The Lost Art of Cooking With Lard

[Purveyor]

Most of us long for the authenticity of old-fashioned recipes, in which farm-fresh ingredients contribute honest flavors. Free-range eggs, with their sunny, orange yolks; freshly churned butter sparkling with the last drops of its briny whey: This is the way food ought to taste.

Thoughtful shoppers can resurrect some of those flavors by shopping carefully at farmstands and farmers markets. But one great heritage ingredient missing from most tables today is lard. Used in kitchens for centuries, lard (rendered from pork fat) has a unique mix of different types of fats that give it wonderful qualities, especially for baking and frying. If you’ve never eaten foods cooked with lard, you’re in for a lovely surprise when you do.

Like most animal fats, lard is higher in saturated fat than most vegetable oils. Lard’s reputation was tarnished decades ago when manufacturers persuaded us that Crisco and Parkay, which are vegetable oils that are “hydrogenated” using chemical processes to change the oils to solids, were better choices than traditional animal fats. Then, in the ’90s, when the medical establishment began to hammer on saturated fats as the culprits in heart disease, lard’s shunning was complete.

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New research shows that saturated fat is not the heart-slayer it was once deemed to be, whereas the trans fats found in hydrogenated fats are worse for us than we realized. (Learn more in The Fats You Need for a Healthy Diet.) It turns out that the trans fats in hydrogenated vegetable margarines and shortenings are lopsided in their ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, and those ratios have been linked to heart disease

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Look to lard for flaky, tender biscuits and pie crusts, and discover how its high smoke point (370 degrees Fahrenheit) makes it ideal for frying. Grit magazine’s lard book includes information on how to locate sources for lard from pastured pigs and instructions to render it yourself.

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/cooking-with-lard-zmgz12djzkon.aspx?page=2#ixzz2GMoWTUXk

<b>comment</b>We tried lard a couple of years ago after reading another article from this magazine about it. Finally a pie-crust and fried eggs just look my Grandma, rest her soul, used to make. As with most everything, use in moderation...

[yellerpup]

1. I render lard every time I make Mexican food.

For me, rendering the lard is the first step. The flavor in fresh flour tortillas and refried beans is authentic and delicious and in pie crusts lard delivers an outstanding flakiness. I store the lard that I don't use immediately in the freezer and it lasts up to a year (if you forget about it) but it's never lasted that long at my house! I am also partial to duck fat and save every drop after I cook a duck. This is great for oven roasting vegetables, sauteeing vegetables in prep for sauce-y dishes and soups because it adds depth of flavor but potatoes oven-fried in duck fat is sublime. Our bodies can't absorb most vitamins if they are not ingested with a little fat; we have evolved to be able to recognize and process animal fats, and I use them instead of fat substitutes. I also use olive oil and coconut oil. My grandma must've been very much like yours. One of my favorite breakfasts was biscuits and pork chop gravy.

[Warpy]

2. Lard and butter are both more heart healthy than trans fats

that are still found in most margarines and many solid shortenings.

I don't eat pork mostly out of longstanding habit. However, there are a lot of local foods in the supermarkets that I don't read ingredient labels on because I know they contain hefty amounts of lard. I certainly am not enough of a fanatic to ask about it in restaurants serving local cuisine and if someone honors me by cooking for me, I'm certainly not going to look askance at it no matter what it contains.

If you're going to use solid fats in cooking anything, use lard or butter. If you're going to use oils, use the lightest ones you can find or get used to tasting real olive oil.

I've used these guidelines for years. Imagine my great satisfaction when the information about trans fats came out and vindicated me.

[lizerdbits]

3. I always use lard for biscuits and pie crusts

Well, a lard/butter mix for flavor. Most of what I find in grocery stores is hyrdogenated for some reason. Fortunately there's a Dutch market nearby that sells plain old lard with nothing added.

[Purveyor]

4. That is true about the hyrdongenated lard. We have a country meat market that supplies the real

stuff for us.

Thanks for mentioning that.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. That's my problem, too...

best I can find is 50/50 lard and hydrogenated vegetable oil. Even the local farmers who do their own killing don't have the stuff-- say there's no demand for it.

(There is, however, always a fair amount of bacon fat/grease around here.)

[Tab]

5. Gimme French Fries with that any day

In fact, most "classic" foods were made with "decadent" ingredients. It's so hard to go back, sometimes.

[dark forest]

6. Best fried chicken

I ever ate, I cooked in lard. Even my wife agreed, it was the best.

Unfortunately, she thinks it's unhealthy and won't let me do it anymore, but dang! it was good

[Mojorabbit]

8. I render lard from wild pig

hubby gets with his bow. They only have nice fat in the autumn and are pretty lean most of the rest of the year. It lasts a long time in the fridge and I have actually never had it go rancid on me.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. I've used lard for both pie crusts and biscuits.