Fat!

[Werdna]

After much searching I was able to find a place that processes and sells top quality "leaf Lard". See:

http://www.mountainfolk.com/dietrich.asp

I usually order (5) one pound containers and keep one on the countertop and the remaining in the fridge. It makes unbelievable old fashioned biscuits and cornbread. I particularly enjoy their plain country smoked sausage. They took my personal check and the transaction was completed with no problems at all.

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How much do they charge for it, and will they ship it? I've been looking for leaf lard forever...

[clearblue]

After much searching I was able to find a place that processes and sells top quality "leaf Lard". See:

http://www.mountainfolk.com/dietrich.asp

I usually order (5) one pound containers and keep one on the countertop and the remaining in the fridge. It makes unbelievable old fashioned biscuits and cornbread. I particularly enjoy their plain country smoked sausage. They took my personal check and the transaction was completed with no problems at all.

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How much do they charge for it, and will they ship it? I've been looking for leaf lard forever...

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I don't remember the cost and couldn't locate a receipt but I too had searched extensively. If you'll call Dietrich's at (610-756-6344) they were more than accomodating in assisting me in putting together my first order. They do ship and it was packaged well. The leaf lard comes in 1# clear plastic containers and will last

a long time if frozen or refrigerated. I believe you'll be so surprised at the quality and the delicous taste. It took me back to the winter hog killing and the cracklins and chitlins that my mother prepared.

This thread reminded me to call a local custom butcher shop.Hopefully tomorrow I'll have 5 pounds of fresh (beef kidney fat) to render into suet.

Edited March 2, 2006 by clearblue (log)

[miladyinsanity]

I use coconut oil in smoothies and for a few special recipes.

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To make coconut oil, you need fresh coconut milk. Leave it in the fridge overnight, then cook it slowly and the oil will 'seep' out. You'll know it when you see it, and just decant it.

It's good for hair too--just rub some in, go do your stuff, and wash it out an hour or more later.

[andiesenji]

This is what I use.

It is solid at room temperature, and is very tasty, as is.

Not cheap, but is perfect for certain applications.

I tried another brand but found this one is superior.

Tropical Traditions They also have an excellent palm oil.

(I have had problems with rancidity in other brands, opening one jar that smelled horrible and the "aroma" hung around the kitchen for some time.)

[Franci]

After much searching I was able to find a place that processes and sells top quality "leaf Lard". See:

http://www.mountainfolk.com/dietrich.asp

I usually order (5) one pound containers and keep one on the countertop and the remaining in the fridge. It makes unbelievable old fashioned biscuits and cornbread. I particularly enjoy their plain country smoked sausage. They took my personal check and the transaction was completed with no problems at all.

←

How much do they charge for it, and will they ship it? I've been looking for leaf lard forever...

←

I don't remember the cost and couldn't locate a receipt but I too had searched extensively. If you'll call Dietrich's at (610-756-6344) they were more than accomodating in assisting me in putting together my first order. They do ship and it was packaged well. The leaf lard comes in 1# clear plastic containers and will last

a long time if frozen or refrigerated. I believe you'll be so surprised at the quality and the delicous taste. It took me back to the winter hog killing and the cracklins and chitlins that my mother prepared.

This thread reminded me to call a local custom butcher shop.Hopefully tomorrow I'll have 5 pounds of fresh (beef kidney fat) to render into suet.

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If you are interested, also this farm sells leaf lard:

http://www.flyingpigsfarm.com/

and for who lives in NY city, there are a couple places where you can buy freshly rendered lard and goose fat. At schaller and weber they do sell, but I didn't like it, if you go to the nearby Hungarian deli, their lard is so much better.

Edited March 4, 2006 by Franci (log)

[clearblue]

quote Franci

If you are interested, also this farm sells leaf lard:

http://www.flyingpigsfarm.com/

Thanks fot the flyingpigs link---- I'll place my next order with them and compare their leaf lard to Dietrich's.

