To Try Out Lard
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fat
Cut the leaves into small pieces and remove all flesh.
Place a few pieces in a kettle and heat slowly.
Once they are rendered, add the remaining pieces.
Cook until the scraps are crisp.
Strain and finish
Strain the mixture through cheesecloth into pails.
For firmer lard, add 1 pound of suet for every 5 pounds of leaves.
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
- Leaves (fatty parts of pork)
- Supply the fat that melts out during slow heating to become the lard.
- Suet
- Adds more hard fat, making the finished lard firmer at room temperature.
The step that matters
Heat slowly at the start. Gentle heat lets the fat melt out of the tissue without scorching it. Scorched fat turns dark and acquires a burnt flavour, and the scraps can cook too fast before the fat has fully rendered.
“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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