We practice many pioneering skills at our homestead, from butchering pigs, raising beef cattle and chickens (a proud flock of 6 laying hens), heirloom gardening and seed saving, with traditional cooking and meals, but before today I had never rendered lard.
Well, not in the traditional sense. I've saved bacon grease from the pan after cooking and poured it into a small jelly jar and stored it in the fridge. Which on a small scale is exactly what rendering lard is, but I've been wanting to do it on a larger scale for some time.
Last month when our local butcher came to butcher the cows, I asked him for the lard. He asked if I was making soap from it, and I told him I wanted it for cooking. He said pork lard is preferred for cooking, as beef is too strong for baking pastries. I was thrilled when he offered me some for free.
I picked up my eight pounds of pork fat and spent today rendering it down into lard. You may be wondering why I would want to render lard to use in cooking and baking. Despite popular myth, lard is not bad for you. It's actually a source of healthy fats when used in moderation. Much preferred to the GMO laden shortening and vegetable/canola oil found on store shelves. This article explains the top 3 reasons you should be using lard.
We'll be raising pigs again this spring and I'll be keeping all the fat from them, but this was an excellent way to get some now. I use organic butter and coconut oil when baking, but the cost of it can be expensive. The lard was free and after rendering down five pounds of it, I ended up with two pints and almost one full quart. Compared to the organic coconut oil, that's a savings of $20.
Plus, I love adding more lost traditions to our home. Now I can use my great-great-grandmother's cookbook and know how the recipes are supposed to taste with the lard. Want more old-fashioned tips and tutorials? Check out The Made-From-Scratch Life!
How to render lard
I used the slow cooker method to avoid grease splatter and tying up my stove top. Tuesday's are generally a busy day in my kitchen as it's my one day off from my day job during the week. I can pack almost a full week's worth of cooking into one day.
There are two types of lard. The lard around the kidneys and organs of the animal is referred to as leaf lard and is considered the purest form and best for baking. The other lard is the back fat of the animal. Mine was mixed together. But not to worry, there's a way to make it work for both baking and general cooking/frying.
Freeze the lard. When rendering lard, it's easiest to work with if you freeze it first. Allow it to partially thaw for about two hours on the kitchen counter.
Chop it up in 1 to 2 inch cubes. You need the pieces of fat to be uniform to avoid scorching and uneven cooking. You want it small to release the oils. Some people will ask the butcher to grind the fat up first, but beings I was receiving mine for free, I didn't ask. While chopping the lard, your knife and cutting board will become slick, use caution. (I'm typing this with a band-aid laden finger, take my word for it)
Put 1/4 cup water in the bottom of your slow cooker. As the fat is starting to melt, you don't want it scorch on the bottom. The water will cook off during the rendering.
Fill your slow cooker to the very top. The lard will cook down and you want to make your time count.
Cook on high for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Depending upon the temperature of your slow cooker's high setting, you'll want to get the lard heated. Once it starts to melt, turn down the slow cooker to low. My slow cooker tends to cook on the hot side, so I turned down mine to low and left the lid off for most of the rendering process.
Stir the lard every 20 minutes. You don't want the lard to scorch. After the liquid has reached the top of the lard, you're ready for the first rendering. Depending upon the amount of lard you're rendering, the time it takes for this happen will vary. I did four and half quarts at once and it took almost three hours for the first rendering. Place a strainer, or sieve, lined with a layer of cheese cloth over large bowl. Pour the rendered lard through. Put the contents of the strainer/sieve back in the slow cooker and continue cooking.
Allow the rendered lard to cool for approximately ten minutes. After lard has cooled, pour into washed and dried wide mouth mason jars. If you don't wait for the lard to cool a bit, you run the risk of cracking your glass mason jars. Let lard continue to cool to room temperature before putting on lids and placing in the fridge. Be sure to wipe down the outside of the jars to remove any grease residue.
Mark the first rendering. Your first rendering is the most pure. It will have virtually no pork flavoring and is perfect for baking pastries, cookies, and cakes. The second rendering will be slightly darker in color and is still fine for biscuits, pie crusts, corn bread, and more savory type dishes. The third rendering will be the darkest and is best used as a cooking oil for frying dishes and has the most pork flavor. All of the renderings will be yellow in their liquid form, but will turn white as they cool. Once solid, the first rendering will be snow white.
Store your lard in the fridge. Lard should be fine on the shelf, but I prefer to store mine in the fridge to avoid any of that work turning rancid. It's good in the fridge for six months. The jars I'm not using go in the freezer where they'll stay good for at least a year.
Use your lard in place of shortenings, butters, and oils. I made my biscuits with lard and they were amazing! I can't wait to try pie crusts, as I've only heard tale that lard makes the best crusts you could ever imagine.