SideNote: I received the beef fat I had ordered a couple days ago and decided to try the crockpot for rendering. The crockpot ,I'm elated to say, worked perfectly. There's now 2 quarts of beautiful suet in the fridge and a package of beef cracklins in the freezer.

For anyone wanting to try the crockpot I simply cut the beef fat into 1/2 inch pieces and filled the pot 2/3's full. Put the temp on the pot at high until it got hot then reduced it to low and let it render overnight. I strained the suet through an extremely fine mesh tea strainer into wide mouth quart and pint sized mason jars and let it cool-- then into the fridge.

The crockpot made what used to be a real job into a breeze- no more having to render using a wood fire and a 30 gallon cast iron washing pot out in the yard while freezing in the cold winter morning air. Life is good!

[Chris Amirault]

Makes me proud to see such a wide array of sparkling fats. In my fridge, I've got duck fat, schmaltz, bacon fat, fat back, lard, ghee, and of course butter.

If you haven't done so already, check out fifi's recipe for rendering lard, which works nicely for other kinds of skin-on fat rendering, too. Just did some duck skin this way, in fact.

[Dave the Cook]

Thanks for posting the food-processor technique in RecipeGullet, Chris.

A few days ago, I rendered fat from duck skin (about two and a half ducks' worth, I think). When I strained it into a new pot, I thought I had about two quarts of fat and I put it in the refrigerator to firm up. Yesterday, I decided that I had enough to share. I pulled the pot out and proceeded to divide the fat into two containers. About three scoops in, I noticed that the fat wasn't as pure white as I'd expected; there were pink streaks in it. I looked at the contents of the pot more closely and realized that there were two levels of stuff: a thick layer of fat, and lower stratum of very firm duck jello.

After separating it out, I ended up with five cups of fat and three of highly gelatinous duck stock -- an unexpected dividend.

[thock]

I have various fats, too. Tallow, lard (a couple of "qualities"), bacon grease, chicken schmaltz, turkey schmaltz...

I have one question, however. Does anyone else have grainy tallow? My tallow (rendered from scrap fat), in a semi-solid to solid state, is grainy. It re-granulates when it's melted and resolidified. It smells neutral, and it's beautifully white, but it's grainy. I just don't remember this ever having happened to my tallow before, but that doesn't mean much.

Ok, so maybe I have two questions. Some of my lard, at room temperature, has two distinct phases: a beige liquid phase on top of a lighter tan semi-solid phase. Is this something anyone else has seen? I canned that lard in a water bath canner, and am keeping it in the fridge, but I noticed this phase change when the jars were cooling off after I canned them.

[thock]

Ok, so maybe I have two questions. Some of my lard, at room temperature, has two distinct phases: a beige liquid phase on top of a lighter tan semi-solid phase. Is this something anyone else has seen? I canned that lard in a water bath canner, and am keeping it in the fridge, but I noticed this phase change when the jars were cooling off after I canned them.

Ok, I think I've found the answer to this question, at least. It appears, from the info at this link: Info on lard, that the separation is called "fractionation," and is caused by slow, undisturbed cooling of fat. It doesn't say how to "unfractionate" it, but I'm guessing, and testing that guess, that by remelting and recongealing the fat quickly, it will become homogeneous again. We shall see...

[Chris Amirault]

Very eager to hear back the results, Tracy -- I was stumped by your question myself.

[thock]

Ok, so here are some pictures:

This is the fractionated lard, at room temperature, of which I spoke upthread.

This is that same lard, reheated in a water bath, just before I stuck it in the fridge on a dry washcloth, straight out of the water bath.

This is that same lard, recongealed in the fridge, but taken out to come to room temperature to see if it would maintain homogeneity. As you can see, it did.

Very interesting...

