How to Render Lard the RIGHT Way! (10 Must-Do Steps)

today we are rendering down our lard that we got from the pigs but if you've never rendered lard before there's a couple of tricks that you want to make sure that you do so that it doesn't get scorched and you end up with some of that pure white lard that is premium and doesn't taste porky for your baking now don't get me wrong i like to have some of the porky stuff for when you're frying or doing things that are more savory like tortillas but when it comes to my pie crusts and cakes and cookies i really don't like the flavor of bacon in there now my son who is a bacon fanatic may argue with me on that but mom's the one doing most the baking so i get to pick there are so lard comes from pigs it's the fat that is from pigs and when it's rendered down and melted that is where we get our lard fat that comes from beef or cattle is referred to as tallow so there are technically three types of lard or fat that you get on your pigs you're going to have the back fat which is this these larger chunks it's very smooth it comes from the top portion hence back of the pig so you can see this really smooth comes in pretty large chunks and they're still you know there's a little bit you'll get a little bit of a meat and whatnot in there then you've got the pork belly which i don't have any show in here because all of our pork belly got turned into bacon then you've got what is a leaf lard now leaf lard is what is around the kidneys of the pig and it is the ideal for your pastry and baking because it doesn't have very much of the meat or other tissue in it and it doesn't taste like pork it generally looks a lot more ropey for lack of a better word and when you if you're not butchering it yourself and you're having a butcher you can ask them to separate it out i did not get mine separated out and i think that this is leaf lard because it looks pretty ropey but to be completely honest this whole bag is pretty much all back fat there was just a little tiny piece like this in here that could be a little bit of leaf lard but predominantly this is all going to be the back fat but don't worry because you get more back fat on a pig than you are going to get of the leaf lard but by using this technique that i use for rendering down the lard you can still get some snow white lard that does not taste porky to use from your baking baking bacon bacon baking try to say those ones three times fast and you'll be really happy with that but the first thing is you want to start with it in a partially frozen or very chilled state now sometimes your butcher will also grind it up for you i did not have ours ground and i don't want to deal with cleaning a grinder that has had all this fat through it i find it easier to just go ahead and cut it up but i took this out of our deep freezer last night had it in the fridge overnight so there's still ice crystals on here it's still partially frozen but not frozen solid and that is really ideal because once it comes to room temperature it's fat it's super slippery it's a lot easier to cut yourself when you're trying to cut it up now we need to cut this up and to get it into smaller forms so i just kind of come through and go into strips with the knife here and so you can feel like i'm having to put down some pressure because this is still slightly frozen but the reason we need to cut this up one it's going to melt a lot faster see you can get dangerous and a lot more uniform so we're going to cut this up in about one inch chunks sometimes people go to two inch chunks but i would like this to melt a little bit faster so that i can show you guys all of this in one day with the filming and then get my kitchen cleaned back up in time for supper time the key is that they're just cut in relatively uniform pieces so that you have even melting so after i got these cut up this is the fat back you can see how this is just a really solid piece and it looks really solid and all uniform this is the piece this is actually leaflet once i got into it you can see that it almost has like a marbling looking texture it's not as firm feeling and it has a different feel just slightly when you're cutting it but that'll just give you a little bit of a visual there on the difference i like to render down mylard in the slow cooker i have tried many different options i have rendered the lard down just on the stove top i've done it outside on a big burner on our back porch i have not done it in my oven because i don't really have any pans that are really large enough that i wanted to try it in the oven and i didn't want to have any spillage or cleaning of the oven so of all the methods that i have tried i do like the slow cooker the best i feel like it actually produces i have less chance of scorching and i feel like i get more of the baking lard which is what i'm after using the slow cooker so i always put a quarter cup of water in the bottom of the slow cooker this will end up evaporating off but it helps it when it's first beginning to melt from scorching so we're going to then put all of our lovely cubed lard that we have here in there there we go and you can see where it's starting to melt just a little bit i'm going to get a really nice conditioning on my cutting board so we obviously want to make sure