How to Render Lard

Nearly all the meat our family consumes is grown within a mile of our home. We raise and process our own meat chickens. We also buy a pig and a half a cow from our neighbors, who raise them. One of the perks of this is that I request the pig fat when the animals are processed, so I can render it into lard. Home-rendered lard is a fabulous thing to have on hand. The best of the lard is great for baking - it results in flaky pie crusts, with a mild (and not porky) flavor. While lard gets a bad rep, it is really the shelf-stable lard from the grocery store (which is shelf stable because it has been hydrogenated) that is the real villian. Home-rendered lard has not gone through that process, and doesn't have the same unhealthy characteristics - the shelf stable version contains trans fats, whereas the home-rendered version does not. Shelf stability is a great feature on an industrialized scale, as it reduces waste and cost. However, on our small homestead, we simply store the unrendered fat in the freezer, and the rendered lard in the fridge until we are ready to use it. Problem solved! The result is delicious lard for our family without the health risks of hydrogenated fats.

We use lard a lot for frying eggs or meat, or for anything we want to make crispy. I often make freezer batches of breakfast burritos, and when put in the microwave, the tortillas get soft and sometimes soggy. I heat them in the microwave, then finish them off on the stove in a bit of rendered lard. They crisp right up and taste amazing. Lard is also great for frying pretty much anything and gives delightfully crispy results. So *how* does one home render lard, you ask? Great question; I'd love to tell you. Our pig fat comes from the butcher in a large, several-pound package, vacuum sealed like our meat. I use a crock pot to melt it down, and the first step is cutting up the fat.

I start with the fat frozen solid. It takes a bit of elbow grease to get through the thicker parts, but as the fat warms it will start to melt on hands and can make the process quite slippery. I start by cutting the fat down into big strips that are no wider than my knife is long. Then, I cut off slices about 1/4 to 1/2-inch thick. Next, I cube these down, then add them to my crock pot over low heat.

The smaller the chunks, the faster the lard will render. You certainly want them to be chunks of 1" or less. I aim for 1/2 to 1/4-inch chunks, and this is often led by how much available time I have to dice it up - on a busy morning, the pieces are larger. If your butcher will grind it for you, or if you have a grinder, such as this KitchenAid attachment, then it will significantly cut down on processing time. I have the KitchenAid attachment, but I normally just cut it up with a knife, as I don't want to bother cleaning fat out of the grinder attachment and typically I don't mind if it sits in the crock pot a few hours longer.

As the fat heats, it will gradually melt. I come back every couple of hours, and when there is enough liquid, I simply scoop some off the top and store in a Mason jar. I do filter my lard, and I do this with a funnel and cheesecloth.

As you can see, the liquid fat is an off-white color and semi-transparent. As it cools, however, it will harden into a snow-white solid in the jar.

I highly recommend givnig this a try. Your home-rendered lard can serve a replacement for anything you'd use lard or Crisco to prepare in your kitchen, and it does it without unhealthy trans fats. You will gain more control and confidence about what you are consuming, where it came from, and how the animals were treated. If you don't have access to your own pig fat, you may be able to obtain some from your local butcher - it's worth an ask. Leaf fat is the prime material for this job; it is the fat around the kidneys of a pig. This was prepared with back fat, which contains more meaty bits. I find that the first draw of liquid from the back fat is completely suitable for pastry baking, and it has an odorless product. The closer you get to the end of the render, there may be more color and potentially a bit of a piggy flavor...sort of like bacon. This is great for frying eggs, making biscuits, or any savory type of cooking. Just save your first draw and label it well for pastries and sweets.

The #1 Plant Every Apocalypse Garden Needs

A few years ago, my son had a school project involving cells, for which we acquired a bag of 15-Bean Soup that was then glued to a paper plate in a representation of mitochondria, ribosomes, golgi bodies and various other cell organelles. Well, this happened to be in the spring as the temperatures were warming up, and on a lark, I took about 5-6 of each variety of bean and planted them in my garden. Just 'cause I felt like it, really. It turns out, I am not the world's best gardener, and my little experiment went largely forgotten until it was time to harvest items from the garden. I will admit that there were many casualties of overgrown weeds that year. Many of the bean varieties were crowded out; I don't think any of them were watered aside from normal rainfall. Despite the flagrant neglect, imagine my surprise to find that there was a very healthy population of the black bean variety.

