A WHOLE YEARS worth of LARD in 1 DAY

we're going to take this fat and turn it into usable lard for an entire year in our busy household [Music] it's a busy work day here on Riverbend I wanted to bring you guys along because today we have a major project I do this project once a year ideally if I can get it all done in one day and that is that we are rendering all of the lard from this year that we raised this year look at this there's a box here a box here a big box there they've been defrosting for several hours and we're going to take this fat and turn it into usable lard for an entire year in our busy household before we get started I wanted to show you my large setup this is really important log days can be really busy days so you have to make sure you're all set up before you get going first of all we have our jars we washed these last night we got them all dried I really prefer using pint-sized jars for my lard because they kind of sit on the kitchen counter for a while kind of like butter like we bring out one jar and it sits there and then we use it for a while and before we can get to the next jar sometimes it can be you know a week of using one jar you know lard is a fat so it can start to go rancid if you're waiting too long to use it so I really like to have the smaller jars so we can get through them more quickly because sometimes the quart jars just take too long for us to get through but I ran out of these pint-sized Wide Mouth Jars this year I think I have them filled with pickles and other things still sitting on the shelf we're gonna have to go with a less than ideal wide mouth quart jars but we've got them all ready to go and then we have our grinder set up now you don't have to grind your fat for lard but it does make a much better product if you grind your fat your fat will melt and and turn into a lard a whole lot faster so it's a lot quicker of a project even with the grinding step added in you also get a better return so you get more usable lard for your fat with the smaller chunks and I do know a lot of people who don't even bother to chop and they just throw the entire chunks of fat like this into their pan to melt and that does work too but again you get a lot of waste and you get not as much usable product demand and then we've got our bus tubs over here we love these things we use these every time we're dealing with fat Abigail's getting them nice and clean for us thank you Abigail yeah and we're getting the rest of the kitchen cleaned up I've got some good helpers today Brianna's here helping and then we're gonna get all of our pots going on the stove so we're pulling out every single stock pot we have which is three big ones and I'm hoping we can do it all in one day [Music] there's two different types of fat when it comes to pig fat that you want to render into lard and you have your back flat and then you have your leaf lard or your Leaf fat and it's really important to keep the two separate because that leaf lard makes the best pastry dough so that's really good today we're starting with the back fat now we've got everybody set up in their stations Rachel thank you what are you doing this morning I'm chopping it so it fits into the grinder Brianna what are you up to okay grind it down this to make it small and it'll come right out there and into the tub and then Abigail what are you doing I'm going to put it in put it into the pot okay and then Mama what are you doing I'm gonna be responsible for the stirring and actually rendering it over in the stove we're gonna get a little bit of fat in each pot right now to start so we can just get a nice melted layer where we're really going to babysit it as the pan starts and then as we get more and more in there we can kind of step away a little bit and not worry about it so closely we can let it cook for little bits of time when you're first starting your lard it's really really important that you just keep saying to yourself low and slow low and slow you just want to make sure you're not scorching anything at the bottom of the pan don't put water in the bottom that is the opposite of what you want to do to have a lard that can sit on your shelf for a year at a time for the moment we've got two pans started and we're keeping it stirred and look at that you're just looking to get a nice layer of melted fat across the bottom [Music] all the first layer of fat has melted and so now we're ready to start piling in more fat into this pan and we can be less and less careful as we get more and more melted fat down at the bottom keep stirring it regularly but it's not going to Scorch as easily now that we have that nice layer down there box number two awesome you want attention beads just fat what are you doing today I'm going to get Abby's cars and Lana's too and mine because I'm gonna come back in the kitchen and play all right sounds like fun it will thanks well the girls are keeping the uh lard going for a second and I thought I'd step away and switch a load of laundry the first type of rendering lard is to get it melted all the way down and this is really important because the point of rendering large is that we're melting it and then we're gonna cook off all the other tissues anything that's in there that's not pure fat we're also going to cook off any moisture or liquid that would get in there because that liquid is what makes your lard go bad really quickly it's the absolute enemy of long storing fat then we're gonna strain it and we're gonna let it cool in jars before we get it into storage [Music] lard can store on the Shelf if you do a really good job rendering it and it will last for up to a year if you have a really nice cool location I don't have a really nice cool relocation so what I tend to do is put a bunch of lard on the shelf and I use that first and then I put the rest of it into the freezer to get me a little bit longer this is the last of last year's alarm so I'm doing this just in time I'm almost at a large so good thing we're rendering oh look I'm getting behind on my job here we go foreign I hoped that we would get all of the back fat in the two pots so that we could have the third pot just for the leaf Lord but I don't think that's gonna happen we still have about half of the second box to do and you can see the pots are starting to fill up we've got a little more room in this really big one but you always have to remember especially if you're cooking on a gas stove that this is boiling fat so you want to leave yourself some room at the top of your pot like don't overflow it or overfill it because this is going to have to boil and boil pretty hard for a while and you don't want a kitchen fire a fat fire with this much fat that would