Update: This Giveaway is now closed. Congrats to Jill! Jill, please check your email for information on how to claim your prize.
Just a warning, friends: expect a lot of giveaways in the next several weeks. I spent last weekend at the Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup and was more than happy to bring home the bacon for NW Edible readers in terms of great book giveaways, fair swag and more.
And when I say “bring home the bacon,” I’m not being entirely figurative.
GRIT Magazine, the rural living sister publication to Mother Earth News magazine, just published a cookbook of heritage American recipes, all featuring lard. I think I’ve made my feelings on lard pretty well known - go lard! – and GRIT was kind enough offer a copy of the cookbook to one lucky reader, along with a complimentary one-year/6-issue subscription to GRIT Magazine.
Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother’s Secret Ingredient is a bit different from a standard issue cookbook because the recipes are collected from GRIT readers, who have been submitting their family faves since the magazine started publication in 1882.
Because of this, the historic nature of many of the recipes (World War II Honey Cookies, for example) and the periodic anecdotes from readers included in recipe sidebars, the cookbook has a very homey feeling, like your 85 year old neighbor from Oklahoma is leaning over the fence to share her recipe for Plum Dumplings.
It’s a very charming cookbook, but it leans heavily to the sweet, with 5 of the 7 chapters focusing on baked goods. In a way this isn’t too surprising – lard is an excellent fat for baking, rendering everything from biscuits to piecrust tender and flakey in just the right proportion.
The remaining chapters, Vegetables and Main Dishes tend toward the fried and the proudly non-gourmet, with the notable exception of Beef Wellington. Recipes like Potato Loaf, Easter Ham Pie and Old Fashioned Green Beans are the kind of frugal comfort food your grandma would have made, if your grandma grew up on a farm in West Virginia. I looked everywhere and there wasn’t a single blood orange gastrique or galangal-scented garlic foam in the entire book.
The inclusion of the occasional can of Cream of Something Soup in the savory recipes is going to make some readers cheer Viva Americana! and others shy away from that particular brand of retro. To each their own. Personally, I’m looking forward to making the honey-sweetened Cherry Pie a bit later in the season.
I made the Homemade Flour Tortillas and they were easy to make and work with. Homebrew Husband declared them the best tortillas he’d ever had and even though I generally make corn tortillas, I’d have to agree these were excellent.
To enter to win your own copy of Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother’s Secret Ingredient and a one-year subscription to GRIT Magazine, leave a comment below telling me your favorite recipe or way to use lard.
Drawing open until Wednesday, June 13th, 9 PM PST. Winner will be notified by Friday, June 15th. Drawing open to US residents, only, please. You can tell me as many ways as you like to use lard, but only one entry per person will be counted in the drawing to win the cookbook and magazine subscription.
Good luck!
A friend of mine just offered me some lard from one of her pigs. I can’t wait to try it out.
I’ve never used lard but I’ve never gotten the all butter pie crust right. And I just can’t do crisco. So I’ll get my hands on some and try it in pie crust!
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you not making this giveaway involve a bunch of Facebook & Twitter antics.
Right now, I’m appreciating lard to fry eggs and other pan-frying things. I’ve used it in some baked goods, which is good, but I’m not as comfortable with it. Somehow, the first lard I rendered was lovely & not “porky” at all. The rest of it, though, has enough pork flavor that I am hesitant to use it in sweet applications.
My favorite with-lard recipe is Rick Bayless’ Swiss chard tacos. Feels a little wild, adding lard to what otherwise would be a vegetarian recipe, but I can’t do it any other way. I’ve done the same recipe with olive oil, but it’s just not the same!
i’ve never used lard before…i suppose pie crusts?
My mom used to have a special can next to the stove for straining bacon fat. Aside from eggs and frying up hash browns, I can’t think what else she used it for. Now I need to ask her! Those tortillas look amazing – fresh are so much better than store-bought. I’d love to give them a try!
I think this is the cookbook I waited for for 60 years! Don’t even think of making pie pastry with anything other than lard. So light and flakey! I’m so glad that Grit is still around.
My favorite way to use lard is deep frying chicken. It may not be as good for you as boneless skinless baked chicken but it sure tastes a whole lot better!
