How to make Lard..simple, easy and fun!

you wouldn't think that fat would turn into something that pretty hey there folks this is josh stoneyridge farmer welcome back to the farm kitchen notice anything missing tell me what you noticed missing on the wall back there today is going to be a fun day guys we are gonna teach you how to make lard we're gonna take pork fat and we're gonna make lard so when we cook here on the farm and if you didn't catch the last video in the series in the kitchen we did this we restored cast iron cookware it was super awesome super fun guys i'll post a link to it at the end of this video we've made lard before on the channel it was about three years ago and we're gonna do it again today we're gonna give you just a brief tutorial on what we're doing so come along today as we teach you how to take pork fat just like this and make lard we'll render lard all right [Music] all right guys welcome to the stoney ridge farm if this is your first time to the farm welcome we're on 150 acres here in the foothills of the blue ridge mountains of north carolina we're building a first generation farm we have cows and chickens right now meat birds and laying hens and we're gonna have hogs and all kinds of stuff goats all kinds of fun stuff here on the farm so if you're not subscribed jump in pound the like button and subscribe the channel you're gonna miss something if you don't we're here to teach you in every video and have fun so what we have today is leaf fat what happened was my neighbor he killed hogs and he didn't want to make lard he didn't want to use the leaf fat and there are two types of fat on the hog there are probably more than two types but what we're going to talk about today is leaf fat there's the fat that goes on bacon okay so there's that fat that uh on the ham of the hog on the on the leg or the shoulder there's a layer of fat about that thick typically the leaf fat is the same stuff that you have inside of you and i have inside of me it's the fat that's inside okay so when you open the hog up and yet all the organs come out and there are actually some kidneys in here too when you open the hog up to butcher it there is fat attached inside the back of the rib cage and that's what leaf fat is this is leaf fat okay it's just fat it's just white fat so what we have to do is take these huge chunks of fat and we're going to take a big butcher knife like this a big cooking knife and we're also going to be using a small paring knife and we're going to take these huge chunks of fat and we're going to cut them up into little cubes about that big about two inches by two inches and then we're going to cook them down so we'll talk a little bit about how you cook them down after i cut them up this can be a bit of an overwhelming task for some people so that's why we have the big butcher knife guys and the butcher's worst enemy is a dull knife so make sure your knives are nice and sharp okay we want to cut this into manageable pieces about that size right there so i'm going to start first start and the leaf fat is very very soft okay what you want to do is you want to put this in the refrigerator and let this get a little bit hard so if it's at room temperature you're going to have troubles all right we're going to take this leaf fat and we're going to cut it into sections that are more manageable for us to use now you'll notice while i'm cutting this up i'm going to speed up the footage here in a minute but you're going to notice that there's some little specks on here there might be a hog hair on here or something like that so you want to make sure that you get all of that stuff out of there and that's why you're cutting it up and dicing it up into little pieces guys if you don't have if you have a homestead and you don't have a pan like this you need some you need two or three of these i'll post links down the video description amazon links for some of those and i'll also post some to my favorite knives i use a lot of dexter brand knives they are absolutely fantastic so let's get rid of some of this and what we're going to do is we're going to cut it up into small pieces again about two inches by two inches and we're going to be putting them in this pot right here okay let's get busy cutting and we're cutting out we're also looking for any what i would call trash in there too so hair or anything like that i mean this was a hog this was an animal so this is a not meant to be gross or anything like that this is just life this is butchering this is uh this is living a country life and if you went to the grocery store and you bought pork chops and you didn't think it came from a pig then let me let me clue you in a little bit uh yeah it came from a pig that's about the size that you want okay you want to look for little pieces of meat and stuff like that too you don't want to put that in there and we want to have a scrap bowl right here is our scrap bowl we'll set it right here and any pieces that we don't want we'll discard them in the scrap bowl and they will go either in the trash or in the woods for the raccoons raccoons got to eat too let's get busy [Music] guys what you need to know here is that there is a membrane sometimes when you get leaf fat if you go to your local butcher shop a lot of times they'll sell you this stuff for pennies on the dollar sometimes they'll just give it to you because it's oftentimes discarded so what you need to know is sometimes there's a little membrane on the leaf fat okay what i'm finding also is that it's easier to use a smaller knife so cut it up when it's great big chunks cut it into smaller chunks with the big knife and then break out your little paring knife again these