be really really dangerous but look at this right here you guys you can see the little bits of stuff that are coming to the Top This is what is known as cracklings now they're not ready yet they haven't cooked enough but you can see they're tiny and that's because we're grinding the fat so we're making real really really efficient use of all of that fat and it's really getting all of the lard out of it the problem is is that if you've ever had fresh cracklings you know that they are an absolute treat and my kids love these things I want to make sure I get some crackling so we're actually going to hand chop just a little bit of the lard at the very end so that we can have some nice sized cracklings we'll salt them and just eat a little bit fresh thank you [Music] you can see this one will only be about a third full but that's fine this one is cooking away right now it's probably gonna have to cook for I'd say 45 minutes or so to make sure everything's cooked down really well okay last box and this is the leaflet if you look at this leaf lard you can see it's very globby in shape it is not the long thin straight like very rectangular shape and that's good that's exactly what we're looking for leaf lard is coming off from around the organs the internal organs like the kidneys in that area and so it's kind of a lot globby or in shape it's going to be a lot softer to work with this is still really Frozen which is really helpful when you're grinding fat if it gets too warm it can really jam up the grinder we found it's best if you let it defrost for several hours but not completely that way it's frozen enough that it's grindable [Music] praise the Lord I Saw The Light it's really close to coffee bake coffee break do you drink coffee no you guys do oh we do what do you want to do at coffee break eat snacks eat snacks oh what kind of snack are you gonna have a coffee break Apple an apple yum okay sounds good we're getting close [Music] it's easy to get lard on everything on a on a large day it's all over our hands I think we've done a good job on the floor it's not on the floor yet but it's definitely on the camera screen [Music] ah there we go that's better little vinegar helps everything foreign [Music] event yeah so all the lard is now ground yep wow we're gonna get done with this project really quickly it's not even coffee break it's not even 10 30 in the morning yet and we have the all the fat ground we've got three pots of back fat or regular everyday lard going and it's actually progressing really really well and then we've got two or one and a half big tubs of lard over here this is the leaf lard so we'll do that next as soon as these pots are ready but I wanted to show you guys really fast remember how I told you that we wanted to boil it until the bubbles stop coming so quickly this is that last pot that I did so I started this last and you can see it's really bubbling pretty hard still but look at this one over here now it almost looks like I have the heat down lower but that's not true it heats up the same as it was before it's just starting to boil off all of the liquids all of the impurities and so what you're ending up with is just fat in there so it's bubbling less and before long it's got a pretty much not Bubble at all here's that other pot same thing it's starting to reduce its bubble not because I've turned the heat down but because it's getting closer to done now remember how we added in those last little bits of cracklings the big ones you you can see the difference these little tiny things that are in the pot I can almost not even scoop them up that's the cracklings that are left over from the ground fat these big guys are the cracklings that are left over from the nice hand chopped fat we're making such a good use of our fat by having it ground you actually get a ton more lard but you don't get the good crackling so we're gonna let these guys cook a little bit longer and we're gonna go take a little break oh it's nice to get outside that kitchen was getting really really humid and very hot hey look who's coming they must have figured that it was coffee break all right you guys ready for a coffee break all right all the cows got out what happened with the cows they stepped over the fence and it wasn't on oh because you guys were working on it yeah and so they figured it out and they stepped right over it all right time for a break let's go we've got cookies for you foreign [Music] Gus just loves his rubs [Music] oh these are the Pressed flowers huh when did you do these last um summer last summer just get them ready to use for some art or something yeah color do some coloring yeah monkeys and butterflies back to work you're gonna get this all cleaned up yay put away it's gonna take a lot of I see you've got really hot water and I think that's good hot water and soap and all of the cleaning things so that's really good I've turned this off for a little bit because I don't like walking out of the kitchen with fat cooking but you can see now that the bubbles have died back completely because there's no heat on it you can see what it's starting to look like and you can see it starts to take on this yellowish color and that's normal it's going to come clear when we're done with it but right now because there's still some of those meat particles some of that tissue in there it takes on that kind of golden brown of that starting to cook here's the other one almost done and here's that most recent one you can see it's not nearly as far along and it's still kind of a yellow color and not that golden brown we're going to turn them all back on and we're gonna get ready to strain out the cracklings probably in about 10-15 minutes these will be ready to come out okay the fat has all come back up to a full temperature and take a look at this this is that younger one still boiling although that's decreasing a bit but look at how still this is you can see there's little tiny bits of bubbles happening but it is decreased bubbling significantly now take a look at those cracklings you can see they're starting to turn a little bit of a golden brown we are really really close to removing them we're ready to scoop out the cracklings but the first thing we always need to do when we're scooping anything out of a pot of fat is turn off all the flames on the stove it's just really important foreign [Music] we're just gonna sprinkle them with a little bit of salt and let them cool for just a minute because they are really really hot right now and then they'll be ready to nibble on now we got all the big ones off let's scoop all the way down to the bottom of the pot oh and you can see all those little teeny cracklings we want to pull as