we have our vessel completely full with the lard now this piece here you can see there's there's a lot of blood and there's a lot of kind of like connective different tissue in here and because i have such an excess of lard we actually um raised and butchered five pigs and only one other person wanted the lard from the pig so of course i'm not going to let that go to waste so we ended up taking all of the lard from the people who didn't want theirs so i have an excess of lard so i can be a little bit picky if you only had one pig and you were trying to get large to take you through until the next time that you butchered you may just choose to put this in and most of it it will come out with straining anyways but because i'm a little bit spoiled right now and have so much lard i am just going to focus on these pieces that don't have a bunch of tissue or blood or you know meat other things like that in them now one of the questions i get asked by a lot of people is why on earth would we want to cook and use lard isn't it unhealthy well first off can we please put to rest the myth that fat is unhealthy and that low fat is the way to go when you have organic pasture raised pork and that it goes for any of your meat then you actually have meat that has vitamin d but also is high in omega-3s instead of omega-6 so any of your animals that you are eating the meat that have been raised on a more conventional diet where they're being fed a ton of grain and are not allowed to be on pasture they definitely have higher levels of omega-6 and as we know having too much omega-6 is not a good thing we definitely want to be getting those omega-3s but good grass pasture raised animals are actually quite high in omega-3 and lard actually has if it's a cholesterol concern lard has less cholesterol than butter i still love my grass-fed butter it's not going anywhere but having a diet high in these fats from animals that are raised outside of conventional farming shall we say is actually really good and healthy fats so there's kind of been a lot of myths plus as you can see the only processing that this has is simply melting it down and straining it out it does not have the process that things like crisco and a lot of those other vegetable fats have to go through before we get to have them i'm talking of things like canola oil crisco shortening that type of a thing so the wonderful thing too about this is we are able to use all parts of the pig or most the parts of the pig so we are not wasting any of it and not only can i use this in our cooking and in our baking but you can use lard to make your own soap so i can make many many things for our family which is what the homesteads of old did from the animals that are raised here on our farm [Music] so we've got our last bit here that we are going to stuff into our slow cooker now as this melts down you'll have you know all the little nooks and crannies will start to fill in with the liquid and so it's fine if it looks a little bit over stuffed not a problem so we are going to get this plugged into power and then for like the first half hour or so just to give it a little kick start i put it on high now this is just to get everything started to heat it heat up and to melt i don't leave it on high however because i don't want it to scorch and i don't want it to get burned because if you get it too high and you scorch it or burn it obviously then all of the lard's going to taste that way but i've also noticed if you have it on too high of a temperature when it's melting then even that first rendering which is your pure snow white looking type lard that i would like to use for my baking it can get a porky flavor to it that i don't want if the temp is too high so i only put it on high for about the first 30 minutes or so and then i'll bop it down to low and allow it to melt but the method that i am using is great because as it melts because you saw mainly this is a fat back i just had a little bit of leaf lard in this and so by using this method even if you only have the fat back the first part that begins to melt i usually do it in thirds so when a third of this is melted which i'll show you shortly then that i call my first rendering and i will ladle off and that jar is pure white has no pork flavor is excellent for baking and then as it melts down again then i do it again with the second third and then that one is really great for doing things like crackers or tortillas or things where you don't mind like a little bit of a meat flavor in them it's not very strong it's not like it tastes like bacon fat um which the difference between lard and bacon fat by the way like if you've ever you know cooked your bacon and then you save that grease your bacon grease which is great that's already been cured and has a lot more flavor added to it whereas lard has not been cured and obviously it's not from the pork belly because that all got turned into bacon so that's kind of the difference between your saved bacon grease and your lard the difference is there but then the very last the third rendering even though it's all in one pot that is the stuff that's really savory so it's great for it has the strongest flavor of porkiness and so that's what i like to use to like fry meat or to maybe saute vegetables in where that's a desirable