Lard

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Cracklin' Press

We raised pigs as a kid and the butcher came and slaughtered the hogs and took them away for cutting and wrapping. People chose the slaughterer on recommendation for dependability and the butcher on word of mouth for the flavor of smoked meats and sausages. Commercial fabrications such a whole pork loin, crown roast etc were reduced to two basic cuts, fry or roast. We had bacon and sausage made but no hams because fresh leg of pork was saved for holidays since my dad wouldn't eat poultry. We used to let the butcher make the lard until mom found out he batch rendered and we got some lard that tasted of "boar" with a sickly musky odor. In the back of Grandmas celler was a lard or cracklin press. Hot fat was poured into a large cylinder, meaty bits and all. The handle cranked a weight down on top and you twisted until a maximum 30 pound wheel of cracklin's were perfectly formed with most of the lard pressed out. Cracklin's were used to flavor soup, gravy, corn bread, corn fritters, used as dog food and occassionally we'd sneak some and then spit out the greasy taste. Mom rendered her's in an old wash boiler on the cool side of her Majestic Wood stove.
 
Cracklin Corn Bread!!!

YUMMMM, now that is something GOOD!!!! My Grandmothers wood stove was a Majestic also!,I wish she had taken a picture of it, I never saw it, she got a Hotpoint in 54, but it had a large flat plate on the right side, and two eyes over the firebox, My Mother said she remembered Grandmother rubbing the top with a piece of fatback and frying pancakes right on the top ...she kept it so well polished they didnt stick, mainly she made yeast raised buckwheat cakes...if I only could find some buckwheat flour I would make some also...they are good!!Anyway, that stove was cream and green colored!! Wouldnt that be pretty!!
 
I grew up in the country and my folks always butchered our own pigs, beef and chickens.  We did it at our house and over several weekends as we did ours and cousins and aunts and uncles.  I have one of my parents big cast iron kettloes and my brother the other.  We never killed a boar (male) hog as as Kely said they have that muskey taste.  Always a gilt (cut male) that we fed out.  Used to Americalns wanted the fat pigs rounded rear end and thick fat across the back and belly now they are much much leaner less fat so less lard.  Butchering took place in the mid fall after we had two or three good frost and freezes.  After the first freeze the pigs hair would tighten up and be much hardered to scald and scrap the hair out.  After the 2nd or 3rd freeze frost would then loosed back up.  Dad wpuld get up early on a Friday morning and start the fires under the kettles and also a big steele barrel with water bring them to the boil.  They would do 3 pigs in a day the pigs had been off food for a day just water only to let their systems clean out.  The they would be driven out to the tress where we had a chain and pulleys and tie their back legs together and pull them up one quick shot from pistol to the head and the throat split to bleed out.  Blood was caught for making blood sausage.  the hog was bled out good then huled to the big barrel and scalded and then strug up and scraped with the knives then again to the bigger pot to scald again and scraped.  Then the eviseration was started everything into a smaller pot so they could be cleaned and washed (women did this as the guts were used for sausage stuffing.  gall cut out and tossed and the liver set aside to be sliced, they men then took the clean pig and poped the body open and let it hang to cool.  Did this to 3 pigs on Friday.  The bodies were left to hang in the cool air and were wrapped in went clean burlap bags over night.  This let the body go through rigor and the meat relax again.  The the butchering began on long table built over saw horses.  One half of a pig would be but and with knife and saw would be cut up by the men.  The kids would carry the different parts over to the ladies to be washed and then they would start with the salting and packing into salt barrels layering it all or cleaning the meat and wrapping it in freezer paper reading it for the freezer locker in town that would blazt breeze them and keep in storage for family.  The salted barrels would then be taken home for who ever and placed in a out building to cure first week the barrels would be emptied then the meat resalted and it would have drawn out lots of mositure.  The packed for another 3 or 4 weeks brought out and the salt wiped off and then to the smoke house to be smopked for 2 weeks.  Smoke house was a small building with things to hang the meat up in bags up outside was a small fire pit wher wood was placed to slowly burn and the top put on.  A 4 inch pipe went from it to the smoke house (cold smoking) and would fill the room with the smoke.  After that the women would make the cloth bags to cover the hams and bacon and either stored in cold place or sent to the locker.  Fresh meat was cut up for the freezer and sausage made and stuffed into the cloth casings or stiffed into the links and smokied in the smoke house.  Pork for a family of 6 for a year if used right.  The lard the women did like Kelly was saying.  Never mixed together they made it into 2 pound blocks to use and froze it al the locker.  The locker in town was huge and we had a big ben there with lock on it would hold our pork and whole beef and the 200 chickens we grew and raised aqnd killed for the year.  Once a month folks would go to the locker and pick out what meat to have for the comming month.  Haul that to the house and put in the chest freezer.  My dad and one uncle would also butcher a pig or fed out beef and go sell to folks off the pickup.  Ways to get some quick cash if needed.
 