many of those off as we can right now without getting too worried about it I'm just using a pretty big frying spider I'm just gonna let it drain a little bit and then put it right into a bowl here some people squeeze all of the fat out of these and then they'll put them into small portions in a freezer bag and then use them throughout the year to flavor their um their cornbread or different things like that they are incredibly Rich so you can't eat too many of them but they do have a lot of flavor in there they're actually really good you could put them in things like chili they were ready to move on to the next step here of the Lord but I wanted you to see what I'm seeing here and this is that first pot that we've pulled all the cracklings out of or at least all the big pieces of it look at how we are getting no more big bubbles none of the big boiling bubbles look over here see those still have big bubbles happening and definitely over here we've got big bubbles happening those big bubbles tell you that there's moisture still in there impurities so we want those to be all the way gone and as soon as we see them all the way gone we are ready to go ahead and pull this off and string this so I'm going to go ahead and turn the heat off right now and I want to show you my setup that I have here I have my good stainless steel canning funnel you really do want to use a metal funnel for this this is incredibly hot you do not want to use anything that has plastic or dyes or anything like that this is what we use for milk filters for when we're filtering out the milk you could use a coffee filter you could use some cheese cloth but you want to make sure whatever it is has no color dye in it because it will strain out that dye because it's so hot over this I'm gonna put a little bit coarser of a filter this is a metal filter again you don't want plastic you don't want nylon this will melt those nylon filters and that's just to get out the bigger chunks so I don't go through as many of the paper filters as I would otherwise [Music] why this is really really hot we're going to go ahead and give it a really quick wipe down on the rim and then get a canning flat and a ring on here we're not actually canning these but these will seal down because this is so incredibly hot right now so you have to make sure that you wipe your Ram with a little bit of vinegar to get any excess fat off there that would keep it from sealing and then set it aside to cool it's going to need to sit really still for about 12 maybe 16 hours [Music] foreign test out the cracklings they might be hot so be careful okay okay toasty on the inside they're really really good really good [Music] they kind of like flake and fall apart and they're really really hot so be careful those are hot boys privates [Music] what do you guys think they're really good yeah what do you think Becca yummy hot yeah yummy they're good you're good you like them yeah it's two o'clock in the afternoon and we have gotten done with all the back fat and we've got most of the leaf lard into the pot now and I wanted to show you how much back fat lard we got something like 42 quarts of everyday lard now I want to point out something though I'm sure you guys can see the difference in color they are going to get significantly different in color from how they are now as they cool down they're going to go to like almost completely white they'll be a really creamy white here's the current lard that we're using that we rendered last year it's going to turn into that kind of opaque white as it cools overnight but you can see that starting off I've got three different colors of larger this one's nice and white and clear this one's much more yellow and this is actually if you can see it this one's actually a little bit lighter yellow than this one this has to do with how long I cooked each one this is about ideal you really want this this one I kind of got busy and I forgot what I was doing and stopped paying attention and I overcooked the crackling rings in there so this is still great lard it's just going to have a lot more of a roasty flavor when I use it so I'm probably going to really use that for vegetables and meat and this one's somewhere in between this is going to be really good lard for everything really want to aim towards this but if you end up with that it's still going to taste great [Music] now we have all of the leaf lard melted in the pot and we're just waiting for it to cook down just a little bit more before we strain it out I'm being really careful with this one making sure that I don't overcook it like I did that other batch we want this stuff ready to go into holiday pastries like pie crust oh it's gonna be so good I think we are ready to go ahead and get this completely strained and in its jars we're gonna wrap it up it's almost 3 30. [Music] thank you look we got it all done that's 13 pints of leaf lard and what's that 14 quarts of the leaf Lord that's on top of the 41 quarts of regular everyday lard that we already did and oh my goodness I am so glad to have this done a lot of times I break this up and I do like one pot at a time and just make it really stretch but you know you get everything really dirty you get it kind of greasy it took us about seven hours altogether but not all of that was active work some of that was when it was just cooking down now this is gonna cool overnight and it's gonna end up being really really nice and creamy white now that is a lot of lard that should get us through a whole year and look at all of them they are all nice and solid this is that leaf lard look at how white this is here let's go compare this to the other ones this is that everyday lard from the back fat and you can see the difference there the everyday lard is not quite as white it's close and definitely that stuff that I overcooked is not quite as white now these are ready to go down into the cool basement some of them I'm going to put in the freezer and they will last for the whole year until I need them but you guys it's not that hard to make your own lard so make sure you check out this video right here on step-by-step directions on how to make your own lard

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 792,304

Keywords: Homesteading, Homesteading Family, render lard from pork fat, render lard stovetop, render lard in crock pot, render lard instant pot, render lard in oven, render lard in slow cooker, render lard temperature, render lard on stove, render lard for soap, render lard from pork belly, render lard recipe, homesteading family render lard, homesteading family lard

Id: aenbA1cTYEo

Length: 25min 49sec (1549 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 05 2022