Got Lard?

Our friends raised a pig for us all spring/summer, and we had it slaughtered about a month ago. On a whim, I asked for the fat which would normally be discarded by the butcher.

I had NO IDEA there would be so much fat. Piles and mounds and hunka-chunks of pig fat.
So yesterday, Mariann & I channelled our inner-Pioneer woman and set about rendering the fat into usable lard.


We hacked it up into pieces and put them into two big pots. (Note: if you ever plan on doing this yourself, make the chunks smaller.)

We set the pots on medium-high heat and waited. And waited. And stirred. And waited. (More notes: having a friend along for lard rendering is vital! It's pretty boring work, and besides, you've got to have someone to share all the "fat lard" jokes that you'll come up with.)

This is what it looked like after about an hour - the chunks were getting all gelatinous and yellowish. (Yet another note: Open your windows! Our house/clothes/hair reeked of hot lard all evening. Next time, I think I'll set up the camping stove outside and do it there.)

Finally, after about two hours, we got a nice pot of boiling grease. We drained it through cheesecloth (forgot to take a picture of that), then ladled it into mason jars.

All that was left were the cracklins. Supposedly, these little bits of deep fried, crispy pig fat are quite a delicacy. One blog suggested using them instead of croutons on your salad. Honestly!?! If I'm gonna eat a salad, the last thing I want on it is crunchy blobs of lard. Just sayin.

But, since we were still harnessing our inner-domesticated goddesses, we decided to give them a try. Yeah . . . they pretty much tasted like fried, unsalted, uncured pig fat. Gross.

At the end of the evening, we had seven pints of rendered pig fat! They were so beautiful sitting there on the counter. I had such a feeling of accomplishment.

Here they are the next day, after they'd had time to solidify. Not quite as pretty, but I'm still awfully dang excited about them!

BTW, did you know that lard is not all that bad for you? It has less saturated fat (the bad fat) than butter, while it also has more than twice as much monosaturated fat (the good fat) than butter. And it has NO trans fats.

So YEAH for lard!