Butter v. Lard

[Stone]

I recently read a blurb somewhere claiming that lard had less "bad" cholesterol than butter. Here's some info I found:

Lard -- Fat Breakdown:

Total lipid (fat) 100.000 g

Fatty acids, total saturated 39.200 g

Fatty acids, total monounsaturated 45.100 g

Fatty acids, total polyunsaturated 11.200 g

Cholesterol 95.000 mg

Butter -- Fat Breakdown:

Total lipid (fat) 81.110 g

Fatty acids, total saturated 50.489 g

Fatty acids, total monounsaturated 23.430 g

Fatty acids, total polyunsaturated 3.010 g

Cholesterol 219.000 mg

I'm guessing these are equal volumes. Looks like lard is quite a bit "healthier" than butter. Lower saturated fat content, much lower cholesterol content. I'm surprised. Next time I get a bagel, I'll ask for it to squeal.

[Foam Pants]

I am now off to bake some lardy crust pies.

[bloviatrix]

Next time I get a bagel, I'll ask for it to squeal.

Call me a traditionalist, but that is just so wrong.

[fifi]

Can we assume that the lard is fresh and NOT hydrogenated? Hydrogenated=bad because of transfats, supposedly.

By the way, thanks for the data. I have been hearing that and have just been too lazy to look it up.

I have been telling you children...

LARD RULES!

[Toliver]

Where does one get non-hydrogenated lard? Besides rendering your own...

I've never bought it but I've seen lard (called "manteca") in my local grocery store but I assumed it had to be hydrogenated like Crisco, et al. Guess I should pick up a package and read the label instead of whizzing by....

Not to hijack the thread but should I assume that margarine/oleo is the worst offender of the three choices...butter vs lard vs oleo?

[fifi]

I am told that you can get it sometimes at small "ethnic" butcher shops. Some of the Mexican shops here have it but I am told you have to arrange ahead because most of it is spoken for. It is an important ingredient in tamales. I just make my own. Sometimes I can find good fresh fat at the Fiesta supermarket here in Houston.

If anyone is interested, I will post my method in the archive. It yields 3 types of lard for various uses.

If it is sitting on the shelf, not in the refrigerator case, and is a pure white solid at room temp... it is hydrogenated.

[fifi]

ooo... ooo... I found this thread... My lard method is in there.

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...67&hl=lard&st=0

[Stone]

fifi's method:

You use a heavy pot on the top of the stove on medium heat (or lower), adding a little water to the bottom of the pot to get it started. You want to go slowly here and it will seem to take forever. The water cooks off. You dip or pour off some of the lard before the fat cubes get brown. This yields a very clear lard with a very mild flavor. Then you proceed to continue cooking. You can actually do this in three dippings yielding three products: the white mild stuff (probably what you want for baking), then a yellower medium flavored lard (general purpose savory cooking), then the bottom of the pot that has lots of browny bits and flavor (great for putting on a tortilla).

What do you start with? Pork belly from a butcher's shop?

How do you know when to pour it off?

Don't you need it solid to cut into flour for dough? Would that be hydrogenated? Or do you refridgerate it first?

Edited August 8, 2003 by Stone (log)

[fresco]

Wasn't there a piece in Saveur a few months back about one guy's quest in San Francisco, think it was, to find the makings for lard? He wound up in a Chinese butcher shop where he got several pounds of quite gruesome material, but it did the trick and he made a great pie crust.

[tjaehnigen]

Yeah, what do you use as the basis for your lard? I'm very curious.

My German mother used to save bacon grease and called it (poo man's) Schmaltz -- the more refined version being rendered goose fat, which you can buy at most German delis/shops.

[fifi]

fifi's method:

You use a heavy pot on the top of the stove on medium heat (or lower), adding a little water to the bottom of the pot to get it started. You want to go slowly here and it will seem to take forever. The water cooks off. You dip or pour off some of the lard before the fat cubes get brown. This yields a very clear lard with a very mild flavor. Then you proceed to continue cooking. You can actually do this in three dippings yielding three products: the white mild stuff (probably what you want for baking), then a yellower medium flavored lard (general purpose savory cooking), then the bottom of the pot that has lots of browny bits and flavor (great for putting on a tortilla).

What do you start with? Pork belly from a butcher's shop?

How do you know when to pour it off?

Don't you need it solid to cut into flour for dough? Would that be hydrogenated? Or do you refridgerate it first?

I usually have no idea where the fat came from so I can't say that I use belly. It is usually packaged in a tray with plastic wrap at Fiesta. At the Asian market, you ask for it and they give you piles of it wrapped in butcher's paper. I look for firm white fat with just a little of the connective tissue here and there. You can tell that because it is not as firm as the purer fat. You want a little of that for flavor but not too much. (Now that is a precise description!)

If you are after the light stuff for baking (I am usually not) you pour (I dip) that off as soon as you get enough liquid fat to work with and before your little cubes start to brown. After that, any time it is liquid it is lard. The only variable would be how far you go with the browning of the little cubes. I like mine where the little cubes look like nicely browned bacon. Then from the bottom of the pot, I lift out the cubes (CRACKLINS) and usually snack on those. Then I pour off the very bottom dregs separately. This is the "asiento" that you spread on a tortilla. If I am not after different types of lard, I do use the oven method. I just find that using my big LeCreuset on top of the stove lets me keep my eye on it a little better.

Note that I said medium heat. It occurs to me that that was on my feeble home gas cook top and a really big LeCreuset. If you have one of those high BTU ranges, start lower. You can always crank it up if you get impatient. But, you shouldn't get impatient. To me, making lard is something to do on a lousy winter day. Sort of like stock, it takes time but only a little attention if you keep that burner low.

