Lard? Ask Your Great-Grandmother

It's a good bet that  your Great-grandmother cooked with lard and that her food was both healthier and tastier than anything you can buy at the grocery store today.

The sad fact is that we've been badly mistaken about lard for at least two generations. We've been told that it made us fat, raised our cholesterol and put all of us at risk for heart disease. We were persuaded to throw away the old-fashioned lard bucket in favor of shiny new cans of artificially manufactured shortening and oils (such as cottonseed oil) that were never meant to be used as food.

Now, nothing here should be construed as medical advice: I'm a writer and home cook and a hippie grandma, not any kind of medical or nutritional authority. Follow these links if you want to confirm the bad news about trans fats and the benefits of animal fat. Here we want to focus on lard,  and how to get Great-Grandmother's bucket of lard back into the kitchen so we can use it thoughtfully and joyfully.

First, do not buy the tidy little boxes of lard sold (unrefrigerated) in the grocery store. That has been processed and contains partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, just like the artificial canned shortening. So leave it on the shelf and walk over to the meat department. If you are exceptionally lucky, your store might have packages of pork fat, beef tallow or suet laid out in the meat case.
But more likely you will need to ask the butcher behind the counter to cut some for you from whatever grass-fed beef or pork they have in stock.

You may be told to call ahead next time because they will consider a request for pork fat a special order. If the butcher should offer to grind the fat for you, say YES.

A note on terminology: lard comes from pork fat, tallow and suet from beef or bison. Schmaltz is a fine Yiddish term for chicken fat. Blubber comes from whales and other sea mammals, but that's slightly out of our range, so we'll just call it all lard if no one minds. Rendering is the process of melting the fat. After the lard is rendered, strained and solidified, it can be safely stored in the refrigerator for weeks or in the freezer for years.

Once you get your lovely fat into your kitchen, plan on rendering it fairly quickly, at least within 24 hours. I made the mistake of assuming fat would have the storing qualities of lard, only to end up with 2 pounds of very nasty rancid fat in the fridge. But you won't make that dumb mistake, because if you read on, you'll see how simple it can be to render out your own natural, old fashioned lard just like Great-Grandmother would do it.

Recipe: Rendering Lard like Great-Grandmother

First, haul out a good heavy pot, such as a cast iron dutch oven. You can also render lard in your slow-cooker, which does a fine job, or in the oven.

Next, chop up the fat into fairly small chunks, an inch square or smaller; this is easier if the fat is partially frozen. You can do this in your food processor. Again, I went barrelling ahead and tried to skip this step, and learned that the bigger the chunks, the slower they melt. So take the time to cut it up.

Now you're ready to dump the stuff into your pot. Add a small amount of water, about 1/2 cup for each pound of fat. This keeps the fat from burning before it melts, and boils off completely. Heat the fat on the lowest setting, and plan to let it melt slowly for 2 hours or longer, stirring occasionally. If you are using a slow cooker, the Low setting will be fine.

Your goal is to have all the fat melt slowly into clear liquid, with bits of brown cracklins floating on top. Be patient, and don't forget to stir it once in a while to keep everything moving along smoothly. Once all the white fat has melted away and the only solids are crisp brown cracklins, remove the pot from the heat, cool slightly, then pour the melted fat through a strainer, double layer of cheesecloth or coffee filter into a wide mouth Mason jar or other glass or ceramic container with a tight cover.

The lard will be amber or golden when melted, then turn white or cream colored as it chills and becomes solid. Beef tallow will become very hard when chilled, so be sure to use a wide-mouthed jar.  If the fat melts slowly without browning, the resulting lard will be nearly white and mild-flavored. Faster melting can result (as mine often does) in a darker beige lard with a somewhat more meaty flavor that might be noticed in dessert pastries, but is fine for savory pies and cooking or frying.

Now, back to the cracklins - those crispy solid bits left in the strainer. Do not throw them away! Think of them as your own tasty bacon bits. Use a wooden spoon to press them against the strainer to get out as much grease as possible, then wrap them in cheesecloth or clean rag and squeeze again. Sprinkle them well with salt and store in little baggies in the freezer to use in cornbread or scrambled eggs or any dish where you would use crumbled bacon.

In the next post, I'll show how to use some of your fresh lard to make Pasties, perhaps just the way Great-Grandmother made them.