The - Making of Lard - and it uses.

[17hornet 188]

A continuation forward of - 'Bringing Home the Bacon'

 

Having killed the pig and turned it into many yummy food items consisting of -
sausages and cured meats, BBQ treats of steaks, ribs, liver, salami, pasta additives,
and even boiled pigs cheek and snout (I scoffed some while cooking it up - so.... good!)
Trotters for later dishes and some other bits I still dont know.

This time the fat was going to be thrown out, in history where there was no refrigeration,
many foods were kept under lard in a cool area like a cellar.

Some foods were kept covered in beeswax, and still others were others were salted inside of barrels of salt,
others dried to emulate cardboard, smoked, pickled or bottled. Foods in water under olive oil, in olive oil itself in clay jars.
Some foods just needed a cool cellar to last, others dried out like grains.
Even fat as a calorie rich food source in itself.

As technology improved in making glass jars and tins, so did the methods or storage change,
then there was the convenience of refrigeration.

BUT until only a few years ago my in-laws still kept the sausages and salami under 'lard',
in a bucket down in the cellar.
With a fridge handy, why did they do this?
Well firstly it kept air and bacteria out of the meat and skin surface, so preserved the meat, the skin was never dry because
of the lard and the meat didnt need to be refrigerated just like the old country. the sausages were layered between lard so
after removing a sausage they would just check that there was no exposed part of the next sausage one layer down,
just covering it if needed.
Fridges are short term use for food care, they dry meats out too.

My Grand-mother also did this along with the other pickled foods and preserves which she made and
sold to WW2 German soldiers in barracks down the road.
She collected scraps from them and grew the pigs, so the circle went - her own little local blackmarket enterprise.

She raised a family of 7 kids with her work.
So to her and many others, fat from animals has been very important to not waste, all sorts of cultures, all over the world.

Back to my present day article.

Origin:

Middle English (also denoting fat bacon or pork): from Old French ‘bacon’, from Latin lardum, laridum, related to Greek larinos ‘fat’.


Mainly from a market in the USA of developing Canola crops, and need to find a market - 'shortening' looks like lard, but it isnt.
We have this repetitive drone 'fat is BAD' for you, but that is like everything, too much of anything is bad for you.
With that in mind I decided to keep the fat and to 'cook' it down into lard, filtering that to have some prime product.

Not having asked about the process, seen it, but not asked, I always assumed that it was simple to just put it into a big pot
and heat until the fat all melted out - that would be easy, right ?

 

LOL, of course it was not quite what I expected.
Lumps of fat into pot, apply gentle heat so as to not burn anything, give it some time, give it some more time , give it even more time....
things were going slow. The fat was melting out but it was so slow and it even started to burn onto the bottom of the pot.
After several hours I did have a good amount of melted fat in the pot, but this was too slow and something was not right.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continued -


I decided to clean out the cooked down leftovers and replace them with cut down chunks of fat. This was a good improvement
and the process went faster but was still not quite right for my memory of the usual pace.
 

 

Of course when you need help, call the 'help desk' !

I picked up the phone and called the Mother in-law for help, got the low down after she laughed at me, I went back to the
pot and this time cubed the fat into no more than 2cm x 2cm blocks.
 

 

 

Now we are talking about 12 kilos of fat here, so it is no small effort, and I did it as small job lots. As it melted down and was finished,
I cut up more and melted it down, scooping out the 'dross' of crispy stuff, then pouring the liquid lard through a makeshift filter into
another pot to cool before filling up the Cooking pot with small bits of fat and starting over the cycle.
This was good, things were now moving better and with less mess, and smell.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Continued -
 

Did I advise to do this outside? The smell is greasy and reminds you of a pork BBQ, the bubbling like foam on top of the liquid lard
is caused by water in the fat cells, when the bubbling stops the water and lard is cooked out of the fat cells.

Cooled liquid lard was then scooped into an ice cream tub and let cool further and harden at room temp.
All up 8 liters of clean lard ready for use.
Had I acted sooner then it could have been twice that volume, some fat had already been tossed out.

 

Now you say,   "What do you do with that lot ?"

Glad you asked, here is a link for an Web search -

duckduckgo.com/?q=uses+of+lard&t=lm&ia=web

www.daringgourmet.com/how-to-render-lard...y-you-should-use-it/

It's used firearms lubricant/shooting lube
It's used for food preservation
It's used as a food
It's used in foods like baked items
It's used used for cooking like deep frying
It's used cutting lube when drilling or taping or threading
It's used fluxing molten lead for casting
It's used sheet metal work
It's used cooking chicken (original KFC cooking)
It's used candles
It's used bird feeders
It's used skin softener for dry skin
It's used cosmetics
It's used for explosives manufacturing
It's used Cast iron to Cast iron high temp lube
It's used medically, particularly as a carrier for fat-soluble medications.
It's used as a lubricant.
It's used as a fuel.
Mixed with beeswax, it's used to condition leather.
It's used as a starting component of soap.

So as you can see it has had a long life and thousands of uses, sub-uses of the above, and others not so obvious.
But at home it will be the go to for food prep and cooking, metal working processes lube and for leather conditioning.

Can you find or think of other uses for LARD ?

 

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[Mister Gain 1,759]

Always fancied curing some nice thick back fat as 'Lardo', but never got around to it, mainly because the pigs seem to be bred lean.

[terryd 8,029]

Great read. Good to be in a position to do things like that. 

[17hornet 188]

Buying a butcher shop pig, they are quite lean as they are grown for the meat yield at a young age, ultimately little fat.

But as we do, you can also collect fat from your cooking, bacon, pork, lamb, beef, you collect it and when you have a reasonable amount you heat it and filter it like I did. I would collect poultry fats seperate.

These fats are great for cooking and add great flavour, withstand very high temps and easy to filter again if particles are in it.

Position to do this? Well....  farm kill and home processing, its more about season and 2 days of space until the work is done.

Thanks guys.