For baking, you refrigerate it to get it solid. A friend that bakes puts it in the freezer on the reasoning that you can adjust your working time for it to warm up to where you want it. Works for her.

You can't hydrogenate it. That takes high pressure equipment and a hydrogen supply. That is only found in the dark and evil food factories.

Edited August 8, 2003 by fifi (log)

[Ruth]

To make your own lard use fatback. Many Italian style pork stores including Faicco's in New York (Greenwich Village and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn - there may be others) make their own excellent lard and I always have a tub on hand in my freezer. I believe that animal fats are less noxious than butter. I love potatoes and mushrooms cooked in duck fat and as we love duck I always have duck fat in my freezer too. Lard does not have very much flavor of its own but the texture of short pastry made with lard is exquisite. In the days when I made a lot of pastry I generally used half lard and half butter - two thirds lard for the meat pies I would pack for my kids for their lunches.

[mamster]

I take offense to seeing the words "noxious" and "butter" juxtaposed.

That said, I have some fatback-rendered lard in the fridge. It's nice, creamy stuff, although it's stronger than I was expecting--anything you make with it will taste like pork. I'm guessing either leaf lard is milder, or I was a little too aggressive in rendering the fat and browned it too much and got a lot of of those Maillardy pork flavors.

Lard is really good for frying quesadillas.

[fifi]

That said, I have some fatback-rendered lard in the fridge.  It's nice, creamy stuff, although it's stronger than I was expecting--anything you make with it will taste like pork.  I'm guessing either leaf lard is milder, or I was a little too aggressive in rendering the fat and browned it too much and got a lot of of those Maillardy pork flavors.

Lard is really good for frying quesadillas.

mamster... you just gotta keep those mallards out of the lard pot! They belong in the garden eating pests.

Lard is the only legitimate annointment for MY quesadillas.

[slkinsey]

Where does one get non-hydrogenated lard?  Besides rendering your own...

I get mine at Faicco's Pork Shop on Bleeker. Of course, that won't help you much if you don't live in NYC.

[Nick]

I'll have to check the last batch of lard I made about two years ago, I think it was. I made a bunch of it and put it in mason jars and stuck it in the woodshed in a carton. It hadn't come out that really nice pure white that the batch I'd made a few years before had. So, since I still had some of that in the fridge, I just stuck the new batch on a shelf in the woodshed. I'll try to remember to check it tomorrow and then we'll know if refrigeration is necessary.

[fifi]

So Nick...

Did you check out the lard in the woodshed? I am really curious as to how it kept. However, I doubt that I would get the same results here on the Gulf Coast.

[Nick]

Jesus, Fifi. It's a good thing you reminded me. I completely forgot to check on it when I was down at the house today. Now that the floor's done I'm completely screwed up trying to figure out the plumbing - and the cabinets, if I can afford cabinets at all at this point.

To try to get an idea of the plumbing, think about putting a water heater and cold water tank under the counter in the base cabinets. Then take into account the pressure relief valves and where stuff goes in the unlikely event one or the other blows off. And think about having to drain the tanks. I'm figuring out how to tie all this together into one pipe that leads to the outside. It's real simple if you have a cellar where all this stuff is - complete with a cellar drain. And also bear in mind that at some point the water heater will need replacing, so all this stuff has to come apart reasonably easy (under the counter) as I stumble into old age and infirmity.

I'll try to remember to check out the lard in the woodshed tomorrow.

[Bux]

From The Good Fat Cookbook by Fran McCullough.

• Trans fats. Unsaturated fats can be turned into what resembles a saturated fat--solid at room temperature and stable--by a process called hydrogenation, in which the fat is heated to a high temperature, treated with a nickel catalyst and bombarded with hydrogen.

It's not all that simple however. Trans fats can be created by just heating oils and fats, so if you cook with natural fats, you're going to create some trans fats yourself along the way. To add to the confusion, conjugated linoleic acid is a natural trans fat that is in milk and meat and apparently good.

I'm loathe to simlify anything in the book. The healthiest fats are the unsaturated ones, provided they're also unprocessed and haven't oxidized. The author prefers lard and butter to highly processed canola and soy oils and even to some unprocessed unsaturated oils because they are fragile and usually break down in the bottle before they get to the consumer. One of McCullough's main points is that as a result of successful lobbying by soy and canola interest groups, our diets have suffered. Now that McDonald's has eliminated the tallow in which they fried their potatoes, the fries are less healthy than before. If nothing else, reading this book should at least reduce any guilt self serving lobby's have instilled in the public's mind regarding lard and coconut oil.

[mikeycook]

I like to get lard at Faicco's in NYC as well, but I am even more fond of cooking with goose fat (I make confit and always have a ton left over.) Any details on the relative health (or lack thereof) compared with lard and butter?

[Nick]

Hey Fifi! I checked the lard in the woodshed today and it's fine. Or at least seems fine. It's in mason jars and when I poured the lard in and put on the covers it ended up pulling a slight vacuum. I pulled the cover that came off easiest and it seemed fine. Good smell and no sign of discoloring. The real test will be to try some after I get back in my house, but I think it will be fine. It's about two years old now.

My Danish grandmother (who's cooking was nearly without equal) bought her lard and, also beef tallow, in five gallon tins which were kept without refrigeration. That was a long time ago so things like that got used up faster. She never went overboard in her use of these and she and my grandfather lived healthily, well into their eighties.

[fifi]

That is good info, Nick. The fact that the jar lids held a vacuum probably had something to do with it. The common cause of fat going bad is oxidation. That gives you that nasty rancid smell and taste.