are dexter brand knives i'm a huge huge fan of dexter brand knives none of this is sponsored or anything like that but i'll put links to the knives that we use here in the video and also put links to uh everything we use in the video pretty much we're going to be using a hot plate outside so we'll see you guys once we get this all trimmed up and what we're doing again is cutting them into small squares this fat is solid at room temperature but when you heat it up it liquefies okay and that's the lard that's what we're doing so we're taking uh and rendering the fat the way we render fat is we cook it down much like when you cook bacon in the frying pan all that grease comes out well that's what we're doing is we're rendering this and probably one quart jar of lard is going to last the average person a year or so so this is something that's saving money and it's not letting anything go to waste and that's what it's all about here on the farm we don't waste feed we don't waste animals we don't waste anything so that's what it's all about not throwing things away oftentimes some of the best parts are the or the things that people throw away we learn this here on the farm and if you've got a cutting board you want to have seasoned let me tell you what this cutting board is going to be a rock star now we were going to use a cast iron skillet uh that we cleaned a cast iron pot that we cleaned but the cast iron pot that we did uh in yesterday's video or day before yesterday's video i ended up getting a hole in it i kind of tapped on it with a screwdriver and it poked a hole in it it was so sad we're getting there we probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 pounds of lard here i've got quart jars set aside i don't want to touch them but i'll show them to you they're right here and right there you're going to have very soft and subtle hands so guys if you got rough hands and you do this tonight is the night to rub your wife's feet because your hands are going to be so subtle and soft [Music] okay guys here's your educational moment that is a kidney that's what a kidney looks like here we are we're doing this outside so that is our lard all cut up our leaf fat all cut up it's not lard yet it'll be lard in a minute what we're using here is just a hot plate here this is a toastmaster hot plate we could do this on a wood stove it's just not cold enough but we really don't want to do this inside i've got this on a cart this is a titan attachments shop cart and it's super duper handy super sturdy i can lay on this thing it's really tough we probably have a pounds of pork fat here now questions i got asked a whole lot last time we did this how do you start it well how do you start cooking bacon you know it's pretty much as simple as starting to cook bacon so we'll just start on a low heat and then we'll bring up our heat gradually to a boil okay you want to put this in a very stable location this will be very stable it'll be just fine for what we're doing here so we're going to turn the heat on low and i've got to babysit this thing for probably the next three hours what we'll do i'll get a flat faced spoon or spatula and i'll stir it a metal spatula and what we're basically doing is cooking all of this down much like you cook bacon down and we'll cook it down into a liquid and we'll put it in jars it's a job but you're going to make enough to have for years to come a lot of times this stuff will be shelf stable if you want to you can sprinkle a little bit of salt in there it won't hurt anything it's kind of like salted butter i guess so a little bit of salt would be okay i'd say for a pot this big and this is uh this is a pretty darn big pot for for a total of about 20 pounds i'd say put a teaspoon of salt in there and that'd be plenty okay so we're going to start cooking this down and we'll see you guys in a few hours that's all this is all you do is cube up the fat and inside where that fat comes out of that's where the fat that's around the kidneys that's what we're using um inside there there's a membrane we want to get that membrane off and cook this up and once these little fat cubes shrink up that's what makes cracklings and cracklings are delicious little snacks they're low-carb snacks and they're great in cornbread too so if you've ever had cornbread with cracklins in it it's good stuff i'll tell you that so we're gonna work on this this is country living right here man let's start her up i will caution you don't fill your pot too full okay so we're gonna add to this pot this is only half of the lard okay so we're gonna be adding to this pot as we go so we're going to cut up the rest of it put it in smaller pots and bring it out here and add to it as we go so we'll need a good spatula or a flat tipped spoon for stirring we'll need a ladle so that we can dip this out and pour it into our jars and we're going to let the jars just cool naturally we'll put the lid on really really tight we'll also need a good pair of oven mitts or gloves so that we can handle these jars because this stuff comes out super duper hot okay the reason we're doing it outside is because it has a smell it's not a stinky smell but it's a cooking pork type smell and i don't want my whole house to smell like that we live in a very small house also this is fairly dangerous so do it outside in a place where if this were to fall over or get knocked over it's flammable liquid once it gets hot it's flammable liquid it's fat so you want to be safe about it okay use your head use your noggin we're starting to hear it sizzle a little bit and we've cooked down probably to about half the size that we were so we're going to start adding some more lard i have