It all started when I saw a class advertised for pie making. I thought the cost of the class was sort of pricey, until I saw that they intended to show you how to render your own lard for the crusts..... then I was intrigued. I looked up rendering lard and how shelf-stable lard in the grocery store is actually kind of horrible because of how they alter it. Then I got on our food co-op website and discovered that I could actually get heritage breed unrendered lard. I added it to my cart.
And THEN I discovered that I could use my crock pot to make it really easy! Here's the howto.
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| This is what 4.88 lbs of unrendered pig fat looks like! |
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| This lard was pre-ground and came from pastured heritage breed pigs! |
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| This is my straining rig. From the top: tomato colander, cheesecloth, wire strainer, sturdy mixing bowl. |
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| Here is the frozen lard in my crock pot. I have an actual crock pot which gives a stabler heat than some brands of generic slow cooker. |
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| Here's what it looked like after I'd taken off about half of the fat. I kept the lid off of the crock pot for this entire time because I added 1/4 cup of water at the beginning so the lard wouldn't burn but I wanted the water to evaporate out. |
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| The lard that came off the first straining. |
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| As you can see this method works really well for giving you pure fat. At this point the liquid had practically no odor or flavor. |
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| All of the fat is strained at this point. What you have here is basically cooked ground pork with a very high fat content. I put this back into the crock and cooked on high. |
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| The "cracklings" that came of cooking the pork further. I expected these to be more crunchy, but they were totally soaked with fat. When they were drained, they were kind of like soft real bacon bits. I intend to use them as such as the flavor is similar. |
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| So much lard! |
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| Bottom: some of the white lard that was strained off earlier. Top: still liquid fat that was drained off of the "cracklings". This brown lard would be horrible for pastries but can be used to cook savory things in, similar to bacon grease. |
