Adventures in Lard

In a pioneering sort of way, with a desire to "use more whole animal," Mommy set out to render the fat from the hogs recently butchered. There must have been 20 lbs worth (from 1.5 hogs). It was quite a project. I'll spare you some of the details (which of course were recorded in notes for future reference and posterity). But the process was pretty interesting.

(BTW, there are much more thorough and beautiful blogs all over the internet documenting this process, so my purpose here is not to make a perfect, instructionally-oriented, or follow-worthy recipe for anyone else....just to give our fam and friends a few insights into this, in case you want to venture out sometime. And to our vegetarian and Jewish friends,  you might want to just "look away" :) .... )

Many thanks to Holly for coming over to help with this!

We tried three mothods: crockpot, oven, and stovetop. These pics are not exactly in sequence, but they highlight some of the process. Foremost, we learned that it is essential to GRIND the fat, not chunk it. Above is the chunked fat in the crockpot (which I later moved to the oven to speed it along).

Mom and Dad gave me a new whizbang outdoor stove, which is super-awesome! (Can't wait to use it for outdoor canning in the summertime!) It was very helpful for this sort of work, which is best done outdoors, if you want to avoid the lingering smell of pork.

You can see in the pic above what the grinding process does. Looks a little like the infamous "pink meat" on the right, and then once rendered it begins to brown a bit (on left). Way more efficient to grind it than chunk it, for sure. 

Gotta say...about that smell.... The scent was actually appetizing for the first hour or so. Homey. Making one crave a roast or pie or something. But by the 24th hour it got a little nauseating, honestly. I think it's due to the cracklins and not the first rendering, but I can see why it's smart to do this outdoors.

Overall, we had 3 outside burners going, 2 ovens, and a crockpot. And not including clean-up this process had us busy for about 6 hours.

Pouring off the oil in a first rendering. In the foreground are cracklins finishing on the stovetop. On the right are more solids prepped for a second rendering.

Solids after the first rendering. In order to get a more pristine, white first rendering (worthy of pastry lard), I purposely didn't let these solids get very browned.

A second rendering outside on the side burner of the BBQ. This original, cast iron Dutch oven was a great pan to use. And you could say it is now very well seasoned!

The oven was my preferred method for ease. Above is a second rendering of the solids. Just had to stir it a few times.

We needed to keep a closer eye on the pots on the stovetops outdoors, as the flames sometimes were blown out by the wind. Also, the heat was a little higher when using a stovetop, so more stirring and checking was required.

A big batch of cracklins, cooling out of the oven where they were finished.

Cracklins finishing on the stovetop. This is not my recommended method to finish cracklins, as this really contributes to the strong smell in the house. I think doing this outside on the stovetop or in the oven is best (but watch the oven closely so that it doesn't overbrown).

I eventually moved the chunks from the crockpot (way too slow) to the oven, which was better but still very slow. The pieces are just too large and they don't produce as much oil. Might make better cracklins, if you have the time and patience for it, but not as productive for the lard itself, which was our goal.

End result (not counting the lard and cracklins from the chunks, which were done very late). Finishing this was a lot like the feeling of accomplishment you have after a canning project, except there's a lot more odor involved. :)

We got a total of about 15 quarts of pastry lard, about 4 quarts of frying lard (I ran out of new quart jars and had to use others), and probably 6-8 quarts of cracklins. The light-colored lard you see on the left turned completely white when cooled. The darker oil, from the second rendering, turned slightly lighter, but still noticably darker compared to the white, from the first renderings.

Now, you might be wondering, What in thundering tarnation is she going to do with all that fat??

We want to make some pastry, of course, with the white lard. It's higher in Vit D than other fats, is not hydrogentated like Crisco is, and is very mild and makes great pie crust. If we are super-motivated (as Aleaha is!), we are considering trying our hand at making soap and/or candles. Or we can give it away as Christmas presents next year!!! (just kidding, family - don't worry) 

We will use the fry oil sparingly as a cooking fat, and if we have too much of that, we can make suet blocks for the birds.

As for the cracklins, well....ever heard of Cracklin Corn Bread? Or using as a topping for salad, like Bacon Bits? Wondered if those might be a usage. However, after sampling a tad, we've surmised that these are an acquired taste, so this by-product will likely become dog food.  (Intersting Factoid: GrammaBon said that the sheep herders used to feed "crackins and midlins" to their dogs.)

Then again, Spiffy's first few try bites were not all that gratefully downed, so I'm not sure he really is onboard with this usage. We might be feeding those to the birds. In any case, they aren't going into the freezers, as that precious space is already taken up with the pork and the lard. And we still need to make room for some beef to pick up later this week!