Fat Tub of Lard

When our first pigs went to slaughter, we received close to 50 pounds of lard. At the time I had no idea what the hell I was going to do with that much lard. All I knew was slaughtering was expensive and I wanted to get everything back from the slaughter house that I could.

So... after doing some reading on the inter-web, I decided I would try my hand at rendering lard. Today I thawed out 10 pounds of lard.

The first step to make all this happen was to trim the fat! (My daughter loves puns :) Once the lard was nice and clean the next step was to cut into small pieces. I saw a lot of different techniques for this part. Some people were using food processors to cut it up. The biggest problem I saw with the food processor was that once the lard heated up you were going to have one hot sticky mess on your hands! I opted to cut it up by hand.

Once everything was cut up, you begin the rendering process. This can be done two ways, on the stove or in a crock pot. I tried both. The stove need more attention and more stirring so the lard didn't burn. No one wants piggy flavored lard when you're making pastries! The crock pot was a lot slower but had much more consistent results.

Once the lard started heating up, the oils began separating from the solids. These oils were ladled out of the crock pot and strained with cheesecloth then poured onto jars to cool. Once the jars began to cool the oils began to solidify and turn into the snow-white lard that we all recognize.

On the health side of things, before I started this adventure I tried to find reliable sources of information on the inter-web about the health benefits of using lard. Good luck! Here is a link to the google search I used, Google Search. You'll have to make your own decision.