Usually when slate has an article about food they are pushing a high carb low fat diet. This time however they posted an article suggesting (gasp) that lard is good for you, and that you should eat it instead of crisco!

http://www.slate.com/id/2219314/

Hey, great article. And it even mentions Flying Pigs Farm, from whom I mail-order my leaf lard to make my own rendered lard.

Dammit! Now everybody will want it and the price will go sky high.

ROFL

Its going to take a loooong time for that to happen, brainwashing like whats been done for the last 50 yrs doesn't disappear overnight.

Hi Merpig. How do you render your lard? Do you just throw it in a crockpot? Have you ever tried making beef tallow? Do you just throw beef fat in a crockpot for it? I'm a newbie at all of this--the only thing I routinely do is save my bacon grease for frying. I've been thinking about asking the meatcutter at the supermarket if he had extra fat, but I don't really know which fat types to ask for or how much I'd need.

--Melissa

I just chop it up into about 1-inch cubes and put them all in a 9x13 casserole dish. Then I set the oven to about 300 and put the dish in, and check on it pretty often, but after about 45 minutes to an hour the dish contains just pure liquid with little chunks of crispy cracklings floating in it.

Remove from the oven *very carefully* (that fat is HOT and can burn). With a slotted spoon I scoop out all the cracklings and put them in a bowl. Then I use a ladle to transfer the melted fat into a large glass mason jar. By the time most is ladled out there is just a little left and I can pick up the casserole dish without spilling and pour the rest into the jar.

Put it in the fridge to chill and voila, you have lard. And the cracklings are delicious to eat!

That sounds relatively straightforward. Have you ever tried making it with leftover fat from a butcher? I think I'd prefer to try doing it with a small batch once, before I consider putting in regular orders online.

Do you use lard in place of butter or olive oil or bacon fat in stuff? I'm just trying to think about how I'd cook with it. Thanks for your help.

--Melissa

I have tried it with small bits of leftover fat and it worked fine too, but you have to keep an eye on it more closely. So far I have mainly used it cook eggs or sauté veggies with it. It's famous for pastries and things, but of course I don't make those anymore.

I use it for general frying purposes, also for basting roast meat (though I often use butter for that). I have also used it in place of butter in mashed swede and in scrambled eggs and it worked quite well.

Cool, thanks for the info Merpig and alisbabe. I may just have to try my hand at it one day. My fiancee still hasn't wrapped his head around the idea of rendering fat though--he still looks at me cross-eyed when I save and use the bacon fat.

--Melissa

It still boggles my mind how fast we accepted the "experts" brainwashing us that margarine and veg. oils and Crisco were healthier than butter and lard and tallow! I keep hoping that the pendulum will swing the other way just as fast, but somehow I doubt it.

Up until about the middle 1950's most people still used sat. fat and thought nothing of it - minimal obesity and even overweight. Things shifted by the mid-1960's - margarine, veg. oils and less well-marbled meat. I wonder how much longer they need before they realize that this experiment hasn't worked and isn't going to??

Yeah....really Cyberus. I give thanks to Ancel Keys every day for having helped to keep meat prices managable!

Well .. you do have to realize that back then doctors were the voice of god re:medical science, heck back then a doctor could stick you in the hospital and not let you go until they decided they wanted to, no such thing as being allowed to discharge AMA (against medical advice). Its taken quite a few years for this medical priesthood to be knocked down to the level of mere humans

That's a hell of a scary thought, isn't it? Just for one thing, think about what they try to *feed* you in hospitals! I'm feeling perfectly well and in no need of hospitalization, but I sometimes think about what I would have to do to keep eating properly. At the very least I think I'd have to get my son or my sister to smuggle in cans of sardines packed in olive oil.

Yeah ... I shudder to think what tray load of carb-a-riffic "food" would be placed in front of me as a Type 2 diabetic should I be hospitalized.

I'm betting it would take me weeks to get my blood sugar back under control afterwards.