that big pan that i brought out here and we're just going to take our ladle really you just need a ladle or a fork or something but a nice spoon with a flat bottom like that or a nice spatula with a flat bottom is good to keep stirring it okay so you want to put it on a medium heat to get started and just keep stirring it and we'll have all that lard right here in this uh pan awesome all right we'll see you guys once it cooks all the way down and we start scooping it out into our jars and we're going to be using a little jar canning type funnel for that okay be careful this stuff's hot man you can really hurt yourself so you got to be smart you got to be careful all right we started this probably about 3 30. it's now 9 15 at night and we're finally getting to the point where we can start jarring this stuff up so i want to show you i poured some this stuff is absolutely beautiful i've poured some in some jars let's get the big one and this is what it looks like well it almost looks like some of that stuff that you make down in the holler it looks like moonshine almost but uh what we've got here uh the pot is up to about right here and we've cooked down all of the fat and my advice to you is to cut it into two inch squares before and cut it a little bit smaller than two inch squares okay so cut it into about uh one inch squares okay this these are the cracklins and this is uh southern gold right here okay this is the fat so those chunks were like this big and now they're down to little bitty chunks and those are cracklings and what we use those for around these parts is to put in cornbread okay so you make your cornbread and you put some cracklins in it guys post me a comment if you've ever had cracklins they are absolutely delicious now this is about as close as you'll ever get to boiling gasoline in your in your house so do it outside do it in a safe area that's why we're in the shop there's a little bit of smoke in the shop i'm actually going to turn the heat down all the way down on this thing right now i'll just reach down unplug it and i'm going to show you dipping some out so we got a jar here and we've got a canning funnel we'll stick that canning funnel right there this is an option so i use a little strainer right here and you can see the strainer still has a little bit of the oil in there and i use a ladle the larger the ladle the easier the job so we just ladle out gently right there into the jar okay you don't want to do this too awful fast because if you do it real real fast you'll put too much heat in the jar all at once and it could cause the jar to break so if you're doing it out in your garage or your shop make sure it's about 60 or 55 degrees so if you go too awful crazy with really cold jars this stuff is hot hot hot and it will break a jar so we're probably running somewhere in the neighborhood of 325 degrees we'll fill this up while you guys are here probably takes this is a quart jar these are old quart jars i've got tons of them this is probably going to be somewhere in a neighborhood of 12 quarts 12 to 14 quarts i've got some pints to give away to neighbors and friends and quarts to give away i won't use all this stuff and it'll take me five years to use it all up we'll show you what the cracklings look like too as soon as i get this full so when you're dipping it out the reason you want to use a uh a ladle to start and you want to be careful don't overfill it i boo booed and overfilled it reason you want to use a ladle to start is because you can take the ladle and you can squish out your cracklings just like this okay and that's what your cracklings look like okay you probably heard that little noise that tink that little noise was our jar sealing off so now that we've got these cracklings off i have another pot over here to drop my cracklings in so i'll squish them out and then i'll put my cracklins over here and they'll get put in a freezer bag in the fridge or in the freezer so that's it guys i've got a lot of work to do here it's a very tedious job scooping all this out once i get to the end i'll be able to pick it up and pour it in i've got some friends over here visiting and they're going to help me with the jarring process so guys that's how you make lard and cracklings okay this is good this is about living the old way i've got grease on my shirt got grease on my hands like i said if you do this plan to rub your wife's feet that night because your hands are gonna be nice and soft and she'll smell like bacon which we all know is delicious we'll see you guys next time on the stoney ridge farm guys pound the like button i appreciate you all right everybody there they are see ya'll come on down to the stoney ridge bring your wine bring your kids we're living life pure and sweet that's the way [Music] guys when you put the lid on you do it just like that you want to hold it with a rag or a glove or something you want to put it nice and snug and this will seal itself okay isn't that beautiful look at that that is absolutely awesome you wouldn't think that fat would turn into something that pretty

Channel: Stoney Ridge Farmer

Views: 136,121

Keywords: chickens, homesteading, farming, tractor, jeep, trucks, stoney ridge farm, stoney ridge farmer, ranching, lard, cooking, how to render lard, lard (ingredient), beef tallow, healthy fats, kitchen, recipes, rendering lard, pork lard, pork fat, how to make lard, recipe, fat, how to, tallow, baking, what is lard, what is lard made of, pig fat, rendering, pork shortening, chinese lard, diy lard, chinese food (cuisine), pork, food (tv genre), render lard, is lard healthy, cooking with lard

Id: Hfv8oegnrgU

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020