Where can I find pure lard?
 

Where can I find pure lard?

I'm talking about pure, unrefined, non-hydrogenated lard? I'd be happy to travel far and wide for pork fat. I can just taste the wonderful dishes I can make.

Maybe from a butcher who cuts up his own carcasses?

You could always road trip down here to Mississippi. They sell it at most grocery stores here. Matter of fact, I bought a new wok the other day and was going to buy a pound of lard for the seasoning procedure...

I used to make my own suite (sp) for my birds....and i got the lard from my butcher. I got creative and took cookie cutters and filled them with the lard...which i had to use the food processor for, then mixed in the seed and some peanut butter...and froze them....and made Christmas Gifts....the joke was they were not for the person, they were for the birds..lol.

You may have better luck contacting a butcher that also processes deer, as they mix some of the beef fat in with the deer burger....(IIRC)

I'm thinking of "lard" as rendered fat. The butcher here does separate the fat from the rest of the meat....but they don't cook it out. My mother/grandmother used to do that each fall when they butchered the years meat. Great tasting, but I don't know where you could find real, homemade lard now.
Ruth

buy the fat from the butcher
render it yourself

it's easy to do
:)

Ask your butcher for the fat from around the kidneys. Cut it up, and render it slowly, on a very low heat, in the oven. That's how I do mine, and it's the easiest, least messy way I've found.

I pay only for beef fat. The pork fat I get for nothing because it's considered a waste product in these crazy days of low-fat madness. :lol:

Lard is actually pretty tasteless. They use it in baking, or used to. You wouldn't want your pie crust to taste like pork. :)

Now, if you want flavorful fats then I'd suggest duck, chicken or goose. Roast the bird and save the fat off it.

I don't know if this is what you mean, i took the lard from the butcher, put it thru the food processor, then melted it, it seemed like there were strings or something that i had to put out.....let it cool, then added my bird seed them put into shapes.........If after cooking if i let it harden, it was white hard, not like crisco............

Thanks friends for your suggestions. I found this site
http://www.prairiepridepork.com/pro...ex.php?catid=20 for already rendered lard, but rendering it yourself with free fat from the butcher sounds like a more frugal idea. :D

Well kinda. You take the "fat" from the butcher...cook (render) it, stiring often, skim off the cracklins when they float to the top, then the liquid fat left is lard. At least that is how we made it. Usually in a 5 gallon pot over an open fire, being very careful to not burn it.
I know someone on here said they rendered it in the oven. That sounds much easier but I don't know how that works (temps, time, ect). HTH's.
Ruth

As someone said earlier, lard is the name given to the rendered fat. Suet or back fat is what you want to ask the butcher for.

There are a couple of ways to render the fat here: http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com...ender-lard.html

It looks like back fat in the photo. Nothing wrong with that (I often use it), but suet from around the kidneys is better, IMO, because it has a less "porky" flavour.

I do mine at a slightly lower temperature 140-145ºC. I don't really time it, but keep draining the rendered fat every now and then. I whack the heat up at the end to make crispy, fatty bits of goodness that don't seem to last very long at all! :yum:

I get mine at my local Hispanic Fresh Market-they have a butcher shop. It comes in long round deli type containers and is more liquidy and darker than the hyrdogenated white bricks.

my grandma in the US buys 5 pound buckets of it from a huge shop called BJs! :)