Rendering Lard

I think I have officially gone off the deep end.

Way off.

Fatback

I rendered my own lard.

I know what you're thinking. “Lard is so unhealthy for you! It's all fat and fat is evil! Lard is something used by our less educated, unhealthy ancestors who didn't know a damn thing about nutrition.” Yeah, right. Except when our ancestors used lard, no one was overweight. Or had heart disease. Or obesity-related illnesses like high blood pressure, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, or any of the other horrible things we suffer from today. In fact, that stuff only really started making an appearance after Americans began shifting away from healthy, local whole foods towards manufactured foods that were more likely to have started in a petri dish than from a seed.

Pure animal fats are full of the healthy oleic fatty acids that lower cholesterol, slow down heart disease, and encourage the production of antioxidants...so basically, a responsible use of lard is a good thing!

Now, I love to cook. Capital L-love. Cooking is my respite. At the end of a long day, all I want to do is come home, cook up something awesome, and relish in the beautiful after aromas lingering through my home. I'm always looking for the next best ingredient, the best technique, or the perfect pan to make my next meal the awesomest thing I've ever concocted.

It starts...

So my new experiment is cooking with lard. I've heard it's what makes the perfect pie crust, and is great for sauteing veggies. I've heard it's great for frying too, even though that's not the strongest technique in my repertoire.

Yesterday, I visited my new favorite store, The Organic Butcher of McLean, a small boutique shop near my office. Their prices are actually pretty reasonable (which is impressive considering McLean is one of the most expensive places to live in an area where the cost of living is already through the roof!) and I love how all their meats are clearly marked with what farm they're from. I picked up ½ lb of awesome bacon and a pound of fatback. I did some googling during my lunch break, and a bunch of articles said fatback is the way to go.

After like, 2 hours, still not done. 

I didn't particularly feel, nor did I have the time, to stir a simmering pot of animal fat all evening. So I cut that stuff up and dumped it in my crock pot on low. I found an article online that swore the whole thing would be done in three hours.

It lied.

The process was great, clean, and easy...but took much longer than three hours.

Finally!

First, chop your pieces of fatback into smaller chunks. The smaller, the better—the fat will render out faster, and you'll have more manageable pieces of cracklins left over when all is said and done.

Second, walk away for an hour. Come back, stir it, then walk away again. Repeat until the fat has rendered out and only crunchy fried bits of Southern goodness remain. 

I strained the fat through a small juice sieve over a wide mouthed Mason jar (with the handle resting on a glass for balance). 

It's that easy!

Lessons Learned:

• Cut your fat back into itty bitty pieces. I cut them into chunks, so not all the fat was able to render out completely. Smaller pieces would actually make cracklins. Not the ugh-a-licious bits of grossness I ended up with. (I took a bite. I regret that decision).
• Do it all at once. I had to let the lard render out over night, but then hit the snooze button a few too many times. I didn't want to burn anything while I was at work, so I turned the crock pot off and just let it hang out all day . It got another couple hours on high after work to make it pourable into the Mason jar. Because of this, I got a smokier flavor to the lard than I wanted. This batch won't be good for baking, but is perfectly fine for sauteing!
• Next time, I want to try rendering it on the stove. Or just render more lard at once. I wanted to start small since its my first time, but the fat barely covered the bottom of my very large crock pot. I'd probably get better cracklins if there was more liquid to fry in!