Having been impressed with the hardiness and yield of this handful of beans, I saved my small harvest and planted an enire row the next year. My goodness. Have I mentioned that while I enjoy gardening, I am overall rather new and not very good at it? My (very minimal) effort yielded 4 cups of dry beans. I never would have expected that black beans would be a good crop for Maine, but I was pleased! What I found most impressive was how I could completely ignore these plants and still have what I consider to be a successful harvest. This year, I planted 2 rows of the black beans. Here they are, living their best bean lives, suffering my neglect, yet still producing for me:

We did have an unusually soggy growing season this year in Maine. I tried to choose a day to harvest when they would be mostly dry. I ended up with a respectable amount in my Hannaford tote bag.

(Note that I invested in the weed barrier cloth this year)

Because the pods were still a bit damp when harvested, I did cycle them through my dehydrator to dry them out. Alternatively, you could pull the plants and hang upside down to dry out, but I am limited on space, so dehydrator it was for me. Then, I let them sit like the patient little harvest they are until I had time to deal with them. I shucked them a little at a time over several weeks. My 2 rows of black beans yielded 12 cups of dry beans, which is about the equivalent of 24 cans of black beans from the grocery store. I also planted one row of Flambo beans (from Johnny's Selected Seeds), and that resulted in a little more than 4 cups of dry beans. Right now, they are sitting in a jar, although at some point, when I am gosh darn good and ready, I will can them up. The beauty of dry beans, though, is that time can be whenever. Last year's bean harvest didn't get canned until about May, and they are just fine. I do like canning them up, as they at that point only need to be put into a recipe or reheated, without all the soaking and planning. However, whether to store dry or can the beans is really a personal preference.

So, why do I suggest that dry beans are a top crop for my apocalypse garden?

1) Easy to Grow. First of all, they are super hardy. You can be busy with obtaining clean water, fighting off zombies and tending and protecting animals (or working, for a non-apocalypse scenario) and not worry that your crop will not produce or will go by while you're off doing other things. Life happens. So should your garden.

2) Beans are a fabulous source of protein. While most of the plants in my garden are lacking in this area, beans really step up. If you couldn't count on the grocery store to provide your nutrition, obviously you'd have backyard chickens for eggs and maybe a few scrawny roosters for meat. But if you had raccoons, foxes or fishers feasting in your yard, the beans could help round out your protein content of your home-produced food while you waited to hatch and raise replacement chicks.

3) Cooking Versatility. From bean dip, to soups and stews, to salads, quesadillas and burritos...there are lots of ways to use beans.

4) Easy-to-Harvest Seeds. Once you buy your first beans (or save some from a bag before cooking dinner), you need only save out a handful of beans at the end of each season to be able to continue growing them indefinitely. No waiting on seed orders long after society and the Postal Service have collapsed.

5) Ease of Long-Term Storage. If you don't have time to preserve your harvest or if you don't know how or don't own a canner....you'll be just fine. Simply get the beans dry and collect them and store in a cool, dry location. They will last a long time with almost no effort, and they are very forgiving. If preservation is a skill you possess, you certainly may can them, but if you don't have experience with it, you'll get by just fine.

6) Improve Soil Quality. Beans are nitrogen fixers, so they help enrich your soil with nitrogen. This comes in super handy on next year's planting, if you plant your heavy nitrogen feeders, such as tomatoes, cukes, squash or cabbage, where your beans grew the previous year.

In all likelihood, we are not anywhere near one plant being the lynchpin of survival, but I do hope you'll give dry beans a try in your garden anyway. They are super easy, super delicious and pack a big nutritional punch as well.