Making Lard at Home
Making lard is simple. Lard is rendered pork fat. You can render it with a saucepan, and a little water, over low heat.There will be pieces of skin and meat bits. These will brown, but not cook down. When the liquid fat is golden, and no white chunks of fat remain, the lard is finished. Strain off the left over browned bits of skin or meat.
Cost: 10
Equipment
- 1 large saucepan
Materials
- pork fat
Instructions
- After washing a whole piece of fat with water, cut it into 2-3cm (1 inch) blocks.
- Put the cut lumps of fat into the saucepan (do not use a wok, use a deep pot).
- Add a small bowl of water to the pot and mix well with the fat (it depends on the amount of oil you need to refine, you don’t need to use a lot of water).
- Use high heat to boil.
- After bringing the water to a boil, reduce the heat to simmer.
- Stir slightly to heat the oil evenly (no need to stir after being heated evenly).
- When the remaining pieces of meat in the pot shrink into small yellow pieces, all water is boiled off, and the melted fat appears yellow in color, remove the pot from the heat. Be careful not to overcook (do not let it smoke). Be careful that the browned pieces do not burn on the bottom of the pan.
- Use fine cheesecloth over a heat proof container to strain the hot liquid fat. Be careful, the fat is hot and will burn you.
- Pour the hot oil into a storage container after cooling, and you are finished.
Notes
- Water is added to prevent the meat from being burnt. The water will boil off while the fat cooks down. As the skin and meat pieces begin to brown, watch that they do not burn.
- Hot oil may spill out of the pot during the lard cooking process, be careful.
- If the fat has skin (or rind) attached, you must separate the pig skin from the fat: frying the skin in the oil will make it pop and sizzle, splashing hot lard!
- The rendered oil will be very hot, and it can stick to skin causing burns, let the oil cool before pouring it into the storage container!