Calling Jon Charles! You need to speak on this!

Good quality fresh Lard was the cornerstone of Great, and I mean Great, American Southern Cooking. It is the same foundation of great cooking as are the Three Fats of France:

 

1. Lard and to a lesser degree, Suet in the North. 

2. Butter in the Great Middle

3. Olive Oil in the South and Provence.

 

The Advent of Crisco transformed the culinary traditions of the American South into trailer-trash swill almost overnight. I loved, LOVED, Octavia Spencer's lecture on the benefits of Crisco in "The Help" but I respectfully disagree with the author. Crisco was and is a poor imitation of lard. It's just much cheaper and easier to store.

 

Lard is not only a great fat to use for Pie Pastry and Baking Powder Biscuits, it is unbeatable in frying chicken and other meats. One has to go to the trouble to find fresh lard, which is getting harder and harder to find. You don't need Leaf Lard (although it is exquisite) but go for the lard in Latin American markets that are in the refrigerator section, not at room temperature. We used to save bacon grease back in the day, and even a mixture of bacon fat and corn oil will produce respectable fried chicken.

 

If and when any of you go to Tuscany, you will find a small ceramic pot of a "schmear" next to the bread that's offered at table. It's called "lardo" and its the lard that's rendered from Prosciutto hams specifically for eating with the bread of the region. Almost puts butter to shame. BTW, old-world Italian butchers can be a great source for buying lard.

 

As far as I know, McDonalds stopped using suet in the Eighties when the hysterical food police blew the whistle on it. The food police hysterics are stupid, shrill and always ill-informed; don't listen to them.
 
Beef Fat or Tallow is a  good clear fat and has a good high smoking point.  Used correctly it is let things cook and not over brown them.  Good to used on hamburgers with onions to grill with them.  put the beef patty on the griddle then s bunch of thin sliced onion the pour a little melted tallow oven and let cooke.

 

 
 
Leaf lard

is the ONLY real lard available here, and only once in a very blue moon.

I deeply dislike factory farmed pork, as opposed to real pork, but I still eat it once in a while.

Tallow is available here, mostly in winter as bird food, but if I am feeling both ambitious and masochistic, I'll buy a few pounds and render it. It lingers, and I do not have a vent fan in the kitchen. (When I get to do a kitchen, a good vent system is the first thing going in!)

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
I don't know.  Lard is fat.  I tend to think that mono fat such as olive oil  is much better for you.  I try to eat everything in moderation including fat and I limit saturated fat from my diet and I won't eat items that I know contain trans fat.  Taste?  I will sacrifice taste  and texture if I have to.

 

None of this probably mattered 50 years ago because many folks did hard labor on farms and such but now with most folks sitting their butts at a desk, refusing to walk 40 steps, seeking the closest parking spot in parking lots, primary and secondary schools not offering gym class, and high school kids and young adults chained to their cell phones texting,  and playing games instead of  moving,   our level of activity doesn't sustain the exclusive  use of highly saturated fat diets.
 
