good lard is a health food!

So happy to have found this thread. Last year when our pigs were butchered we got a ton of fat but didn't know what to do with it and it went bad. Also, we hadn't learned about the fallacy of the "low fat" diet, nor did we understand that it's carbs which are truly evil.

So now we are happy to be embracing animal fats and I intend to turn this year's pigs into lard to use for cooking and baking. Our aren't completely grass fed, but are living out on pasture/forage all summer. I'm hoping to eventually grow fodder for them, and we have a new raw milk subscription so I'll have lots of whey from making cheese...

Hooray for pig fat! (I think it is Emeril Lagasse who extols the virtue of pork fat, is it not?)

carbs ain't evil

refined carbs are evil

I can eat 5-7000 calories a day of mostly high carb root tubers or WHOLE wheat all day everyday and my energy levels and mood stay high and level
I drink soda's and eat sugars (or even too much white flour/cornmeal) and my energy starts to spike and fade
I eat too much protein/fat and I find myself trying to hibernate: literally I go from needing 4 hours sleep a day to 10-12, and if I reduce calories while eating more that 25% or them from protein the body wants to store fat.

point being everyone has different needs, trick is stopping listening to all the experts about nutrition long enough to listen to your body.

I remember as a kid eating lard spread on bread with a bit of salt.
There was no guilt involved thinking it was unhealthy or such.
Gave some to my Jewish friend ( he didnt know what lard was)
enjoyed it!
At that time there were no "refined" foods and the foods we ate were free range.

L8 Bloomer - next time you have too much fat an lard , cook up some soap !

I tend to agree with most pastry chefs:  you cannot make a good, flaky pie crust without lard.  Crisco is actually better than butter for pie crusts, but I trust cows more than I do lab techs.

I have actually heard of new research that is claiming that cholesterol has little to do with what you eat.  Anyway, I believe more heart attacks are caused by stress than cholesterol.

Jami - Great to see you mention the Weston A Price foundation.
I just stumbled on this toaday and thought of posting here immediately.
It's a must read....
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional-diets/628-guts-and-grease
Its about Hunter Gatherer diet , Eskimo, Indian.
Beginning to think the modern diet is an abomination...

re: lard is better than butter in pastry?  I wouldn't be surprised.  My biscuits are always better when made with coconut oil than butter.  So now that I have read this I would like to try them with lard.

Have to raise a pig first.  I wouldn't touch lard from the grocery store with a ten foot pole.  And the people I buy pork from charge a fortune for thier lard - don't blame them though.  You couldn't pay me enough for any of the meat or eggs that I raise.

Good idea for another thread or podcast - what is/are my meats and veggies worth?  I am not interested in selling but I always cringe when I see people I know selling thier home produced meats and veggies for next to nothing.  Per hour that comes to a few cents.

For pie crusts, the secret, whether you use butter or lard, is to keep it solid (not melted) until it goes into the oven.  When it melts in the oven, it creates air pockets, which is what gives the flaky texture...sort of like layers of phillo dough.

I usually put my lard in the freezer the day before I make pastry.  I then run it through a coarse cheese grater to make it easier to work with.  While I roll out the bottom crust, the other half of the dough is back in the fridge.  Then I swap them out.  If the butter/lard begin to melt prior to going into the oven, you end up with a mushy crust with little to no air pockets.

Cheese grater - great idea, thanks!

Jen0454 wrote:
Jami - Great to see you mention the Weston A Price foundation.
I just stumbled on this toaday and thought of posting here immediately.
It's a must read....
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional-diets/628-guts-and-grease
Its about Hunter Gatherer diet , Eskimo, Indian.
Beginning to think the modern diet is an abomination...

Loved this article - thanks! Amazing how they describe what the natives called "rabbit starvation" - a malady from eating too many lean meats and not enough fat.

Yes, great article link ~Thank you!

Paul and Jocelyn's podcast on movies Supersize Me and Fathead: http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/?s=supersize

Haven't yet raised a pig, but just bought (a butchered) half of a Tamworth. Getting leaf lard and all other fat trimmings to render. Bones for stock too.
Just in time for fresh fruit pies! Yay!

OK, here's my experience.  Not just lard, any saturated fat seems good.  And I didn't bother with organic and such, as didn't have money or a farm at the time. Perhaps my story will amuse?  or offend, depending on who is reading it, I guess. It's long, but without the details a person might do it wrong (eat carbs) and make selves sick.

