Most everyone has heard of, if not read themselves, the Little House on the Prairie series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and preppers especially seem to be very familiar with one title in particular--The Long Winter. The blizzards just didn't quit that year and many people were indeed starving. It makes you want to buy more food.
There's another series of children's books, also autobiographical, but this collection is worlds better than Laura Ingalls'. While the former collection is written at a second- or third-grade level (or maybe college-level now with the way our world is), the Little Britches series by Ralph Moody is written at a much higher reading level. The books detail Ralph's life from the time his family moved to Colorado to help his father's tuberculosis to his time in Kansas as a young man raising and selling hogs. All throughout the books are many lessons to be learned about hard work and self-reliance. I feel it is one of my great failures as a mother not to have read these books to my boys when they were young, but I didn't even know about them at the time.
Anyway, in the final book of the series I learned that, historically, pigs were raised as much for their fat as they were for their meat. We're a bit removed from that in this age when the majority of our oils come from neat little bottles, or if you insist, from plants like soybeans, corn, peanuts, and coconut. Before those came along, however, there was lard. And most every woman with an ounce of brains knew how to render it.
It is not at all difficult, but it will smell up the house a bit, depending on what method you choose to render it and how much fat you are processing.
The three kinds of fat from pigs come from different parts of the body. Back fat comes from, shocker, the back of the pig and still often has the skin attached. Once rendered, it produced lard that is a bit yellow and has a stronger pork smell. It's generally used for frying and sauteing and making sausage.
Belly fat comes from, another shocker, the belly and often has some meat in it as well. Belly fat is not typically used for rendering into lard. This is also where bacon comes from.
Leaf fat comes from around the kidneys, so there is no skin attached and no little layers of meat in it. When rendered, the lard from leaf fat is perfectly white and odorless, so it is what you want for making biscuits and pie crusts. Lard from the back and belly fat is great for sauteing and frying.
If you are ordering your pig fat from a family farmer or you're getting your pig from a butcher, you can request to have the different fats packaged separately to make the process easier for you.
Render the different fats separately, starting with the leaf fat. Chop it into small pieces and place it in a crock pot on the lowest setting, or in a heavy pot (cast iron Dutch ovens are ideal) on the stove on low or in the oven at 225 degrees. Add about a quarter cup of water. This will prevent the fat from burning before it begins to melt and the water will eventually evaporate off. Leave the lid off to allow the water to evaporate more easily.
Check occasionally for the first hour and stir. This process can take from two to several hours, depending on the size of the fat pieces. After the first hour, check more frequently. Once the cracklings (little crispy bits) start to settle on the bottom, it's time to ladle the fat through a cheesecloth-lined strainer to remove the cracklings. If you allow the edges to burn or over cook it, the lard will brown and take on a stronger pork flavor. It's still fine for sauteing and frying, but it won't be what you want for biscuits and sweet pie crusts. (It will be fine for chicken pot pies.)
Pour the strained lard into clean pint or quart jars, write the date on the lid, and store in the refrigerator or freezer. That way, when you write a blog about it in the future, you'll be able to tell people something more specific than "I think it's two or three years old and smells fine." (Note that I did not write good. Bacon smells good. Lard that is not rancid smells fine). Yes, when the lights go out for good, we won't have refrigeration. But that's ok. People rendered lard for centuries before we had refrigeration and they simply kept it on the counter or in a cabinet for months or even a year at a time. When it's our turn to go without electricity, we'll just have to keep it as cool as possible as best as possible. Our faithful noses will tell us if it goes rancid.
And why do you want to know this? Well, if you've exhausted your supplies of oil, how are you replenishing them? What's sustainable here? Pigs. Unfortunately, unless you come across a rancher raising heritage breeds that still grow a lot of fat on them, the pigs won't have as much fat as they did historically. But they will at least have some. That fat is high in vitamin D and helps the body absorb and utilize vitamins A and E as well.
For more information:
https://www.daringgourmet.com/how-to-render-lard-and-why-you-should-use-it/ (history of cottonseed oil, canola oil, and Crisco)
https://www.myhumblekitchen.com/2011/02/how-render-lard-the-right-way-snow-white/
https://www.mommypotamus.com/render-lard-crock-pot/
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5 june 2021