We have an old family recipe called Well Pudding. It calls for lard, flour, currants, brown sugar and butter! It is definitely a special occasion type recipe and has been passed down from generation to generation for as far back as we know. Great- grandma used to put out the call that she had Well Pudding on the stove and the whole family would be there in 30 minutes or less!
I’m a recovering vegetarian, and probably my favorite holdover from those days is a snack. Fried chickpeas coated in sea salt and smoked paprika. I used canola oil on them back in the day, but then I was able to get some wonderfully cheap, beyond-organic fatback from my favorite local rancher. Turns out chickpeas fried in lard are what Zeus surely snacks upon when he’s got the nibbles on Mount Olympus. I’m going to vegetarian hell, but who cares when I’ve got piggy fried chickpeas?
Oooh, yummy!
One of my cookbooks, Darina Allan’s ‘Forgotten Skills in Cooking’, tells how to render lard, but I haven’t tried making it myself yet. The one recipe that I’ve made with lard is a molasses crinkle cookie recipe from one of my great-aunts that she got from her mother.
Question along the lines of cooking with lard…bacon grease. Is there something I can do to the bacon grease to lessen the bacon-y flavor? I bought half a pig last fall, and the bacon produces a lot of grease that I keep storing in jars (because I tell myself there must be something besides cornbread that I can make with it). I made one failed pie crust using bacon grease, and ended up just eating the filling, although the bacon flavor might work in a quiche.
Hi Maggie!
Do you strain out the bits in your bacon fat? Until I read “Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient,” I’d never known what to with bacon fat or to strain it. I ended up discarding a lot of bacon fat for lack of knowledge.
That cookbook has an awesome recipe for “bacon fat spice cookies”. Really? They’re molasses cookies with bacon fat as the fat, basically. It’s stupendously good, and very simple. So, I personally suggest playing around with that idea (or checking that cookbook out of the library).
Look for Darina’s books from her beautiful and amazing 400 acre estate in rural East Cork, Ballymaloe House, the renowned Irish country house hotel and restaurant owned and run by the Allen family for over 40 years.
Ballymaloe Cookery School
Shanagarry
Co. Cork
Ireland
The bacon-y flavor of bacon grease is the best part. I recommend using it when cooking all beans. A tablespoon of bacon fat in a pot of beans makes it extremely delicious. Also good in savory tart or quiche crusts.
As a teenager my dad used to dip into his mother’s can of rendered bacon fat to pop corn. I haven’t tried that yet, but he used to rhapsodize about how it was the ultimate snack.
Hello, Maggie,
You can use bacon grease or any other dripping for soap. Just save the dripping after cooking in a container in the freezer. Follow the recipie to make the soap.
If you can get some real lard from a pig or other animal (the kind that lies beneath the skin and surrounds organs, etc, you can render or “try out” the grease. You cube the fat and cook it over low heat. The cooked bits of fat can be saved to to flavor cornbread. Lard doesn’t have as strong a taste as bacon, which has been smoked.
Carla Emery has written a book on homesteading and many other things. I think it’s now in its 10th edition. I have my mother’s copy of one of the first editions, which was photocopied on what looks almost like construction paper, only thinner. Do take a look at her book!
Finally, the best sugar cookies I ever had were made by my grandmother. I asked what was in them; she insisted I taste one first. She had used chicken fat which she had removed from a chicken before roasting it.
Awesome giveaway. When we go camping, we dry up the bacon, then the potatoes and then then eggs. Sooooooooo tasty, but not something I kick out everyday.
There can’t be just *one* favorite way to use lard!
The most traditional way, though, has to be the pie crust recipe that was handed down to me from my mother. She learned to make the crust by watching and working with my grandmother (her mother-in-law). I have such fond memories of homemade cream pies in my grandmother’s kitchen. There was nothing more heavenly than that combination of cream filling and crispy lard filled pie crust!
My fave thing is pie crust. If you can master making a pie crust with real lard, then you truly win my heart over! Delish!!!
Great giveaway! Count me in!
I’ve never actually used lard before! I’ve tried 1,002 (est.) tortilla recipes, and non turn out as good as central market’s. I’m thinking that lard might be something that is missing from my version. Would love to win this to try out the torts!
