How to Render Lard
Lard is such a great food for paleo nutrition, and accounts for the bulk of my caloric intake. I just got 60 lbs of pig fat (pastured and organic) so I decided to make a how-to. I took these photos while rendering the last little bit (I previously had rendered two huge batches—4 gallons each—in a big water bath canner.)
First of all, use ground fat. It renders so much faster and more efficiently and cuts out all the work of chopping. If it’s frozen, let it thaw in the fridge. Then, stick it in a suitable vessel and put it in the oven at 250 F.
Putting it in the oven
After one hour it’s mostly done (if it isn’t ground it can take several times as long). I ladled most of it out into a pot to cool, strained through a steel mesh strainer to catch bits of cracklings. Others say to strain through a coffee filter or cheesecloth, but since I don’t use the lard for baking, it doesn’t matter to me if its not 100% pure. Then I put the rest back in the oven to finish the cracklings.
After one hourAfter another hour it’s done. The cracklings are nice and brown, so I strained the lard…
After the second hour…leaving some tasty cracklings.
Cracklings
That’s it. Keep the lard refrigerated, or freeze it for longer term storage.
Olivia are discussing. 
Olivia 7:50 am on April 18, 2010 Permalink |
Vanilla lard. Yum
How to eat paleo on the cheap « Lower Thought 5:31 am on December 16, 2010 Permalink |
[...] but good paleo-quality fats are very cheap: I get pastured, organic pig fat for $2/lb and render it into lard, my staple source of calories. You can find cheap paleo meats as well: I often get bison hearts and [...]