Jerrod

You might want to investigate further.

They are finding that lard is not nearly as bad as it was once thought to be!
(I don't mean the processed stuff in a can)
And that some vegetable fats do more harm than good.

Saturated fats are important for the body to have in order to absorb Calcium, vit D, vit E, and A (within reason of course)

Quality Pastured pork from your local farmer, or local organic farm ( 0 trans fat) is rich in Omega 3 fatty acids.

It's kind of like non fat milk that has vit D added...it's kind of difficult for the body to absorb calcium, and vit D when it lacks ALL saturated fat.
This is only what I have been reading anyway?

food for thought LOL
 
Stop the presses! This just in...

Just as the wizards behind Crisco found a way to manufacture their product in a way which greatly reduces the amount of trans fat, Armour has apparently done the same.

For comparison: Butter contains 7 grams of saturated fat per tablespoon; lard 6 grams. Lard has less than 1/2 gram of trans fat/serving; butter none.

NOTE: Products can be labeled "zero trans fat" if they contain less than .5 gram/serving. New Crisco, for example, still contains some trans fat, but it's just a hair under .5 gram/serving, so they can label it "trans-fat free". Trans fat is considered so dangerous to cardiovascular well-being that guidelines recommend eating no more than 1.5 grams of it per day.

frigilux++10-14-2012-06-18-36.jpg.png
 
Pigs, Pork, Lard & Other "Oink" Matters

It is important to remember the saying "long as one had pigs or a pig one would never be hungry".

For most of modern history domesticated pigs were fed rubbish, swill,slop, or simply were allowed to roam about a town, village, fields etc eating whatever they found. Because it cost so "little" to fed them (unlesss one was fattening a pig up) most everyone even the poorest of souls could have a pig or two (hey you gotta keep next year's meat coming), and thus some sort of meat, especially in winter. Pork also giving off much fat when cooked also provided something to use for cooking and or baking other items.

OTHO because pigs often were fed "rubbish" and or foraged their meat contained various parsites included ones that caused Trichinosis. Some of these parasites can withstand high temperatures thus cooking pork until done often did not mean it was safe.

One of the claims surrounding modern pork (the other white meat that has been bred to be lean and now rather tasteless)is that modern pig farming techniques has rendered most pork sold in the USA (and one assumes the EU) free of parasites. This has lead to the USDA to lower the temperature for done pork down to about 145F to 150F instead of the 160 of above as before. Those of us old enough to remember our mothers/parents being so careful not to ever serve pork that was 'pink", and thus supposedly undercooked.

Cooking pork roasts or other cuts to that high internal temperature was great for killing "bugs" but often resulted in hard and tasteless meat.

The real sad thing is in the USA, UK and EU many of the best older breeds of hog/pigs have gone extinct. So much breeding has gone on to produce a pig that meets supermarket quality, that porkers our grandparents, great grandparents and so forth knew are long gone. How they probably would leff at what we call bacon today.
 
Fried Foods

Quiet right!

If done at the proper temperature fried foods shouldn't absorb much if any fat/oil at all. It is only when the process is done in cool (<325F to 350F) oil or fats do problems start.

It is easy to tell properly fried foods by how much "grease" is left on a paper towel or one's hands for that matter after touching.
 
Stan

True saturated fat is needed in our bodies and I still get some because I use half and half for my coffee and I eat cheese once in a while. I eat out at restaurants on the weekends so am probably getting some there too.  As for getting it from meat, I guess I don't  care too much about that any more because I don't eat meat but I do still eat fish.

 

Everything good for us in moderation.

 

The armour lard label:  120 Calories in each tablespoon.  Calories from fat 0.   Every other nutrient at 0%.  What is containing the calories, the cholesterol or is the lard not fat?  I am confused.
 