I was surprised at how far the lard rendered down. I went from a full slow cooker to a single cookie sheet of leftover cracklins. I baked them at 350 degrees for 20 minutes to use in place of bacon bits and as flavoring in beans and on top of soups. Store cooked cracklins in the freezer, if they're not all inhaled upon baking.
Have you ever used lard? Were you surprised about its health benefits?
Good morning! I rendered lard years ago and just haven’t gotten around to doing it again-although we loved and used every bit of it! When I poured mine into the canning jars, I wiped the rims, put on the seals and rings-just like I was going to put them in the canner-and let them sit on the counter until completely cooled. The cooling down process allows the seals to seal (?). I guess you could also use a vaccumn sealer with the jar attachment to do the same thing, creating an air tight seal to make it have a longer shelf life. Gonna have to try this again!!! Thanks! Susie 🙂
Melissa, this is a great post with lots of pictures! I’m adding the link to a post on our blog. I didn’t know about the difference in the first, second, and third renderings, but that explains why some of our lard tastes porky!
Thanks, Marie! The porky lard is great in crackers or things where you want some of the savory type flavoring.
I’d love to hear when you make your next batch. Santa is bringing a vaccum sealer to our house…
I was wondering, a friend of ours gave us quite a bit of bacon from a pasture raised pig but it has almost no meat, just fat. Could I render it?
You bet! The fat will melt off and the meat will remain behind and be caught in the strainer. Love to hear how it turns out for you. You could try trimming off any large portions of meat while chopping up the fat for the rendering process.
Great so I could get a cheap box of bacon ends and pieces and give this a try and see how fast it’s used up, before I make a big batch, Thank you Melinda for asking the question, I’m sure it’s not as pure as fresh bacon or pork, but when your on a limited income it’s either this way or not even trying.
I’d love to hear how it turns out for you and how you like cooking with the lard.
Hi all! I actually render bacon ends and pieces often. I get about a 16 oz container of bacon crackling/crumbles at the end and 4 +- , 8 oz jars of fat. We use it for everything! makes the best biscuits and crackers! good eggs and great for reheating veg. Just used it last night to coat leftover baked potatoes and reheat for a roasted potato type side and they got super crispy and just a hint of bacon…. do be warned tho this kind of lard/fat will probably taste like bacon so i’d probably keep it out of cookies – unless you were making something interesting, now I wanna try pecan/maple/bacon cookies! LOL Good luck!
[…] a well-balanced diet, but unless you have access to your own meat for rendering lard (here’s how to render your own lard), you probably won’t have a fat source. We need fat for cooking and baking. I use butter, […]
Thanks, Melissa. Am getting 1/2 an organic, GMO-free pig in the spring of 2015, and was wondering how to render the lard.
Julie,
Congrats on the pig, they’re really a funny animal to watch. We enjoy them and the lard. 🙂
wow! we render pork fat to make cracklin but didn’t know to render 3 times to get the most lard and then cracklin and seasoning bits. That’s why I love your site, I learn so much. Thanks.
Chicken fat is a delicious. easy and inexpensive source of lard on a small scale. When making chicken & dumplings, skim the fat off the top of the broth to use for the noodles, and when boiling the chicken for chicken salad, save the fat to use for pie crust. So yummy!
I’m making this tomorrow! Last year I made this in the crockpot but ‘cooked’ it too long. I like the idea of pouring off the rendered lard in three stages. We order pastured pigs each year .. and I’ve already got the fat in the freezer.
Thank you for sharing this! I have a difficult time processing things I have just heard or read about, and not seen, so please forgive me as I clarify a few things. So, after the first rendering, you put the pork fat back into the crockpot…do you add more water, then? How much? Do you fill it to the top again and do the entire process two more times? Thanks again for such good information! 🙂
After the first rendering I put the chunks of pork fat in and I don’t add anymore water. I repeat this two more times. 🙂
Hi Melissa,
I rendered the lard from this year’s hog a couple of weeks ago. One thing I do differently from you that is a time saver – I don’t cut the lard in cubes, I cut it into 1″ strips and feed it into the meat grinder. This goes much faster than cutting into cubes as I used to do and the smaller chunks render more quickly. I fill the large turkey roaster and render it in the oven at 250 degrees, stirring every 15-20 minutes. All 3 passes are done in less than 2 hours. I finish the cracklins in my cast iron skillet on top of the stove while another batch of lard is in the oven. If you don’t want to use the stove top, you could save up the cracklins and put them on the cookie sheet after the roaster is no longer using the oven space.
As another reader said, I also put my lard in mason jars where I wipe the rim and place the canning lids and screw bands. The jars seal as they cool and are nicely shelf stable in the pantry with the other home canned items instead of taking up space in the fridge or freezer.
The lard works great in your great-grandmother’s pastry recipe. I love my grandma’s pastry recipe but have used your recipe since I like to try new things. I found it delicious and very easy to work with as long as it was well chilled before rolling.
