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leaf lard preserving

post #1 of 4
3/3/06 at 5:32pm
Thread Starter 
I've ordered 35# of leaf lard that's coming in the end of the month.....ok so now that it's showing up I've been looking and asking for a way to make it shelf stable.....I've got canning jars, pressure cooker, access to a cryovac....
my frenchie friend says he grew up with rendered lard ontop of his fridge that they ate with salt on toast....he thought possibly wax ontop, unsure.

I've also am picking up lardo (fatback for a chef who is going to preserve the fatback himself) Steve went to the SLOW Foods school for several months in Italy....He's going to show me how to bone out a piggy and take the hams off and stuff the rest with that meat. Roll and roast.....like a galantine.
I ran it by another friend who started talking about turducken, I mentioned this big ole fryer I'd just seen and we talked about frying a whole pig!!! can you imagine? Bet it'd be really good.
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post #2 of 4
3/3/06 at 7:12pm

Wow...what a weiner (pig that is....)....

A whole pig...that sounds great!

Hey, did you happen to see the stats on how many people set their house on fire trying to deep fry turkeys at Thanksgiving now?

It was almost as bad as putting real candles on your tree at X-mas...

My uncle used to eat lard and onion sandwiches during the depression. I'd mention it to people and they'd turn green, but I don't know...it sounds pretty interesting to me...except for the way they had to preserve stuff way back then...go figure...they all lived into a ripe old age even eating all the stuff deemed unhealthy now.

April
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post #3 of 4
3/9/06 at 5:40am
Thread Starter 
My search for shelf stable lard has lead me on a trek that included calling Jeff Steingarten (not returned that call yet), various RD's, Past Pig Queen of nebraska who grew up on a hog farm, a 90+ woman who's momma made lard pies (didn't everyone a century ago?) but couldn't remember how her mom stored it.....
I did discover there is an Institute in DC that specializes in Oils and Fats....how cool is that?
There are some food scientists at Mizzou that should also have a response.
The best so far was from a foodie/farmer friend that lives in New Hampshire and works for the Sustainable Ag program for the University/State. She said that her husband's family would buy 3# cans of it from the butcher and leave it in the basement. Julie said she kept the majority in the freezer and then used wide mouth jars for the stuff she had in the cupboard. She said pour the rendered fat into canning jars right up to the rim and seal them like jam....that makes alot of sense but still looking for scientific validation so it stays fresh. Hard to find info on something that has become all but extinct.
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post #4 of 4
3/10/06 at 5:00am
Thread Starter 
I use leaf lard/butter for pies and sometimes biscuits.....frying is with other lard.
35# is a lotta space to take up in the freezer.....right now the 3gl of blackberries, 7 gl of peaches, 5gl tub of black raspberry sorbet are clogging up space.....time to make pies!!!!

One of the piggy farmers has berkshires that have more fat so he's butchering 10 hogs and I had dibs on the leaf lard.
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