I thought the answer was so obvious, I failed to put in the previous post. We would use lard for cooking!

Ah, but there's more to it than that. Lard historically has been used where we now use butter or other vegetable oils. Despite its somewhat nasty reputation, lard has less saturated fat, more unsaturated fat, and less cholesterol than butter. And, unlike margarine or shortening, lard contains no trans fat.

I don't happen to live in Iowa or, tragically, Italy, so corn and olive oils are not local foods. Nor do they provide the right kind of "mouthfeel" for moist but flakey baked goods. Lard also has a relatively high smoke point, producing little smoke when heated and is more stable at higher temperatures. To read all about lard, check out the wikipedia article for more benefits for cooking.

Of special note is that the kind of back fat I showed in the pictures does not come from modern pork pigs. You need a heritage pig bred to create fat (which most of our fat phobic dieters abhor) and it needs to live outside to be stimulated to produce more than 1" of fat under the skin. Our pig was a Tamworth x Berkshire.

As for our uses, we will use small amounts of lard for frying up meats so they don't stick to the pan. We will make tortillas and pie crusts, including quiche. We recently used it to grease a pan for bread pudding, using up old, stale homemade bread. Basically, we will use lard for anything we would use oil for if the food combines well with a more "savory" fat.

Once my goats are in production and I am making homemade butter, the hope is to limit our olive oil use to just what is required, such as marinating mozzarella (which, in my opinion is a "need" and not a "want"). Olive oil, like tea and coffee, are not produced locally so will figure into the 30% we allow ourselves to come outside of our sphere of influence.

The Goodness of Lard

Lard has been much maligned recently, but I think with the "Trans Fat" scare, people are starting to realize that animal fats aren't really all that bad. On a scale between Good and Evil, lard is not exactly lily-white Luke Skywalker. It's more of the Han Solo type (after all, Han did shoot Greedo first). You can't help but love it and nibble it all over. Lard, that is. Not Han. Ok, well maybe Han a little.

Anyway, lard contains about 40% saturated fat and 45% monosaturated fat. For reference, coconut and palm kernal oil run 80% in saturated fat. It is also high in Omega 6 fatty acids, Vitamin D and has some nice anti-bacterial properties as well. There's a reason soap has traditionally been made from animal fats and don't even think about hanging that nice slab of beef for three weeks unless there is a nice layer of fat covering it.

But don't run out and buy a tub o' lard for your next cookoff. The lard from the store has been hydrogenated to increase shelf life. And like most things done for preservation, injecting the lard with Hyrdrogen negates a lot of the good benefits, leaving the fact that it is just a bunch of fat. The best and healthiest way to use lard is to render it yourself from pig fat from a local farmer.

You knew I was going to say that, didn't you.

This year, we bought a whole pig from a local farmer. What that means is that we purchased a pig and even though the farmer raised the pig and delivered him to the butcher, he was technically our pig. We paid the farmer for the pig and the butcher for the processing and got the added benefit of being able to specify what we wanted back in little packages. Because we don't believe in wasting anything from an animal, we got it ALL back. So we received about 154 lbs of pig parts, including the head and trotters. About 120 lbs of that pork were prime cuts, ham, and bacon. Not a bad deal.

In case you are wondering, the head is great for jowl bacon and tamales and some amazing stock. Waste not, want not!

But today is all about the lard. As part of our pig, we received about 20 lbs of back fat and leaf fat. For lard aficionados, leaf fat, the fat from around the kidneys, is preferred because it can be rendered "purer" with less porky flavor. Another tip for less porky flavor is to not overcook it. If you heat the fat until the cracklins turn brown, it's too late and you get a more "savory" lard.

We cooked our lard via the "wet" method, where we poured the hot oil into water to allow the water to bring the stray proteins out. Then you reheat the water/oil mix until you stop hearing any sizzling. At that point, all the water has evaporated out, and the oil you pour off cools to a snow-white finish. Yum!

The cracklins can be saved to flavor meat soups and to feed to the chickens on cold days where lots of calories will help them stay warm.

The bag of fat as delivered from the butcher

The bag opened. Leaf fat is hiding under the first slab of back fat.

Leaf fat exposed!

Leaf fat ready for cubing.

Back fat being cubed. The smaller the cubes, the more yield. Also, it's easiest to cut the fat when it is semi-frozen.

A slab o' fat makes lots of cubes.

Two pans of fat ready to go. Leaf fat is on the left, back fat on the right.

Boil, boil, toil and trouble.

Pouring the oil into a pot of water, filtering out the cracklins and solids.

We cooled our lard with snow, the traditional method!!

The finished product. We used less than half our fat to make this much lard.