My First Experience of Rendering Lard

Yep, you read it right, LARD. :) Lard really isn't as bad for you as alot of people say. Here is a web site one can go and check out for more reading on the subject.

http://www.westonaprice.org/transition/fatfear.html

Lard is a monounsaturated fat. Here is a little blurb about monounsturated fats.

"Monounsaturated fats (MUFAs) lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) while increasing HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol). Including peanuts, walnuts, almonds and pistachios, avocado, canola and olive oil are high in MUFAs. MUFAs have also been found to help in weight loss, particularly body fat."

Lard is also one of the best sources of Vit. D.

I guess my take on food is a little different than alot of peoples. I like to eat things the way God made them in the first place. Alot of fresh foods (vegs and fruit). Home cooked meals etc. I figure people can't improve on what God has already made. Same with choosing what milk I feed my babies (breast milk) I find it a little strange that people think they can make a better milk for their babies than what God has already made. Anyway, I'm getting off track here, back to LARD.

Here in this house we use butter instead of marg. I hardly ever used Crisco, because it was man-made and I knew it wasn't all that great for a body. I LOVE biscuits though, so I would use it every once in a while. After moving here where we had a pig raised for us, Grandma told me that they always melted the pig fat down and make lard. They would then use it in making bread. (A couple of the kids around here is sensitive to soy, and lard was the only thing his mother could use that wouldn't bother him.) At first I just gave my fat to Grandma to use (she is sensitive to additives in food etc). I finally realized that one could make biscuits with it and so I started to use lard. This year we didn't get a pig since the Kauffmans were very busy with adding on to there house. So I started looking into buying the pig fat.

I found a place that sold it to me for 74 cents a lb. Thursday I went and picked up 30lbs of it. After that the fun began. :)

Grandma helped me to cut the fat into small chucks. Then we put the fat in a roaster and put it in the oven. I read that one could leave it in the oven all night at 225 degrees. So I did that. But my oven heated hotter than 225 during the night so my oil got a tad dark, but Grandma said it was still good and useable. Yeah!

Here is the fat chucks being put in the oven.

Here is what is left of the fat chucks when all the oil is out of them otherwise known as "cracklings". I took the little pieces of meat off them and ate them. They were sooo good, basically slow cooked and then fried pork. Very yummy, the kids though so too.

This pic is a little darker then the other cracklings I made yesterday, but you get the idea. :)


Here is the oil I got from my first batch. If I was thinking I would of took a picture of the lighter oil I got from the second batch. It was more like water looking. After the oil cooled, I poured it into 5 lb marg. containers.


From there, I put them in the frig. to get hard, more lard like. I ended up with 3 container fulls. That is 15 lbs. Grandma has a 3 lb container at her house that I gave her, so a total of 18 lbs of lard. Roughly about $1.40 a lb. Grandma check the lard they sell in chucks at the stores. They sell for about $2.40 a lb. That lard isn't the best for a person as it has added stuff in it to give is shelf life.


So now I have enough lard to last me for a while. I'm happy. Two tubs are in the freezer and one in the frig. I can't wait to make some biscuits! I've read that it is suppose to make some really good pie crust. I'll try it one day I'm sure, but not today. That was my day yesterday in between doing school and all. Hope every had as good a Friday as I had. It was a fun day. :)