Just bought 50 pounds of lard

[NetWareHead]

Lard is one of the best ingredients a modern cook can "discover". Too bad it developed such a bad rap. Lard is actually healthier cooking fat than some oils and butter. The word "lard" is not a pleasant sounding word and if you know how it is made, its a smelly non-appetizing process. I really beleive marketing killed the lard industry and steered people towards margerine and vegetable oils.

As already said in this thread, it has one of the highest smokest points of any fat and a flavor unmatched. lard is also one of the best fats to use for pastries. When lard is incorpororated into a pastry dough, due to its large fat crystals (poor terminology but for lack of a better word...), when it melts it leaves behind large voids in the pastry and this is what produces flaky crusts. Some of the best pie/pastry crusts I've had were a made with a mixture of lard and butter (lard for flakyness and butter for flavor).

Id love to get some real lard, the stuff on the store shelf is hydrogenated and treated with chemicals to make it shelf stable and doesnt perform the way it should.

 

[Kaido]

Lard is one of the best ingredients a modern cook can "discover". Too bad it developed such a bad rap. Lard is actually healthier cooking fat than some oils and butter. The word "lard" is not a pleasant sounding word and if you know how it is made, its a smelly non-appetizing process. I really beleive marketing killed the lard industry and steered people towards margerine and vegetable oils.

As already said in this thread, it has one of the highest smokest points of any fat and a flavor unmatched. lard is also one of the best fats to use for pastries. When lard is incorpororated into a pastry dough, due to its large fat crystals (poor terminology but for lack of a better word...), when it melts it leaves behind large voids in the pastry and this is what produces flaky crusts. Some of the best pie/pastry crusts I've had were a made with a mixture of lard and butter (lard for flakyness and butter for flavor).

Id love to get some real lard, the stuff on the store shelf is hydrogenated and treated with chemicals to make it shelf stable and doesnt perform the way it should.

Yeah. I did try the store-shelf variety first & the results were excellent, which is what pushed me into buying the fresh stuff. Once I run out of this, I'll be on the hunt for leaf lard next!

 

[NetWareHead]

I didn't know that lard was used in preservation, either:

http://hillsidehomestead.com/2013/03/10/pork-preservation-success/

Now this is interesting that they are doing this with raw meat. I have a great-aunt that makes and cures dry sausage. After the sausages hang for 2 months or so, in the olden days (before refrigeration) they would be placed in a crock and then molten lard ladled on top. When you wanted to cut some sausage, reach in to the lard to find one. Dry sausage that eventually absorbed the lard and became unbeleivably moist with passage of time. These pics are great. The first pics show the golden yellow color of molten lard and later on how it hardens to a snow white. One of the best sandwiches I ever had was some of this lard used to store the dry sausages scooped out and spread onto a slice of crusty bread (like butter) and eaten. Delicious.... This lard was not thrown away either. We used it as cooking fat which gave its rich meaty flavor to any recipe... You cant replicate the old school flavors and recipes with vegetable oil etc...

 

[NetWareHead]

Yeah. I did try the store-shelf variety first & the results were excellent, which is what pushed me into buying the fresh stuff. Once I run out of this, I'll be on the hunt for leaf lard next!

If you find raw pig fat, specifically the leaf lard (loin fat surrounding the viscera/kidneys) cut from a pig, it is worth your time and money to buy a meat grinder. A simple cast iron hand crank one will suffice even for your first time. Grind the fat, put in an oven safe pot with a cup of water into a low temperature oven. After an hour or so, the melted lard can be scooped out. The membranes and tissue left behind are crispy now and I like them sprinkled on top of salads, kinda like the salad bacon bits they sell in the stores.

Do this on a day you can ventilate the house. Personally, I cant stand the smell of pork fat rendering.

 

[Kaido]

If you find raw pig fat, specifically the leaf lard (loin fat surrounding the viscera/kidneys) cut from a pig, it is worth your time and money to buy a meat grinder. A simple cast iron hand crank one will suffice even for your first time. Grind the fat, put in an oven safe pot with a cup of water into a low temperature oven. After an hour or so, the melted lard can be scooped out. The membranes and tissue left behind are crispy now and I like them sprinkled on top of salads, kinda like the salad bacon bits they sell in the stores.

Do this on a day you can ventilate the house. Personally, I cant stand the smell of pork fat rendering.

Yeah, leaf lard is next on my list, especially since I have been into doing pie-type things lately. Easier method of rendering is just to use a crockpot, no grinding needed:

http://www.mommypotamus.com/render-lard-crock-pot/

I agree about the smell. I did lard-fried chicken today & it stunk. I do not like the smell of frying lard at all. I also wasn't a really big fan of the results, it came out pretty much the same as oil-fried chicken, but now my house smells funky haha. Results so far: (note that I am dairy/gluten-free, so no butter or wheat)

1. Pie stuff: (pie crust, mini pies, pocket pies, empenadas, gyozos, etc.) Pretty good. Easy to work with & gives a better crust.

2. Tortillas: Gives it a nice puff, almost like naan. Very nice.

3. Popovers: Awesome with lard. 10/10. Flaky & soft.

4. Brownies: Decent. Not bad, not great. Good texture.

5. Cookies: Made them kind of fall apart too. I prefer shortening (palm).

6. Fried chicken: Same as vegetable oil. Although I prefer just pan-grilling chicken without a flour crust in a cast-iron pan.

Right now I'm just trying a bunch of stuff with my 50-pound block. Once I get good at baking pastries, I'll invest in some leaf lard see if the results really are that much better.

 

[shortylickens]