I have only used lard in pie crusts, and that was a long time ago. I would like to get back to using it again, and look forward to learning other ways to use it.
Pie crust! For quiche, specifically. Yum, and this is a former vegetarian talking.
I use bacon fat to make fried rice with leftovers in the fridge. Used lard in a chicken pot pie crust, which was the one and only time my pie crust ever turned out well. And I have fond memories of baking with my Nana using lard and learning to measure it with water displacement. :)
My Aunt Frannie always had a bacon drippings can on the back of the stove……a tablespoon or so was added to just about every vegetable. Favorite: fresh green beans cooked long and slow in a cast iron pot with bacon grease and onions.
Biscuits are not the same without lard!
Oh lordie,lordie! did someone say lard?! Have very fond memories of Mom using lard for everything! Tortillas, in pinto beans while there cooking and refried! And ,I never had a problem with my cholestrol levels. ;-)
Right now we only use lard in our homemade soap, but big tortilla eaters at Casa de Dogs or Dollars. I’d love to give those a try.
Just recently found your blog….funny that one of my next projects was to render lard! I will have to try those tortillas for sure!!
My grandpa used to eat lard on toast, instead of butter. I never tried it that way, but may give it a shot. I can get good, fresh lard from our natural foods co-op…haven’t yet because it’s pricey, but I will buy some on my next trip. I also plan on using a bit for my face….
I am sad to say, I have never cooked with lard, so I don’t have a favorite recipe, but you have made me want to give it a try!
The closest thing to a lard story I have is from when I worked in the kitchen at Tall Timber Ranch, up by Lake Wenatchee, one summer (one of the best summers ever!) All the staff got their photos taken and posted in the dining room, and when the camera came around I happened to have the giant tub of crisco out to make cookies, so I scooped a giant spatula full and held it up like I was going to eat it. All the kids would look at that picture and say “Ew! You’re eating lard!” and then I would have to explain to them the difference between lard and shortening.
In real life, I think I would be more willing to eat a spoonful of lard than shortening, but hesitant for either, really.
Among other things, I use lard to seal the tops of my rillettes and store them outside in the cold weather. When I bring them back inside, the lard softens up and I can mix it in or remove it as needed.
What is rillettes?
Honestly I don’t have a favorite way…yet….I just started to save my grease and was hoping to find some recipes to use it on. Soo this giveaway is perfect timing!!
My Grandmother’s “white cookies”. Simply the best recipe ever for rolled sugar cookies. She made them at Christmas time, of course, and at Easter (chicken and egg cutouts) and in between she just cut them with a 4″ round scallop-edge cutter. Those were the best, because oversized cookies hadn’t been invented yet.
I’ve rendered it to use in making refried beans and for sauteing other meats because it browns them so well and just adds a richness to their flavor. The nice thing is it really doesn’t take hardly any for the added flavor.
Also the birds get some too if I find good leaf lard that won’t melt (some is mixed with too much tallow when I’ve purchased it at local butcher shops pre-ground and that is just no fun at all.)
i use lard in pie crusts, cookies, tortillas, biscuits, and tamales. my grandmother used it in soap. my mother still holds onto some flakes that my grammy made in like 1978. she claims it’s the best for getting out stains. i most often use it to season my cast iron since it doesn’t go rancid as quickly as other oils. the only problem is that vegetarians can’t eat my cooking :o
We use lard in our homemade biscuits! YUM!
I actually like to use lard in soap! I recently made this amazing shampoo bar with lard and it leaves my hair and skin super soft. I also prefer to use it when doing stirfry or sauteing. Of course it’s amazing in baked good as well. There’s just so much to do with lard!
I don’t use lard too often, but I like to use it in my pork rillettes since it’s hard to get good fatty pork at the market. I’ve tried making pie crust with shortening, palm oil and butter, but nothing beats butter + lard. I haven’t found a local source of organic lard yet, but I’d really like to. This cookbook sounds wonderful!
I’ve never used lard. But I have been hearing more and more about it….and of course am now curious about what the big deal is about!
I still need to try to use lard. So far, tortillas is what I can testify to. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good home source of the stuff yet, and I’m not so sure about the commercial version.