ASB Bridge

Off topic - Armour packing Co., Swift Packing Co., Burlington railroad. ASB Bridge in Kansas City. That's where it got it's name. Still there but only rail traffic on the lower deck. The upper deck was closed to automobile traffic in the early '80's.

Sorry, mid-'80s. It seemed like it should have been closed in the early '80s. It was quite scary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASB_Bridge
 
@launderess:

You said, "Because so much pork production is done on modern factory farms and slaughter houses and demand was weak, hardly anyone bothers to save the real stuff anymore for rendering."

The rendering business is doing quite well. Modern pork has much less fat than, say, 40 years ago, but the pork processors (processors =/= pork farmers) don't pay to have the fat hauled off to a landfill. You can take pork fat, treat it with sodium hydroxide (or potassium hydroxide) and methanol and end up with biodiesel fuel along with glycerine that ends up in your shower soap, among other things.

One thing you can say about hog production is that the chances of any part of mama pig ending up in piglet's diet are nil.

That's not true with with the poultry business. Ever wonder what happens to all of the chicken feathers left over from poultry slaughter? They don't end up in a landfill or into pillows, they get processed into feather meal, which goes into chick/chicken feed. Not a pretty thought, but that's why New Yorkers can buy skinless, boneless chicken breasts for under $2.00 a pound. And those breasts are about 45 days old - from the little chick pecking through the shell, to getting loaded on a Tyson truck.
 
Everything But The Oink

Oh yes, one knows that almost every part of a pig slaughtered in modern factory places is used one way or another; Mr. Armour started that process years ago.

What one meant was how hard it is to find leaf lard in the absence of local butchers. If one is lucky enought to have either that or a local supermarket with in house butchers that get whole animals one does stand a better chance.
 
@arilab:

McDonalds didn't use lard in their fries. They used beef tallow - but they didn't actually fry their taters in beef tallow, the were sprayed with it in the processing plant.
 
@launderess:

One thing I find confusing, among many, with today's green movement is the predominance of artificial bristle brushes. Depending on the use, horsehair and boar's hair brushes used to be the best materials available for applying paint. I think artists even used Sable brushes for either oil painting or water colors. Kind of like horsehair bows and gut strings for violins and violas.

But now 3M wants us to buy unbleached Scotch Brite pads and they call them "Green", just like S.C. Johnson wants us to buy glass cleaner without the blue tint, so we'll think that is better for the Earth. Bonus points if you buy that stuff at Whole Foods, rather than Safeway.

I can only imagine the number of native Americans doing major face-palms over our current way of living.
 
@launderess:

You said: "The real sad thing is in the USA, UK and EU many of the best older breeds of hog/pigs have gone extinct. So much breeding has gone on to produce a pig that meets supermarket quality, that porkers our grandparents, great grandparents and so forth knew are long gone. How they probably would leff at what we call bacon today."

While your notion is romantic, it's not realistic. There's more sleight-of-hand meat marketing going on now, thanks to the Food Channel, the interwebs and crafty beef marketing campaigns by the Angus producers than there is actual good information.

There are shrewd marketers trying to sell, "Berkshire pork" for $12/lb by mail. That's silly. There is more factory-brined Hormel pork in East Coast supermarkets giving real pork a bad name and taste than there is to be gained buying "Artisianal Pork" because someone saw someone on TV cook it. Quit buying prepackaged "Always Tender" Hormel pork. Quit buying decent pork and brining it with salt and sugar because some attractive but idiotic "chef" on the Food Network says you're supposed to, because they don't have the kitchen skills to cook a lean cut of pork without drying it out and turning it into a boot sole.

There are loads of TV ads, and signs in supermarkets proclaiming the superiority of "100% Angus beef." The only thing superior about Angus beef is the marketing effort carried out by the Angus producers' association.

I will guarantee you that no one here could tell the difference between a steak cut from an Angus, or a Limousin, or a Charolais, or a Hereford, or even a Simmental. There are some structural differences between these breeds, but the only way to identify those would be seeing a whole side of beef, since the breeds vary in width-to-height ratios, and even that would take a trained eye. And besides that, beef producers aren't like dog breeders, they mix and match what they have for economy, finished characteristics and behavior in the fields.