[andiesenji]

I grew up on a farm where hogs were slaughtered at this time of the year, lard was rendered in big, outdoor "pans" in fact, they were the same wood fired pans in which sorghum molasses had been cooked a couple of months earlier.

After the rendering and skimming off of the brown bits of stuff that cooks into BCBs, the cooling lard was constantly "raked" with what look like wooden combs on a long handle and this went on round the clock until the lard was uniformly cool, "white" and there was no more separation and the lard took on a slightly grainy appearance.

Modern methods have made this process more rapid - sometimes with the use of additives - but have not really improved on the process that worked just fine for hundreds of years.

You can get a similar effect by pouring the rendered lard into a mixer bowl and setting the paddle or beaters at the slowest speed and run it while the lard cools. You can wrap a stainless steel bowl with a towel wrung out in ice water but have to stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl as the more rapidly cooling lard congeals on the sides. (Unless you have one of the beater paddles that scrape the bowl sides.)

[thock]

Very cool. I was wondering how it was done without refrigeration (i.e. in large batches or before there were fridges), or if they just dealt with the separation. Did you then keep the lard refrigerated? Did you use lard for pie crusts? If so, and if you didn't refrigerate the lard, were the crusts as flaky as you get with cold lard and butter? How long was it, typically, until the lard became rancid without refrigeration?

[Lindacakes]

I've got bacon fat and lard.

I've tried both Dietrich's and Flying Pigs Farm and I think they are quite comparable.

For me, in New York City, getting Flying Pigs is easier so that's what I do. Dietrichs likes a personal check, which then has to clear, which is a bit much.

Someone here should write a nice country blues song about My Fat Jar.

I love my fat jar,

I got me lots of fat jars,

Bacon fat and hog fat and drippins from the chickins . .

My fat jar gittin' higher since you ain't eatin' my biscuits no mo . . .

[andiesenji]

Very cool. I was wondering how it was done without refrigeration (i.e. in large batches or before there were fridges), or if they just dealt with the separation. Did you then keep the lard refrigerated? Did you use lard for pie crusts? If so, and if you didn't refrigerate the lard, were the crusts as flaky as you get with cold lard and butter? How long was it, typically, until the lard became rancid without refrigeration?

The lard was stored in milk cans in the spring house - it contained a cistern where very cold spring water came out of the ground and the overflow spilled into a concrete trough in which the cans were placed (along with milk waiting to be used or made into cheese, also butter, eggs and anything else requiring cooling. The spring house was like a fridge - easily as cold as most and one could now stay long in it without a heavy coat.

It was used in all kinds of cooking and in preserving some meats(canned in jars) - some was sold to local stores or traded to other farmers for their products.

In the kitchen the ready supply of lard was kept in a large crock that sat in a shallow crock filled with water. The evaporation of the water kept the larger crock cool even in summer. The cover was wood with a rim that kept it from dropping into the crock.

I was born in 1939 and this way of processing lard was carried on until the late 60s when the farm converted to more high tech methods.

[thock]

Thank you so much for this information, Andie!

[Soup]

I keep a jar of fat on the counter. The fat is from multiple sources (bacon, sausage, etc) when I believe the fat is worth saving, I save it in this jar.

Question: Does fat go rancid/bad (how do I know if it has gone bad?). Should I keep it in the fridge?

[OliverB]

Ah, fat! Love it, have it, keep it, and get more of it. Bacon fat, duck fat, chicken fat, pork fat, beef fat. It's all good! There's a neat book out there, "Fat" by Jennifer McLagan. Worth getting, good info and recipes and dispels with some of the nonsense "information" out there that was pushed by margarine manufacturers and others with monetary interests in other fats than those coming from animals.

And Andie, I love these stories from the past! My family owned a very big farm and mill operation in Germany, sadly one uncle grabbed it all once my grandparents passed, which made visits from the rest of the family almost impossible. Mill was powered by a big water wheel and huge belts ran up and down through a 3 or 4 story building. So wish I could show it all to my kids...

