Rendering lard

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whole milk

Senior Cook
Joined
Apr 3, 2008
Messages
214
Location
yokohama, japan
Gosh, I hope this is the right section to put this in.

I found an online butcher and was able to order some pig fat and so yesterday I rendered the fat into lard. I did a lot of searching on line and I was curious who does it here. I'd like to get tips so the next time I do it, the whole process goes smoother.

Some questions I had were how much water to fat when you boil? Some said just a half a cup, other recipes said half the weight.

How long does it take to render it? I chose a method where I put the lid on the dutch oven and stirred about every ten minutes and it took about an hour for four kilos of pork fat -- but there were still a few bits left that could have been rendered more.

Also, to my surprise, there were a lot of little piggy pieces floating around after. (I don't even wanna think of the caloric content.) Can these be used for soup or stock? What do you do with them?
 
That you. That was interesting. All of the other recipes I found ended up with one pot of white lard. The difference seems to be the cooking time. I'm guessing the longer you cook it the more the flavor burns off. The stuff I have in the fridge is white and creamy.

Cheers,
 
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