Most people on the coasts don't realize that there are different breeds of cows optimized for for different characteristics, like dairy production, e.g. Guernseys. But they are the first ones to wail about, "corporate farming" as if some big corporation owns all our production. I guess if a person sees a special on Channel 239 with Willie Nelson, Dave Matthews and Wilco about corporate farming, then everyone in the midwest is just a corporate pawn.

The whole, "this breed is better than that" claim is nonsense and tends to come from the people furthest removed from production. Why that is, I don't know. I don't claim to know that much about seafood, even though I live as far away from the Atlantic as the people who prattle on about their beef and pork expertise live from where cattle and hogs are actually raised.

Sorry for the rant, and I hope you don't think this is directed at you personally, but there is so much misinformation about beef, pork, corn and soybeans out there these days that I have to shoot my mouth off sometimes.

p.s. Trichinosis hasn't been a problem in U.S. pork production since the 1920s. There's a lot more potential for public health problems with the dum-dums that are promoting raw milk production than ever came from pork.
 
Launderess,

What parasites were not killed by cooking?

My understanding is that trichina parasites (which can cause a quite serious ailment if contracted by humans) are easily destroyed by normal cooking temps (such as to 165F).

What is interesting is that there are two types of trichina. The one most prevalant, if found, in US pork is killed by simply freezing the meat. The other type is not killed by freezing and therefore thorough cooking is required to destroy the parasites.

Here's some info from Wikipedia:


<h3><span id="Food_preparation" class="mw-headline">Food preparation</span></h3>
Larvae may be killed by the heating or irradiation of raw meat. Freezing is only usually effective for T. spiralis, since other species, such as T. nativa, are freeze resistant and can survive long-term freezing.<sup id="cite_ref-two_12-11" class="reference"><span>[</span>13<span>]</span></sup>

<ul>
<li>All meat (including pork) can be safely prepared by cooking to an internal temperature of 165 °F (74 °C) or more for 15 seconds or more.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Wild game: Wild game meat must be cooked thoroughly (see meat preparation above) Freezing wild game does not kill all trichinosis larval worms. This is because the worm species that typically infests wild game can resist freezing.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Pork: Freezing cuts of pork less than 6 inches thick for 20 days at 5 °F (−15 °C) or three days at −4 °F (−20 °C) kills T. spiralis larval worms but will not kill other trichinosis larval worm species such as T. nativa if they have infested your pork food supply (which is unlikely).</li>
</ul>
Pork can be safely cooked to a slightly lower temperature provided the internal meat temperature is at least as hot for least as long as listed in the USDA table below.<sup id="cite_ref-25" class="reference"><span>[</span>26<span>]</span></sup> Nonetheless, it is prudent to allow a margin of error for variation in internal temperature within a particular cut of pork, which may have bones that affect temperature uniformity. In addition, your thermometer has measurement error that must be considered. Cook pork for significantly longer and at a higher uniform internal temperature than listed here to be safe.

 

Internal Temperature Internal Temperature Minimum Time

 

(°F)                            (°C)                            (minutes)

 

120                               49                                1260 

122                              50.0                               570

124                             51.1                               270

126                             52.2                                 120

128                             53.4                                 60

130                             54.5                                 30

132                              55.6                                15

134                              56.7                                 6

136                              57.8                                 3

138                              58.9                                 2

140                              60.0                                 1

142                              61.1                                 1

144                              62.2                              Instant

 
 
PS-I am currently enjoying buying sirloin tip pork cuts, slicing them into bite size thin pieces, and then stir-frying them along with various veggies for a great quasi-Chinese dish to be served over rice.

 

This cut of pork is very reasonably prices (generally $2/lb or less) and lean. I buy it in bulk from Costco, not the brined flavored Hormel crap.

