lard

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In spite of the public campaign against it, lard contains less than half the cholesterol and less than one-third the saturated fat of butter. The best lard to use is the kind that can be poured.

If you don't want to make your own lard, buy it from a Mexican butcher; it will come in a plastic tub and be labeled manteca de cerdo (pig fat). It's made from rendered pork for chicharrones (crunchy pork rind), and it has a toasty, deliciously browned aroma and flavor. Commercially packaged lard (in the blue cartons or pails) is bleached and hydrogenated to make it more solid, white and stable; it doesn't have a good flavor and should be avoided.
"It is absolutely the best for frying," says Fran McCullough, author of The Good Fat Cookbook, an impassioned defense of butter, fish oil and other natural sources of fat. "Nothing crisps food quite as well as lard. Hands down, there's no better fried chicken." or tamales or pie crusts.

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I agree on the tamales, lard is the only thing that works right....

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great to have in the nighstand if you run out of ky....

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Lard is the French word for bacon. My personal preference for frying a great many foods (and especially potatoes) is to fry them in bacon fat. My grandmother had an old tin can, holding about a quart, with a recessed strainer lid, and which was stamped "grease" on the outside of the can. You'd never find something like that today, unless you found it in a "second hand store" (which is what "antique" shops were once called). She always poured off and saved her bacon fat in that tin, if she weren't going to immediately fry something in that fat. One of my favorites was popcorn, because she popped it in bacon fat. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm . . .

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I did not know that only commercial lard was hydrogenated.

In fact, I always thought "lard" and "hydrogenated fat" as being the same in my mind.

So....how does one go about making their own lard?

We had a grease can growing up, but it was to collect fat, then frozen and disposed of.
If you collect drippings and let it cool, it hardens, which is what I thought made them worse.

How does lard compare to liquid oils like olive, canola, corn, etc.?

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making lard

Chai wrote:

I did not know that only commercial lard was hydrogenated. In fact, I always thought "lard" and "hydrogenated fat" as being the same in my mind. So....how does one go about making their own lard? We had a grease can growing up, but it was to collect fat, then frozen and disposed of. If you collect drippings and let it cool, it hardens, which is what I thought made them worse. How does lard compare to liquid oils like olive, canola, corn, etc.?

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/gabris79.html

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Geese fat (schmalz) is excellent for various dishes, e.g. kale.

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This is off the top of my head here, haven't looked it all up lately, but I think butcher type lard is partially hydrogenated, or, partially saturated, if you will, as opposed to commercial lard, which is entirely so. I've known for years that 'real' lard is less 'saturated' than butter, and that butter (not sure if there are variations with butter, re commercial or otherwise) is less "bad" than transfats were/are.

As to cholesterol metabolism, that is complex, and subject to some extent on the body's making of cholesterol itself, rather than ingestion. Additionally, the presence of certain non cholesterol compounds or other factors can affect the deposition of plaque...

I had an old friend who used to eat ginormous amounts of meat complete with lots of meat fat, who was a mess in terms of health, but who had low cholesterol levels..

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Geese fat (schmalz) is excellent for various dishes, e.g. kale.

Schmalz schmecks, ja?

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Geese fat (schmalz) is excellent for various dishes, e.g. kale.

Schmalz schmecks, ja?

(psst . . . in English, say "goose fat.")

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Setanta wrote:

(psst . . . in English, say "goose fat.")

Stupid. You need more than just one goose to make a portion of Gänseschmalz.

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Pork fat is key in making the less desirable cuts of venison edible. Pork fat rules.

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Rendering is how we extract cooking fat from the chunky solid stuff. (The grease in a pan of bacon is rendered bacon fat.) Heat melts the fat and draws it out of the surrounding tissue; it also evaporates the water in the fat. You can't just crank up the gas, though, or the fat will scorch. To speed up this low-temperature process, I sliced my fat into big chunks and ran them through an electric meat grinder. What came out looked like spaghetti on steroids. Even with the flame set at a quiet flicker, the spaghetti strands quickly melted. Then, for the next two hours, the pot bubbled away as the kitchen filled with the aroma of roast pork. When the bubbling became sluggish, I strained my brand-new lard through cheesecloth and let it cool on the counter. The solid crunchy bits caught in the filter are cracklings. They are famously delicious in corn bread, but I've been too busy eating meals that were deep fried in pure lard to mess with cracklings.
I used 8 oz plastic tubs that i filled with the rendered lard and put them in the freezer until needed. the consistency of good lard should be about like hand lotion at room temperature, neither liquid nor solid.
I don't render lard any longer mainly because I no longer have hogs to butcher.

By the way, after a life-time of using lard almost daily I have excellent cholesterol levels.

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cj, is that the secret to antler soup....

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Setanta wrote:

(psst . . . in English, say "goose fat.")

Stupid. You need more than just one goose to make a portion of Gänseschmalz.

I would never suggest that the English language is not, from time to time, stupid. I would make two observations, however. One is that a single goose yields a butt-load of fat. The other is that i would never believe anyone who attempted to assert that the German language is not, from time to time, stupid.

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That's correct, Set.

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dyslexia wrote:

Rendering is how we extract cooking fat from the chunky solid stuff. (The grease in a pan of bacon is rendered bacon fat.) Heat melts the fat and draws it out of the surrounding tissue; it also evaporates the water in the fat. You can't just crank up the gas, though, or the fat will scorch. To speed up this low-temperature process, I sliced my fat into big chunks and ran them through an electric meat grinder. What came out looked like spaghetti on steroids. Even with the flame set at a quiet flicker, the spaghetti strands quickly melted. Then, for the next two hours, the pot bubbled away as the kitchen filled with the aroma of roast pork. When the bubbling became sluggish, I strained my brand-new lard through cheesecloth and let it cool on the counter. The solid crunchy bits caught in the filter are cracklings. They are famously delicious in corn bread, but I've been too busy eating meals that were deep fried in pure lard to mess with cracklings.
I used 8 oz plastic tubs that i filled with the rendered lard and put them in the freezer until needed. the consistency of good lard should be about like hand lotion at room temperature, neither liquid nor solid.
I don't render lard any longer mainly because I no longer have hogs to butcher.

By the way, after a life-time of using lard almost daily I have excellent cholesterol levels.

forgot to say I used a double-boiler.

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speaking of LARD or SCHMALZ , in germany there was certainly a difference (in price too :wink: ) between LARD from a pig (schweine-schmalz , but usually just called "schmalz) and LARD from GEESE(gaense-schmalz) .

there is a HUGE difference in the amount of lard coming from a north-american goose fattened on corn and a german goose fattened on oats . the goose fattened on corn has truly enormous amouts of fat .

we used to make a daytrip to kitchenner/waterloo in early december for many years to buy a goose from the mennonite farmers there .
those geese were called "grass geese" and were very lean and tender .
they were quite a bit more expensive than the regular ones and usually kept under the counter - i had to specifically ask for it and it would be quickly pulled out from under the counter , wrapped up and handed over like contraband merchandise .
since i don't feel like making an 800 km roundtrip to buy a "grass goose" any more , we've pretty well given up on the christmas goose and now rely on TURKEY-IN-THE-BOX (deboned and pretty well ready for the oven ; it works , but i do miss the "grass goose" ) .
hbg

btw. REAL pumpernickel with goosefat and MATJES herring was always a special treat for new year's day in germany - it was considered a "hangover cure" and much needed Shocked