I do already have a good written source of lard info, and I try not to bring in TOO many cookbooks. So if I ‘perchance” win, you can pick a different winner for the cookbook and make two girls very happy! However, I would love love love to win the subscription to GRIT. That would just make my day!
Mmmmm…lard! I use it every day for savory cooking. And lard from the pig’s head is as good as goose/duck fat for cooking eggs. Don’t use it for pie crust though, as I’ve found that gluten-free pie crust is too sticky with lard for some reason.
I’ve never used lard but have wanted to for some time.
Refried beans!
I use lard to make lye soap and for skin rejuvenation in the winter. I haven’t cooked with it too much other than biscuits. This book is right up my alley. I just downloaded a WW2 food economy cookbook for the parsley honey recipe which came out great.
After 20 years of vegetarianism, I have recently converted whole heartedly to eating meat. As a baker, my greatest find has been using leaf lard in my pie crusts. Absolutely amazing!
I need this cookbook! I have gone dairy free for my son who developed an allergy in my breastmilk. I miss butter! I have been using duck fat instead with some good results. I was hoping to source or make my own lard to expand my options. Maybe I can live without butter indefinitely after this experiment. I hope not though. Thanks for the give away!
I always cook my soup beans with bacon or bacon grease. Nothing better.
In my family, annual Christmas tamales are a tradition. Lard is absolutely essential in making the masa, and I wouldn’t make them any other way. Tamale making is a family event (prefaced by margheritas), in assembly-line fashion starting with prepping the corn husks, slathering on masa, and adding the filling. The filling is typically javelina (wild boar) that my father hunts in Arizona every year, covered with a variety of homemade sauces. If there is leftover masa we make dessert tamales with raisins, nuts, and cinnamon as the filling.
I would love to expand my culinary lard knowledge, and score this giveaway!
Thanks!
The only thing I have ever used lard for was to make food for some nesting bluebirds, but I recently obtained some fatback from a local farmer and am planning to try to render some. If I’m successful, I will use it to sauté vegetables and try to make a decent pie crust.
Generally I use Lard on my cast iron skillet right before I use it, works great with eggs! Once I get some wicks, I’m going to try turning my cleaned/filtered bacon drippings into candles (my neighbor did it and said it worked great, no smell or anything).
I’ve never used lard before but I have been trying of trying it for some time. We have been moving to a “from scratch” cooking environment and I have read about using lard quite a bit in the process.
Haven’t used lard yet – but would love to if/when I can get it from pastured pork! I would like to try it in coconut flour biscuits.
Tamales. Every year my girl friend and I get together and make a huge batch on tamales from scratch. And lard is essential!!!
I rendered lard for the first time last month and I fell head over heels…! I’ve been using it in lots of dishes, vegetables, soups, desserts. Granola(Almond/coconut/vanilla) is simply delicious with the addition of lard!
We love chimichangas fried in lard. Or french fries. This cookbook looks awesome!
I season all my cast iron with lard and use it as often as I can. Pie crust, and anything I cook in the cast iron, I use lard. Keeps it going, non-stick!! I also make outside treats for all the pretty birds that come around. It’s very good in the blocks I make for them in the winter. I would love the recipe for the tortillas. My mom used to make them with lard, but I haven’t found a recipe using it yet. Maybe now??? (hint, hint)
I have never used lard to cook. I have memories of watching my Nana cook with lard but I have no idea. :(
Im not too versed with using lard. So far I’ve only used it in my beans. If I win it would be a great opportunity to learn more ways to use it! **fingers crossed**
I use lard to make ginger cream cookies. It is a recipe my mom (RIP) has passed on to me. It is lard melted with water then add molasses and flour, then refrigerate over night. The next day roll it ourt and make cut outs or just slice it and bake it.
I don’t remember using lard. I also have been hearing about the benefits of using it, and would love to learn to use it. I also thank you for not making us jump through 5 hoops via facebook, twitter, etc. to enter. It’s great to find a book that can teach us newbies, and some sources.
I haven’t tried cooking with lard, but I love cooking with bacon grease and schmaltz! I would love to learn how to make real tortillas and see how they compare to the tortillas I make with vegetable shortening.