They used to cut ice from the pond in winter to put into a cellar for keeping things cold pretty much all summer long, love the idea of your well house also!

[thock]

I keep a jar of fat on the counter. The fat is from multiple sources (bacon, sausage, etc) when I believe the fat is worth saving, I save it in this jar.

Question: Does fat go rancid/bad (how do I know if it has gone bad?). Should I keep it in the fridge?

I'm not an expert, by any means, but I think you should be able to smell it when it starts to go rancid. That said, I've had bacon grease get moldy in my fridge. I'm guessing because it got wet.

[OliverB]

Unless you use it frequently, I'd def put it in the fridge. People have different sensibility to rancid taste/smell, my mom can't eat butter if it was carried through 10 sec of sunshine, LOL. But countertop is not a good place. You might fare ok with one of those butter bell things for frequent use. I put all mine in the freezer where it keeps for a long time.

Different fats and oils go rancid at different speed, but all suffer if exposed to air and light (and warmth). Since your fats seem to come from strong tasting sources like bacon you might not taste the rancidness as quick as with straight fat, but it will still go bad.

I keep my nut oils and those I use less frequently (truffle oil, sesame oil, etc) also in the fridge for example. Thinking about getting a small dorm size fridge for storage of these things.

[kayb]

Very cool. I was wondering how it was done without refrigeration (i.e. in large batches or before there were fridges), or if they just dealt with the separation. Did you then keep the lard refrigerated? Did you use lard for pie crusts? If so, and if you didn't refrigerate the lard, were the crusts as flaky as you get with cold lard and butter? How long was it, typically, until the lard became rancid without refrigeration?

I too grew up on a farm with hog-butchering, sausage-making, and lard-rendering. The lard stayed in the cellar, in gallon buckets filled to the top and covered so there was little if any air space. When a gallon was opened, it then stayed in the refrigerator. As well as I recall, the covered lard,stored as it was in a cool place, lasted for the full year (or until we ran out). Lard was used in pie crusts, biscuits, and most everything else.

[Heartsurgeon]

Thomas Keller lists a sous vide technique for rendering duck fat that i have used for duck, turkey and chicken fat - works great.

run the skin/fat/bits through a meat grinder, bag it and place in a 198 degree bath for 1.5-2.0 hours.

strain the solids out

cool the liquids

scoop the fat off the water/gelatin base!

this gets every last molecule of fat rendered.

If you don't have a sous vide set up, here is a quick and easy method which requires NO special equipment:

grind/chop/process the skin/fat/bits anyway you can (finer the better).

place the goop in a heavy ziploc freezer bag (exclude as much air as you can)

place the bag in a pan of barely simmering water, put a small plate over the bag to submerge it.

barely simmer the water for about 2 hours.

strain the solids out

cool the liquids

scoop the fat off the water/gelatin base!

[Sugar Apple]

Another source for leaf lard is Prairie Pride Farm located in Minnesota. You can order online and both the lard and their customer service are excellent. The website is:

http://www.prairiepridepork.com/

[Chris Amirault]

Thomas Keller lists a sous vide technique for rendering duck fat that i have used for duck, turkey and chicken fat - works great.

run the skin/fat/bits through a meat grinder, bag it and place in a 198 degree bath for 1.5-2.0 hours.

strain the solids out

cool the liquids

scoop the fat off the water/gelatin base!

this gets every last molecule of fat rendered.

If you don't have a sous vide set up, here is a quick and easy method which requires NO special equipment:

grind/chop/process the skin/fat/bits anyway you can (finer the better).

place the goop in a heavy ziploc freezer bag (exclude as much air as you can)

place the bag in a pan of barely simmering water, put a small plate over the bag to submerge it.

barely simmer the water for about 2 hours.

strain the solids out

cool the liquids

scoop the fat off the water/gelatin base!

You can also do this in a 200F oven to the same effect, following Wolfert et al above.