Homemade lard ...

Here's how AB does it ...






Do you have any other suggestions / recipes / recommendations ...

link fixed ...

I would like to see Feral post in this thread. I bet he has some pretty good input.

Swank!

I;ve got to admit, that dude makes lard sound good and sexy.

I liked lard before I saw the video. After the video, I can't wait to make my own.

Uh oh......I am gonna try that......this forum is getting me into way too much trouble in the kitchen!! Hubby said this morning that we need to look into canning our own chicken cause it would probably be way tastier and better for us than the store bought cans. ....but before that happens I am betin' there will be a jar of homemade lard in my kitchen!!

Anybody tried this yet?

I've never made it but use it all the time in baking and cooking instead of shortening.

I agree. When we were in NY, we used to buy lard in the grocery store next to the butter in 1 lb. bricks. When we moved down south, we could not find lard any more. I did find it eventually at the independent meat market, but only in 10 lb pails. Weird, eh? When we were in upstate NY last Thanksgiving, I got a half dozen lard bricks from Wegmans. I feel so much better....

I don't have much to add as we don't render lard much. Have a jar in the frig from two years ago that occasionally gets used for cookies. I typically just use bacon fat which works fine for the things I cook.

Just as an update ...

I've used this process a couple of times now to make lard and it's great.

This is how the Old South Farm Museum in Woodland, GA does it at their hog killing class this last weekend:





I got to talking to the instructor/cooker for the lard; long story short: I ended up with 9 quarts of fresh lard. I was the only participant at the class of about 100 or so that either asked or got any.

Good stuff!!!!

Very cool !

as a kid growing up in a rural area of NW Minnesota we always had a hog for our own and a couple that friends of my dad kept there for butcher - at butcher time the hogs were sent off to slaughter what the others did with there's I have no clue but - depending on time ours came back whole and we (my dad) butchered it or it was cut there and every thing was given back less the guts except for heart and liver - that is when my mother rendered down the fat and made lard - I did it ounce when I was younger and now that I have read this thread I am going to do it again

Fantastic ...

Let us know if you do anything differently.

One other question ...

With that much fat, about how long did it take to cook it all down ?

Winn,

They did two batches in the time I was there. That pic of the first batch was taken at 8:22 AM and I left with my lard around 2 PM, but it was ready about an hour before that. So two batches in around 5 hours, call it 2 - 2 1/2 hours per batch, if that. And the first batch will take the longest since you start out with some water to boil the fat first; once that water is boiled off, the second batch doesn't require any since they had a big vat of melted lard already there.

We ate all the cracklins they made too! YUM, YUM!

The biggest downside to taking a class like this: I now gotta have one of those big cast iron pots!!!!

Thanks,

Winn are you Polish?
I noticed the saying in your signature, and lard is served with bread in Poland

Nah, mainly German on my dad's side and Scottish on my mom's side. Anyway, it's funny that you mention lard on bread.

Just this morning I was planning on having some eggs with toast, but when the bread popped up out of the toaster I then discovered that we were out of butter. My wife was standing there and she suggested using lard instead of butter.

I thought about it, and even said that there are probably a lot of people who do that ... but ... I wasn't quite ready to give it a go just then.

I smoked one of the three hams I got at the hog killing class - oh boy, was it good!

I also used some of the lard to flavor the green beans I cooked along with the ham - it was quite tasty as well, if I don't say so myself!!!

Just goes to show:

Neat!

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