Hmm … So many great uses for lard. My favorite is probably pie crusts. But I do love making carnitas in it … kind of a pork confit.
Fish fry time! I remember 4th of July fish fries at my grandmother’s farm in Wisconsin. My grandfather had a cast iron pan that had to be three foot in dia, and he would cook directly on a charcoal bbq. He would fry northern pike and pan fish from Canada in lard. Yum!
I love traditional tortillas!!
I haven’t used it before either (hanging head in shame) – only bacon grease, which is outstanding for cooking just about any other breakfast food in. I would love to learn how though!
lard is made for pie crusts.
I was raised with lard on brown bread, instead of butter. I still like it better; no accounting for tastes formed in childhood!
mmmm….. I’d have to say my favorite lard recipe is yummy homemade buttermilk buscuits….
I’d love to try out more recipes though…
I’m just learning to cook and haven’t used lard before. However, I have a couple of great cooks who will help me with ideas for where to start!
I love to use lard in frying and pie crusts but only from my own butchered hogs for the same reasons that I raise my own pigs instead of purchasing factory farm animals.
I’ve been working on tortillas for a while … my corn ones are *terrible*. I’ve got an authentic recipe (I personally knew this mamecita!) that I’ve been playing with: 2 cups flour, 1/4 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 Tbs LARD, 1 cup warm water = 12 tortillas.
I love to use it for pie crusts.
As a vegetarian, I have been too afraid to use lard in my cooking. But my live-in chef (aka my boyfriend) has no such qualms. I am learning to accept the usefulness of animal fat (I’m helping recycle, right?)
My #1 reason for loving lard – you can’t beat a piece of homemade [lard-filled] pie at a truck stop at midnight. Those truckers know how to eat!
I love lard for pie crusts, but it is also my go to fat for pan frying.
I use lard for pie crusts, seasoning my cast iron, frying eggs, skin salve. Its wonderful stuff!
I must say that rendered lard and strained bacon fat has been a staple in my family. My grand mother was from MS and my grandfather was from AR. They migrated to St. Louis and brought the good home gooking with them. Buttermilk biscuts, buttermilk cornbread, buttermilk pancakes, along with buttermilk pie crust were some of the things that she used lard for. My grandfather would used the strained bacon grease to make smothered potatoes, any type of beans, all of his greans and cabbage. I am starting to get hungry and homesick at the same time. I wonder if the lard and buttermilk enhanced each other?
I discovered the joy of lard a few years ago. There’s no tastier fat to fry an egg in than lard. And lard pie crusts are wonderful – they actually have flavor and aren’t just some bland pie-filler holder! I have a bunch of leaf fat in my freezer ready to render into lard, so would love to have a gander at this cookbook, and would be interested to check out Grit magazine, too. Thanks!
Biscuits! Sourdough biscuits. Mmmmm!
Pie crusts and biscuits… but looking to expand my repertoire!
i miss seeing the old school round fat strainer in a prominent place on the stove top or back of the range . . . i think my favorite use was in a batch of greens or beans, where you want to imply some meat but not necessarily use meat. As to fine lard, i think a primo use is in the making of Tamales.
Thanks for the chance to win an intriguing cookbook!
I love to put lard in my cookies YUM so bad for you :)
1) saute brussels sprouts in it, with a little minced garlic thrown in towards the end.
2) PIE CRUST!
3) biscuits (although I sometimes to use coconut oil for this)
4) Frying beignets
5) Searing short ribs before braising them
6) Making rue for gravy, and for mac & cheese
7) When grilling hamburgers from grass-fed beef, we usually put a pat of butter or LARD in the center of the patty. I prefer lard if we’re putting blue cheese on the burgers.
Mmmm…. lard….
Oddly enough, given the title of the book, my favorite way to use lard is in my Grandma O’Brian’s donut recipe. The whole family loves them and they just aren’t the same fried in Crisco. Gotta have the lard.
Soap!
I’ve only ever used it to make pies.
Pie crust! I’ve only ever made pie crust with my Nanny’s recipe using lard.
I use lard or bacon grease for lots of things, but I think my favorite is pan-fried potatoes.