 
 
If a person were really concerned about trichinosis, they would stay away from venison - and pretty much all other game.

Anyone that's ever shot a deer has seen how many ticks and other insects they are infested with.

Current guidelines for cooking pork are 145F to be safe.

Hamburger is 160F, and that's only because most ground beef gets processed at big plants where intestines get breached often enough to spread digestive/fecal matter into the beef. Grind your own, and you can safely make steak tartare.

Chicken is 165F, because the alimentary contents get ruptured in the chicken processing often enough to be a concern.

And just in case the tofu fans are snickering, tofu production is like a big petri dish, too.
 
@sudsmaster

Methinks the confusion comes from what is meant by "high" temperatures.

As your chart shows depending how much below 160F one goes uniform internal temperature must reach and be sustained for a certain period of time.

One supposes it is like hot water; one persons 120F is "warm" whilst another sees 140F as "hot".
 
Driving the Market

When beef prices skyrocketed in the early 70's Poultry Council marketing made huge strides in presenting chicken as a healthy alternative. Then pork began to slide because of it's bad rap for fatty meat. In the 80's I.P.P. made huge inroads into the market by selectively breeding fat out of the finished product making it the "other white meat" alternative. I.P.P. also began touting the erradication of trichinosis and telling the public pork could be served less well cooked. Lamb was stuggling to overcome it's bad mutton rap that it received during meat rationing and World War II. Lamb is expensive and to a novice cook the concept of paying a fortune to cook an unkown was daunting. Both Pork and Lamb began to use standard cuts like Prime Rib, New York, Sirloin, Tenderloin etc demystifying how to prepare Lamb and Pork as easily as beef. As a nation we prefer white meat poultry. Our birds are bred to have much larger breasts. Dark meat is sold to Asian markets and tenderloins are sold of to European markets and in return we buy their white meat. Chicken feet which are a delicacy in China were a cash cow for Poultry producers in the USA. The depts of Agriculture from China and US had conflict over the way China handled the melmac milk issue and renigged in allowing Chinese inspected products. China rebelled, quit buying chicken feet and now South America is the largest supplier of chicken feet to China. Very few cooks cut up a fryer or even use the whole bird so specialty packs are the norm. To answer the call the Dept of Agriculture invented a new cut of beef called "Select" touting it as low fat. Grocery store beef is not aged, usually very lean and if you cook it too fast it will turn into rubber. The USDA eliminated an old grade, Commercial creclassifying it Standard and slid Select between Standard and Choice. Congratulations stupid America! You can now pay twice as much for this new beef grade the industry created just for us to stay healthy. This grade used to be sold to schools, cafeterias and health care because it was tough and cheap and their clientele preferred braised meats. If one looked at how far the tenticles of greed, lobbyist, politicians and money reached into our food supply you'd be sickened, Read the amount of totally false rhetoric pandered by government groups and CSPI like telling us all eggs were bad for you because of cholesterol. That all came out of fight between the sugar lobby that wasn't aupported by the poulty group so they dredged up some "doctors and scientist" to get back at the poultry industry. We all know now much of those studies were baseless.
Of course Food Network talks up organic, wild, odd and imported but the number of Americans who actually watch an episode and get on the phone to order a Wild Boar or Ostrich are few. Store like Whole Foods are lovely and have a fascinating selection but the cost of goods outweighs the end result. The calories of cheap food, organic food and home grown food have similar calorie and nutrition counts. As much as Laundress can make my jaw muscles ripple at times, I feel she is correct in the intent of what she wrote. Boutique meat factories are not the norm. In commercial processing everything is utilized in some fashion and we know that fats are a major player in soaps, cosmetics, cleaning products and myriad other uses, some pharmaceuticals. After 50 years in the food industry I have seen it all and I must confess it amazes me more people aren't sick or dead from questionable food products, sloppy hygiene and not knowing much about cooking.

mixfinder++10-15-2012-01-52-50.jpg
 

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