trait and you would like to have that in your lard or in whatever you're cooking i should say flavor-wise so it's been about an hour and we have drop here where you can see as i said as this begins to melt it's definitely going to drop down i am going to put this on low now and you can see as it starts to get it gets really shiny before it starts to actually melt so you can see this part's really shiny and then on the sides these don't actually really look pink anymore they start to look white and kind of almost translucent and that's because it's hotter along the sides and the bottom which is also why it's really important that we stir this oh can you hear that yeah we don't want it to burn on the sides or on the bottom and then that'll also bring the hotter pieces that are on the outside more into the center and that will help warm the center up and transfer them out so we'll just get it to melt faster and not be in any danger of scorching so ideally you're going to want to stir this oh about probably every 30 minutes is adequate some hot slow cookers i've noticed like they're hot tends to cook really hot or they're low tends to be more hot so know your slow cooker and if it tends to cook on the hotter side then you may want to stir like every 20 minutes but usually about every 30 minutes is fine but you can see we don't really have a lot of clear liquid yet now if you don't have a slow cooker in order to do this in and you want to do it in the oven you can you can do that you're going to want to preheat the oven to oh about 250 to 300 degrees fahrenheit just to keep that on the lower end and then again make sure that you are stirring it often and how long does it take well obviously it kind of depends on like the size the larger chunks that you have you know if it's ground it's going to melt faster just because it's smaller surface area and then also the volume like how big is the container um but for it to be all said and done it's usually about eight hours and that's like every single piece is is rendered down and all you have left at the end is just uh the little bits that you can either turn into cracklins or you know what you've actually strained out but we should get to our first rendering usually it's about about the three to four hour mark um so it's definitely something like you don't have to babysit it all day but it's not something like you really can just put in the slow cooker and then leave for the day and then come back it is something that you do need to be around and tending to every so often so it's been three hours and we are going to start the first rendering so you can see it's no longer pink any of the fat pieces it's totally translucent and there is a lot of liquid that's starting to rise up and this level has dropped quite a bit so when it's this full i don't try to lift this out and pour it through the strainer just because there's still too many solids this is hot it's really heavy and it can cause a big old mess so i am just going to use my ladle here and let that fill with liquid and if i get a few pieces of the lard in there it's not a big deal i'll just dump them back in later but i'm going to spoon this through my fine mesh wire strainer now if this was something that you were going to be doing for soap if you were rendering this lard for soap and you wanted it to be really really cure not cured that's what you would do with the soap after you had made it was to cure it pure is the word i was looking for then you can take cheesecloth and line your fine wire mesh sieve with that to get it even more clean finish my thought there i'm getting too excited as i'm pouring this through so now we're going to go ahead and dump these bits back in so that this can continue to melt down for our second and third rendering and we'll make sure i'm going to give it a nice stir there we go and usually once you get this first rendering because all of the other pieces of all the fat in here is warmed up usually once you get the first amount of liquid it tends to go faster so even though it took us about three hours to get to this point i should be able to do a second rendering in maybe an hour hour and a half it shouldn't take nearly as long all right so we're just going to pour this in and i just use a funnel because i tend to be messy whenever i'm pouring anything and i don't want to deal with wasting any of my precious liquid lard so i've got a little bit of solids here so i am going to use the cheesecloth actually if you have a coffee filter that works really well too um but we don't actually we we have an espresso machine so i don't use a coffee filters anymore so i don't have any so i'm just going to use this cheesecloth i've actually this is a really loose weave very poor quality of cheesecloth it's not what i actually use for cheese making that i had stuffed in the back of the drawer i've actually put this over i think about four times but we're going to pour this through that and you can see all those little solid pieces are getting trapped there so in order to make this a full jar of the first rendering as just a little bit more of this melt enough i'll probably just take a couple of ladles and put that in there so that this is a full jar but then you just simply let it cool down to room temperature and then i