Hi again! It’s me the newbie :) So I have never cooked with lard so I don’t have a well of amazing recipes to share from. What I do have is a memory.
My granny, used Lard in her baking,well she used it for everything. The thing I remember the most is her tart cherry pies. I would sit on a stool and watch her with this big tub of ‘grease’ that’s what she called it. Anyway she was so comfortable with herself she would just stick her hand in that tub, eyeball it and call it good. What came out of that was the most amazing pie crust I have ever had. Will I ever be able to do it as well as my granny? Never, because her dough, had granny love in it. Good luck to who ever wins! :)
I have only used it to season my cast iron and to “taste-up” my dog’s feeding dish when he gets tired of the same old-same-old and rub the edge so he thinks he’s really getting something good! I have not ever baked with it though. Doesn’t it have a hint of bacon taste to it?
I use lard in flour tortillas, to saute, to fry (especially our family’s favorite dinner-crunchy tacos), and other baking. I saw someone else mention bean soup-what a great idea!
Pie crust with lard is the best!! at least if it is real lard, not the homogenized stuff they sell at the store now days, I won’t eat that.
Tortillas made with lard are the absolute best! So soft!
I’ve made a lard pie crust which was good, maybe I need to try another recipe. But daily I use lard to cook eggs. Yum!
I’ve lived in the south the majority of my life. Here is where my father’s people have lived for generations. My Aunt Gladys always dropped a large dollop of lard in everything she cooked. I like to use lard in biscuits. That is the extent of my use of lard while still trying to cook healthy.
My WV farm guy makes insanely wonderful biscuits with lard.
I would LOVE to win this book as I have American Guinea Hogs, which are supposedly a lard type pig. And one is going to the butcher fairly soon!
We just sent a beef to the butcher and I requested all the tallow. I will be overwhelmed with soap making next week but it will be fun in the meantime. Everyone is freaking
out about using soap with fat in it….until I point out that all good soaps have fat!
Thanks for all the good blight entries…I am going to have fun reading back through your work.
I was just reading my soapmaking book and the author distinguishes between soap – which is ALWAYS made by the reaction of fat (animal or vegetable) and lye – and detergent, which is a petroleum distillate. Detergents are increasingly common in “soaps” and various liquid cleaners. It’s fascinating to me that a nervousness about a product made with tallow would drive people to scrub with a product made with crude oil. Ah, marketing…
I love to fry stuff up in lard–potatoes, squash, okra, etc… Those tortillas sound amazing!
I just use lard as a substitute for oil or butter depending on the dish and who is eating it.
I’ve never used lard. It fascinates and scares me. i need guidance and wisdom, but my grandmother is not alive.
Pie crust is a given, but I use it mostly in my biscuits and dumplings. Fluffy and plump every time.
This is almost terrible to say …. But one of my favorite ways to use lard is to use it to quick stir fry some vegetables and serve them to my almost vegetarian husband (he pretty much only eats chicken breast – and any type of animal fat tends to completely gross him out). I don’t tell him what the secret ingredient is!
My grandmother makes the best cinnamon buns on earth with lard. I love eating Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner at her house because she thinks margarine is the devil and refuses to use anything but lard and butter in her cooking and baking. I would love a chance to try some recipes! Thanks!
It’s essential to use lard in making home made tamales! Chicken are our favorite.
See if this counts. It is pig fat – yummy fat rendered from cooking bacon. Mom always saved it to saute onions. fried potatoes, or whatever. Also, boil fresh corn on the cob, and use bacon fat in place of butter. This is a favorite from Grandma’s: brown cut up bacon, remove from skillet, saute chopped onion, add cooked fresh snap beans and the bacon. Another: brown cut up bacon and onion, add apple cider vinegar, reheat, and pour over leaf lettuce from the garden – wilted lettuce. Here’s one of mine: brown cut up bacon, scoot to side of skillet, saute onion slivers, toss in baby organic spinach and just wilt, mix in a little pomegranite syrup, stir, serve, yum.
In my teen years we lived on a farm, butchered a pig and rendered a bunch of fat, so we tried to do our own pork rinds. The flavor was good, texture not so good, not a swimming success, and didn’t look much like the store bought version.
