Rendering Lard
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fat
Remove all skin and lean meat from the fat trimmings.
Cut the fat into strips about 1½ inches wide.
Place the strip skin down and cut the fat from the skin.
Cut the strips of fat into pieces about 1 or 1½ inches square.
Render the lard
Pour 1 quart of water into a kettle and fill it nearly full with fat cuttings.
Render the lard over moderate heat, starting at 160°F and increasing to 240°F.
When cracklings begin to brown, reduce the temperature to 200°F.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Fat trimmings
- Main source of fat; heating melts the fat out as liquid lard, leaving solid cracklings behind.
- Leaf fat
- Firm, mild fat that renders into a clean, bland lard.
- Back strips of fat
- Supplies fat that melts into the lard during gentle heating.
- Water
- Added to the kettle at the start to help keep the fat from scorching while it heats.
The step that matters
Lowering the heat when cracklings brown. Once the cracklings begin to brown, the fat is close to scorching. Lowering the temperature to 200°F slows browning so the lard stays light in color and does not taste burnt or bitter.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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