Thanks for a fun and interesting blog site!
[…] I prefer butter. Pie crusts and flat breads, like tortillas, make lard my new best friend (I render my own lard from our pigs, a plus for my dairy-free folks). Coconut oil is also great in pie crusts, but not so […]
[…] Lard- If you don’t have access to any good pig fat, you can purchase it at most stores now. We raise our own pigs and here’s how to render your own lard. […]
We had three hogs butchered. we got the lard from them and I was surprised at the amount that we received. we were not for sure how we would like it butt my mother said she would buy what we did not want. I am surprised at how wonderful it taste in bake goods.my children could not tell the difference in my brownies but I could the seemed moister and brought more of the flavor out in them. and the pie crust are awesome I have gotten many complements about it. My mother tells me her mother used to make a cake out of the rind after she rendered the lard. curious to try.
Roger,
That cake sounds super interesting. I’m loving using lard too. We’re butchering our three pigs next week!
I will see if she can find the recipe and post it for all that are as curious as I am. I am going to be buchering our two pigs this month also at least all but he smoking. thanks for your information it has been helpful.
Cracklings are good in cornbread. Just mix them in the batter and bake. Oh so good!!!!
Wonderful article. Love your style!
Hey! I do that! I’ve been rendering leaf lard since last holidays and I love it! I cut mine into 1″ pieces and throw them all into a lidded dutch oven and stick it in a 200f oven for a couple three hours. Less “piggy” smell through out the house when done this way and no need for water in the pan prior to heating. Just stir every half hour or so. I use it for baking (just made an awesome red velvet cake with half butter and half lard) cakes, cookies, biscuits, whatever I’m baking I’m subbing half the butter with lard. Such a luxurious taste and texture! A couple things I noticed and don’t let them throw you: when taste-testing batters beware that they may taste and smell a bit “piggy” – remember, you’ve replaced half the butter with lard. Next, when cooling in pans there is none of that shrinking from the edges of the pan as with an all butter batter. When cooled and or frosted there is no lingering “piggy” smell and your finished product has a taste and texture that is far superior.
thanks for the lard rendering instructions.on my way home yesterday,from getting the cat spayed, i stopped at a butcher/slaughterhouse that i have wanted to go to for a long time. i asked about leaf fat and he took down my number. today he called me and said he had 10lbs. of course i went and got it. now i need to render it.
wish me luck,
barb Gardiner (sp7608)
I am so excited to try this! I’m working on a post for saving bacon grease/fat/rendering right now, which is supposed to be slightly different in flavor than pork lard. It would seem obvious that natural real food is better for you than fake, ultra-processed, chemical junk, but our generation has been duped by the so-called experts. I’ve gone back to whole milk (since I found out that non-fat has aspartame in it), whole eggs rather than egg whites, and am trying to go as organic as my budget will allow. Thank you for the great post. If I can find a kind butcher I might do a Pintesting on it. 🙂
So glad you enjoyed it Anne and lard makes the best tortillas and pie crusts.
one of my favorite articles yet! Thank you so much for this information. I’ve been wanting to learn how to do this. I’m sure you’ve noticed the BHT and other scary stuff added to quote on quote lard on the grocery shelf! Hoping for some Leaf fat to come back with my neighbor’s cow from the butcher 🙂 that won’t be so good for cooking, but it will be good practice, and I can use it to make candles!
Drew, you can use it for soap making too!
[…] the lard, although, you just butcher the pigs probably once a year and rendered that down into lard(How to Render Lard). We  used Mortin salt and salt-cured (How to Salt Cure Your Own Meat) a lot of it, I think, was […]
Hi Melissa,
I grew up on a farm just north of Nashville Tn. And my dad slaughtered hogs every year around Thanksgiving and we had awesome hams, sausage and all the wonderful meat that a hog provides.
After my dad trimmed all the fat from the hams, shoulders and other meat he would cut the fat up and we would render the fat and make lard in a big iron pot over an open fire.
It was work but also a lot do fun seeing that fat turn into a product that would be used into the winter months and make wonderful dishes with pork and veggies that we raised in our garden.
I thank you for the tips on how to render the lard in a crockpot and look forward to doing that same thing this fall after I have my part of a hog butchered and processed in October.
I hope you have a wonderful Fall and I enjoy reading your post even though this is the first time doing that.
Best wishes to you and your family, enjoy the holidays since they will be upon us soon.
Take care, Dale
Is it normal to get a layer, 1 inch, of gel at the bottom of my jar
Where can I checkout your cookbooks?
The book tab in the menu on the top of the website has each of my books listed, this one has the most recipes https://melissaknorris.com/book/hand-made/ and this is my other one https://melissaknorris.com/book/the-made-from-scratch-life/