I have never cooked with Lard. But I am interested in giving it a try. I would like to learn to make tortillas and a good pie crust. We are thinking of raising a pig.
I do use bacon drippings for seasoning vegetables.
OK, so I’m with Kate: margarine is the devil.
Another OK, after reading through all the comments, I am wanting to trash the kitchen and cook up at least a dozen comment-inspired dishes. Anybody else feeling this way?
My favorite way to use lard is in tamales! It is a necessity.
So, I’d say Tamales as well. However, as we found out, you must have good quality lard to make good, quality tamales. Most times that means NOT getting from a typical grocery store. Directly from a farmer is a great place to start, as are the independent markets that sell these types of items.
Pie crust, of course!
I’ve never tried cooking with lard, but maybe I’ll give the pie crust thing a try. Is it possible to get lard in small quantities, like butter, or do you have to commit to the rest of the pig?
Home fries! I also love how it seasons cast iron
This looks like the perfect answer to keeping my Greatgandmothers’ cookbook safe and usable! It’s from 1850 and is called “The Plucky Housewifes Guide” I have been using Crisco and Chicken Fat saved from the beer can style of roasting chickie…
I’ve never cooked with lard, but I use bacon grease often enough.
OK, that is a book that interests me, so I’ll enter. Actually, I’m a made-for-lard girl since Crisco and margarine (and mayo and everything else) are lovely GMO soy products and I am soy intolerant. Tortillas sound lovely, btw. (Tortillas in the US are also a fine soy product. Srsly.)
Favorite Recipe: Soap
24 oz Olive Oil
24 oz Coconut Oil
38 oz Lard
12.5 oz sodium hydroxide
dissolved in 32 oz water
Color and scent as you like.
Makes about 32 4 oz bars
(I have large tubs that read ‘manteca’ all through the garden…)
I use in my pie crust. Just like grandma!
One of the things I like about my move to a big city is that non-processed lard is available in the grocery store. I use it in any recipe with beans and as the fat to cook leaner meats like ground turkey. I’m looking forward to the day that I can render my own from my own pigs!
Pie crusts and soap. Haven’t really tried it in anything else.
I just rendered lard for the first time last fall. When we took our pigs in and I told the butcher that I wanted all the extra fat, he gave me a very strange look… Guess he doesn’t get told that much, eh? Anyways, we use it in baking, and for anything pan fried. When we butchered our last round of chickens, we had the most outfreakinstanding liver and onions… Cooked in lard, of course. :) I’m hoping to try soap this fall.
I have never used lard but would love to try!
I’ve taken to rendering my own lard. It’s easy-peasy and is less expensive when having organic lard is important to you. (Honestly, given that fat is the place where toxins like to get together … like the Toxin Bar and Grille, if you like, going organic can be considered pretty important. But only if such things matter to you.)
As to using it, I love using lard as an enrichment to my whole grain bread. I grind my own wheat (yes, I’m one of those), and fresh ground wheat + organic lard makes for a mighty fine loaf of bread.
And now I must go find a towel. The drool on my keyboard is making a mess….
:)
I’ve had a bucket of lard that the hubby brought home sitting in my fridge for two months. I have NO idea what to do with it, and hubby’s getting frustrated! A book like this just might smooth the turbulent marriage waters…if I don’t win, I’ll check it out from the library.
I have never used lard, but after discovering all of it’s wonderful health benefits I am dying to try it out! I think the first thing I will use it for is frying or roasting veggies in. Yummy!
I’ve never cooked with lard, I remember using it in baking pies with my grandma as a child but I’ve never brought it into my own home (shame). I need this book to teach me all the lardy goodness!
Biscuits has to be at the top of the list for things that are better with lard. Anything you fry browns better with even just a little lard added to your oil. When my grease crock starts getting low, I render out some sliced fatback, to refill it, and store the fatback in the freezer. I throw in a piece of it when I’m cooking beans for seasoning. My dad ate bacon every day of his life, along with eggs, real butter on his biscuits, and whole milk. He never had heart trouble or high blood pressure. Mom did end up with high blood pressure in her 80′s.