put a lid and a band on it again i'm not actually canning this and then i will put it mark it as a first rendering which i can usually always tell because it's that snow white color i don't really have to mark it but i do and then it will go out into our fridge to be used throughout the next year or two and then we'll get to the second and the third renderings here so for the second rendering i usually will go ahead and do just the same process and i'll ladle it out by the time i get to the very end when there's not very many solids left at all then there's not large volume and it's not nearly as heavy so that's usually when i will just take the entire interior you know the whole the insert here on the slow cooker and i'll just take it and dump everything through the fine mesh sieve with well probably beans i've already got this dirty go ahead and use the cheesecloth on there and then we'll be all done now with this first rendering which is ideal for pastry baking some people use it in cookies and cakes like any type of bakings or sweet but i gotta tell you when it comes to pie crust pie crust made with lard is like no other it is so good flaky texture but i have to say my favorite is doing half lard and half butter the reason is i actually like the flavor of butter and so i like doing the mixture and textural when i've used a hundred percent lard in the pie crust even making sure that it's completely chilled and coming from the fridge i find that it's more it's harder to work with i'm just trying to find the right words um it's more tender not just like tender eating which we want to tender crust off obviously when we're doing pie crust we want to be flaky and tender and melt in the mouth fragile that was the word i was trying to come up with it's more fragile when you're rolling out your pie crust and like lifting them out and pinching and the crimping the edges of the pie crust when i use a hundred percent lard i found it as a little bit harder to work with because it's more fragile so if i do half lard and half butter it's like the best of both worlds and the best of both flavors and texture so that is my favorite way to put this first rendering lard to use so this is how much lard i get out of the crock pot so you can see i've got two quarts here and then a pint and this is the first rendering so you can see once it's had a time to solidify and to set up this is really white and then this is the second rendering it's still pretty white and actually this still even though this was a second rendering this still had a very mild flavor it would be absolutely fine for baking but then as you get down here this was the very last this is the third rendering and yeah i just threw a little sharpie on there on top so you could keep track of them but you can definitely see that there is a difference in the color this is definitely has more of a yellowish or a brownish cast to it even though there's not that much variation between one and two there's quite a bit if you throw three next to one you can really see the variation in there but this gives you a really good idea of the difference in looking at those of the renderings all from the same fat that was put into the slow cooker but just in the way that it melts down and as you're pouring off now lard can be stored at room temp ideally in a colder temperature environment but i don't want to take any chance of mine going rancid so i just pour it into the mason jars do not can lard there's no reason to do so and there's also no safe times that we have established to know if it would be safe so i keep mine we have a fridge out in an outbuilding and so i just keep my excess out in the fridge you could freeze it also if you wanted to then i just have the jar that i'm working from a couple of jars in the fridge between uh the snow white version for baking and then the other one that i keep in there but it will last for at least up to a year usually we raise pigs sometimes every year sometimes every other year we gauge it by how much meat we have left before we go ahead and raise more so it i've had it last up to two years in the fridge without any problem no issues of rancidity but again i don't leave all of mine out at room temp just because i don't want any of it to go rancid i consider this very precious and want to make sure that it stays good all the way through if you want a printable version of all of this tutorial and information you can click the link below and go over to the website in the blog and grab that and if you are interested in the types of pigs that we raise and how we raise a year's worth of our own meat then you can go and look at this video you

Channel: Melissa K. Norris - Modern Homesteading

Views: 63,984

Keywords: Melissa K Norris, Pioneering Today, Homesteading, Homestead Living, Pioneer Lifestyle, rendering lard, how to make lard, how to render lard, render lard, how to render lard from pork fat, how to render lard from pig fat, leaf lard, rendering lard from pork fat, pork lard, pork fat, pig fat, how to, how to render lard in a crock pot, how to render lard the right way, how to render lard at home, leaf lard rendering, oven rendering lard, rendering lard from pig fat

Id: V-sJziDF4Ko

Length: 21min 59sec (1319 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 26 2022