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annie1992_gw

Finally, it's.....LARD!

annie1992
9 years ago

Yes, finally. The pigs have met their final destiny and are safely residing in the respective freezer(s) of their purchasers. One for Amanda, one for Ashley, one for Elery and I, one for Elery's son. The smoked meat is being sugar cured and brined, and then will hang in the smokehouse for a week, so no bacon yet.

I did tell Wendell that I wanted fat for lard and so he kindly trimmed about 30 pounds of it. I'm not sure I wanted that much, but....OK. I didn't freeze one bag, I just plopped it in the sink and went to work:

It all got cleaned and a final trim, and then I ran it through the meat grinder:

Since my day was already booked up and I couldn't stay home to tend lard, it went into the slow cooker with half a cup of water so it didn't stick while starting to melt. About 8 hours later, I ladled the now mostly melted lard into a container, filtering it through one of my Chemex coffee filters fitted into a sieve. It came out nice and clear:

Lard normally whitens as it sits and hardens and mine did:

I got 3 full pints and one about 3/4 full from my first cooking, I'm figuring I have enough fat in the freezer for another 10-12 pints. That's a lot of lard.

The cracklin's, unfortunately, were not fried until crisp and used in cornbread. Elery is not a fan of cracklin's, and convinced me that they were too unhealthy, what with my cholesterol test coming up, LOL. Maybe the next batch...

Annie

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