Hands down, it’s pie crust. My mom always makes hers with Crisco, but after finding out all about trans fats years ago I looked around for something else. I tried butter, and it’s all right, but never quite got the flaky, tender amazingness that I got from my mom’s pie crust. Until lard came along. I was so hesitant to use it, but it’s truly amazing stuff. I even found a local butcher who uses locally raised pigs, to get lard from.
Now I want pie….
What have I used lard for? With my mother and sister-in-law, I have made cookies and piecrust. My mother and I made lye soap for the laundry, washing dishes and the “bath” (we didn’t have one): took sponge baths instead.
The soap was lovely for washing my skin and never dried it. I wasn’t so lucky with using it to wash my hair.
We fried vanity cakes from the “Laura Ingalls Wilder Cookbook “with lard. Made other doughnuts, too.
And we seasoned our cast iron frying pans with it, as well.
I’d like to try making a shampoo bar with the soap.
Prefer cooking with home rendered lard when it is available :) It stores well in the freezer also :)
I know that whatever I make with lard I use the cast iron skillet my great-grandma handed down to me. I miss amazing biscuits and pancakes like she used to make them.
Easy. Grandma Esther’s No Fail Pie Crust! So unbelievably superior to any othe pie crust I’ve tried!!!
I have not used lard. That’s why I really want the cookbook! Ed Wilsey from Homestead Natural’s just gave me some lard and I’m excited to use it.
I love to use lard in soapmaking :D Lard and tallow make handmade soap awesome IMO.
I don’t have recipe per se However, I have wanted to fry up some chicken using lard!
This is fantastic because today I bought lard for the first time ever, to make homemade tortillas tomorrow. And now I see your post on tortillas and lard, via Facebook. Excellent! My local butcher handed me his last container or pork lard and sounded so happy to hear of another lard lover :) I’m excited for tomorrow’s dinner!
I use lard to make whole wheat biscuits, when cooking turnip greens or swiss chard, and it’s a very tasty way to flavor cornmeal pudding! My family’s Choctaw recipe handed down from my great-grandmother using unfiltered lard from frying pork belly is as follows:
Cornmeal Pudding
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
4 cups milk
1/2 cup coarse grind cornmeal
1/2 cup light molasses
2 tbs unfiltered lard/bacon grease
2 strips cooked bacon, crumbled
2 eggs, beaten
about 5 cups boiling water
Heat oven to 350F, grease 2 qt casserole dish. In a saucepan, heat milk until the edges begin to have bubbles, stir in cornmeal. Cook around 20 minutes on low, stirring, until it is very thick. Remove from heat and stir in maple, molasses, crumbled bacon, spices, salt, lard/bacon grease, and eggs. Pour into greased casserole, and place the casserole in a larger 13X9 pan. Place in oven, and pour the boiling water into the larger pan to a depth of 1 inch. Bake for 80 to 90 minutes until knife or toothpick inserted between edge and center comes out clean. Remove smaller casserole and place it on a rack to cool for 2 hours. Serves 8.
loving lard – mostly for pie crusts but would love to branch out!
My favorite use for lard is using it to saute green beans, or brussels sprouts. My kids like to make homemade potato chips, coincidentally my husbands favorite as well. I would so like the Lard cookbook.
Hi, my favorite way to use lard is in Chinese-style stir fries. You know the kind: part of the flavor profile is the smoky, barely-scorched oil? Not a healthy way to use an unsaturated fat. Most Chinese culinary traditions prefer lard or duck fat for this purpose. It’s marvelous!
Erica, I would love to win this book. I have had it on my “save for later” list on Amazon since I read about it. My favorite way to use lard is to season my cast iron pans, and to fry veggies in. We rendered lard from the two pigs we butchered about 3 months ago. Thanks for the opportunity to win this book!!
I love to use lard for grilled cheese sandwiches and garlic bread. That beguiling crust it forms is simply magical. I also use it to make popcorn, saute veggies, and in my baking in place of shortening.
I actually use lard in soap making! I haven’t used it in a recipe in years but my grandma had a recipe for butter cookies that used lard. It unfortunately died with her and I’ve always meant to find a similar recipe!
(so a book like this would come in super handy-wink,wink!)