Pork Lard For Cooking, Frying and Baking, Rendered from Pork Back Fat

I was lucky enough to trade some lamb for some pork from my friend's homestead. They raised 2 pigs last year, sold some and had some leftover to trade. Lucky for me they wanted to try some lamb. I ended up with some nice pieces as well as some organ meat, 2 heads and quite a bit of fat that no one else wanted... yay!

Having wanted to try making lard for a while now, I was recently inspired by @arcticgarden's post on curing bacon and rendering lard who made it look easy. Turns out with a little patience, it is quite easy!

I've never rendered lard or cooked with lard, so this was an entertaining and quite successful experiment.

Here's what 5.8 lbs of pork back fat looks like.

Thanks to some guidance from The Encyclopedia of Country Living I cubed up the fat into small chunks, roughly 1".

Into the pot they went.

And placed on the back of the wood stove on top of an iron trivet for rendering. The trivet raises it up to keep it from getting too hot. I liked using the wood stove because it's already burning much of the day this time of year. You can also use an oven or crock pot on a low setting.

The fat begins to melt.

Stirring once in a while to get even cooking. The pieces on the bottom melt and brown faster.

This is pretty close to where I took it off the heat. I was worried about going much further because it was starting to brown quite a bit. I had read that you can turn the lard more porky in flavor and eventually bitter if it's overcooked. In retrospect I think I could have gone just a little longer because some pieces had more "juice" left in them.

Using an old piece of cotton tshirt that is worn thin and a metal strainer the lard was strained and let sit to drip.

This is what it looks like in the bowl it was strained into.

And then poured off into jars.

I was surprised at how white it turned once it solidified! Not bad.

Meanwhile I put the pieces of fat back into a cast iron pan and fried them some more to see if I could get some crispy pieces of fat.

I strained off more fat and got this bit which was darker and more pork flavor and smell. I'll save it for cooking when I don't mind a little extra flavor. In retrospect I could have put these pork fat back on the trivet instead of frying them.

After straining off the lard I fried the fat bits again to try to crisp them up. They got darker but not crisper. They are fun to eat as little tasty snacks or adding onto some dishes for flavor but I don't find myself craving them as much as I thought I would. I think if there were more meat or skin on the fat they would have crisped up nicely. This just tells me I probably could have rendered more lard out of these pieces.

I might even try cutting the pieces smaller next time to see if it melts faster and gets more lard out of the fat quicker or more completely before they get too brown.

5.8 lbs of fat yielded roughly 2.25 quarts of lard or 9 cups.

_

So far we tried baking sugar cookies with 1/2 lard 1/2 butter, waffles, cooking popcorn and frying veggies in the lard. Everything turned out wonderful. The cookie batter had some slightest pork flavor and smell but after it was baked there was no trace of that at all, leaving pure yumminess.

Interestingly enough it seems that things tend to cook faster in lard than in oil or butter. The popcorn starts popping faster and burns easier if not careful, and the cookies cook faster, so keep that in mind in case you have similar results.

Next up to try are baking biscuits and pie crust with pork lard.

And when I get a chance I'll try rendering some tallow from the sheep fat that I have in my freezer and make a post on that.