Eventually everything comes back into style, doesn’t it? I’m super happy to see lard hit that list!
Before we get into the how, I think it’s important to talk about whys, because there are plenty of them.
Besides being good for you, lard makes fantastic food! I am quite surprised when I get asked what I do with lard. Cook really awesome food, that’s what! We use it for frying eggs in the morning, roasting vegetables, deep frying, popping popcorn, and making incredible baked goods. It’s a great fat for high heat cooking, making it prime for searing steaks and chops in a cast iron pan!
If you’re gasping at the thought of all that saturated fat, let me stop you right there. Lard, when sourced from properly raised heritage pigs, is extremely nutrient-dense. Saturated fat is not the heart killer it was once thought to be. If you haven’t yet recovered from the saturated fat scare of the 70s and 80s, I would encourage you to dig a little deeper.
Used in kitchens for centuries, lard (rendered from pork fat) has a unique mix of different types of fats. In the past, it was what cooks used when they needed to make pastries; when dinner needed cooking; and even as a quick breakfast...eaten spread on a piece of bread! Today lard is seen as a dangerous fat, but is it?
Lard is an extremely versatile fat: It doesn't smoke at high temperatures, so it's perfect for high heat cooking or frying. This also means it doesn’t break down and oxidize, creating harmful free radicals (the reason you don’t cook extra virgin olive oil at high temperatures). It has less saturated fat than butter. Yes, that’s right lard has 20 percent less saturated fat than butter. It’s also higher in monounsaturated fats, which are good for cardiovascular health. Lard is also rich in oleic acid, the same fatty acid that is in olive oil and praised for its health benefits. In addition, it has no trans fats like its synthetic counterpart, shortening.
Lard contains about 1/3 The saturated fat as butter... that’s 12 mg per tbsp vs. 31 mg per tbsp. Our bodies need fat to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins, A, D, E and K. Without dietary fats, our bodies have a hard time absorbing these critical vitamins. These fats are necessary for immunity and general health.
Plus, and our favorite part, lard is sustainable! If you use lard to cook, you use more of the animal thus wasting less and being more environmentally conscious!!
So let’s get to the how. I think there’s a better way to render lard than using a slow cooker. I know, because it’s what I do. Typically lard is slow cooked for a long period of time, like hours, until all the fat is melted away from the meat, skin, and connective tissue. But the more time the fat spends heating up around the these other meat bits, the lower quality it becomes.
Our lard goals are:
1. To make a beautiful white lard.
2. To make lard that has a clean and neutral taste, not too “porky,” but it is pork fat, so some of that is inevitable.
3. To make lard that is shelf stable.
The whitest, purest tasting lard will come from removing the liquid lard from the pan as soon as it melts. However, removing the lard quickly and not giving it a chance to heat for a while means there could be residual moisture from the meat bits… which doesn’t bode well for the shelf life. See my predicament?
The solution is this: remove the liquid lard from the pan as soon as it melts in order to get it away from the meat part. Put the liquid lard into a second pan and heat it for a while to remove the moisture. Since there is no meat, we can safely heat the lard to evaporate the water, without risking discoloration or a meaty flavor.
See how a slow cooker doesn’t fit in well here? Plus, most slow cookers only have a couple settings and cook way too hot for rendering lard. I may be a bit of a lard snob, but I think a slow cooker is the worst tool for the job in this case. It may be the easiest, that’s true. But if I wanted easy, I wouldn’t be a pig farmer.
Ingredients & Equipment:
Any quantity of pastured pork fat, ground
2 pots, each large enough to hold your quantity of pork fat/lard
2 large bowls
2 fine mesh sieves (you can get away with only one)
Paper towels, cheesecloth, or clean cotton tea towels
Storage containers, I use mason jars
You will need ground pork fat, you can grind it yourself with something simple like a hand crank meat grinder. If you get your fat from a butcher, ask them to grind it for you. This method works with pork fat cut by hand into small pieces, but it takes a lot longer. Having the pork fat ground is really the first step in making great lard. Pssst... Farm Daddy I need a meat grinder!
Remember to keep a watchful eye; rendering lard is easy to do, but it does require your constant attention.
SHORT INSTRUCTIONS:
Heat ground pork fat over very low heat until most of the fat is melted.
Strain everything through a mesh sieve into a bowl.
Strain the melted fat that collects through a second sieve lined with a paper towel.
Heat the pure fat to evaporate any moisture.
LONG INSTRUCTIONS:
Place the ground pork fat into pot #1, but don’t fill the pan more than about 4 inches full (you may have to work in batches). Heat on the lowest possible setting, and stir frequently to help facilitate the melting.
Set up the first filtering station, which is your largest sieve, sieve #1, over a large mixing bowl.
Once most of the fat has melted off of the pieces of meat and skin, but hopefully before those bits start to turn from pinkish to brown, indicating they are cooked, ladle the melted fat and pork mixture into the sieve, straining out the meat and skin and allowing the fat to collect in the mixing bowl. You want to do this all at once, and while you don’t have to work that quickly, don’t dawdle because the lard will start to solidify as it cools.
While you let the fat continue to strain for a minute, prepare the second sieve, sieve #2. Set the clean sieve over pot #2, and line the sieve with a single layer of paper towel (you might have to slightly overlap a couple paper towels, depending on the size of your sieve and the size of your paper towels, which is just fine).
Set the meat and skin in the sieve aside, and pour the liquid fat in the bowl through sieve #2, through the paper towel and let it collect in the pot below. It strains slowly, so I had to keep adding a little bit of fat at a time as there was more room in the sieve. The paper towels will collect fine sediment, and eventually clog up so that the fat stops dripping through. When this happens you’ll have to swap out for a new paper towel.
If you have more pork fat that needs melting, go ahead and start the second batch now.
When all the pure fat is strained into pan #2, turn the heat on medium, and heat over medium to medium to low heat for 5 minutes for every pound of pork fat you started with. I had about 7 pounds of pork fat, so I heated my lard for about 35 minutes. This will evaporate any moisture and help the lard to be more shelf stable.
Pour the lard into whatever containers you plan to store it in. I use 12 oz mason jars.
What to do with the leftover pork bits? Eat pork cracklins of course!
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