Saturated fat is probably a superfood.  At some point I noticed that doctors were in the business of keeping people ill (else there would be no more business), and therefore they and the organizations associated with them would be financially invested in peddling  the  horsepuckey known as "health advice," a goodly focus of which is to eat lots of "healthy" whole grains and keep your cholesterol low by avoiding evil saturated fats.
In the spirit of Durk and Sandy, I prefer to test my theories on myself rather than innocent victims or animals.  So I reversed the above advice, on the notion that it was likely, of course, to be the exact opposite of the truth or anything close to it.  For a month I ate a diet of about 90 percent fat, with no grains whatsoever and pretty much no carbohydrate with a glycemic index over 5, other than one apple a week.  This was harder to do than I thought, because it was hard to find foods with high enough fat content and still have a diverse diet!  I ate lots of bacon, heavy cream, cheese, avocados, nuts, and added coconut oil to my morning coffee just to be sure I was getting enough saturated fat.  I ate some meat--about 6-8 ounces a day, not as much as I thought I would because I ended up so satisfied that I had very little appetite, and I ate salads with homemade olive oil dressings (sugar and crap in store stuff), and lo-glycemic veggies like green beans, asparagus and mushrooms.  I cooked with lard and butter, gobs of it.  I ate no grains or sugars other than those naturally occurring in vegetables.
Many interesting things occurred.  My freaky female hormones completely normalized, my energy levels skyrocketed, my lung capacity doubled and somehow I was just breathing more, also adding to the huge energy increase, my skin got supersoft and smooth,  I was no longer anemic, and I effortlessly dropped 15 pounds.  My body temperature/comfort level modulated itself differently--hot and cold temperatures were no longer bothersome.  Exercise became fun and refreshing rather than tedious.  I found myself voluntarily going on long walks just because it was pleasant to do so with all the extra energy I had.  After two weeks of this, I peed brownish, very stinky urine for three days (most people would have run to a doc at this, but I didn't--being tuned in has some advantages--I observed it was just the release of a gunky substance that had been clogging my kidneys)---this stopped after three days and urine became normal.  After this I noticed my blood pressure had dropped 10 points on both systolic and diastolic (a permanent improvement--I used to have very low blood pressure but it had crept up to 120/80 before I did this test--it's been good again every since).  Broccoli started to taste like candy.  Since I avoid doctors and medical tests whenever possible, I did not have my cholesterol levels checked but I think the radical improvement in my blood pressure speaks for itself.  My memory also improved immensely and I felt very clear-headed. 

The only downside was that, after a month, my knees got a bit creaky.  I have two theories about that:  I may be slightly allergic to pork products, or (more likely) my mineral intake was not quite sufficient to keep up with the massive fat burn-off that was occurring in my body.  I suspect that the body needs salt and other minerals to facilitate some of the reactions involved in metabolizing fats and I wasn't getting quite enough.  Next time I will add kelp and alfalfa tablets to the regimen to see if that helps.

After a month, I left the country and stayed with my sister, who eats a lot of delicious organic, locally produced bread.  I joined her in this quasi-vegetarian diet and promptly gained back all 15 pounds! 

Blood pressure still low though, 3 years later...

I shared this info with a friend who is a competitive ultra-marathon trail runner... she did the exact same diet, and also experienced the nasty urine release at week two, which also lasted exactly three days, and the other effects.  She started fat-loading instead of carb-loading before her next race...  and won easily, beating even the men by a good 10 minutes, and without the usual injuries. 

Well, that was my own personal "supersize" movie... make of it what you wish! 

Breaking rules works pretty well for me I guess.

Blessings to all who wish them,
Keraleeod" organic either, as I didn't have much money or a personal farm at the time: 

Wow, what an amazing story, keralee!

Yes, I'd love to have more ideas of meals/foods to facilitate this fat loading diet.  Can you post any more . . . .

Okay, I'm feeling awful.  ops:

Two people I know came down with pancreatitis (one of them twice!) and I mentioned that lowfat diets are "bad" and might have been related to their condition. One told me his recuperation strategy is a low-fat diet to let the pancreas "rest" ala this Pancreatitis Diet Plan.

I'm not buying that his pancreas is inflamed due to not being able to process fat. Maybe if it's the icky hydrogenated fats, but I don't think that's the case here. This guy is pretty progressive, well-educated and a healthy-looking bloke. He's a little older but trim, active and social.

Am I wrong to question that it's too much fat?

Anybody have any info to help?

Jami McBride wrote:
Yes, I'd love to have more ideas of meals/foods to facilitate this fat loading diet.  Can you post any more . . . .

Oh, and Jami, just for you (and ME!): Bacon Fat Mayonnaise.

Would you believe it, I'm cooking bacon right now!

Yum Jocelyn ~ Thanks for that recipe.  I needed new ideas for my homemade mayo, we need to stop eating that store bought stuff.

Wrote a blog about this:

http://www.makeitmissoula.com/2011/09/organic-lard-is-health-food/

Just a thought.
How about making up your own cooking fat
with half Lard, some clarified Butter (grass fed of course)
and a bit of Coconut Oil?
Objections to this may be that Coconut oil is not local.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/coconut-oil-and-ghee/#comment-778956

I heard an 80year old Chinese lady mention that todays supermarket pork is not as "Oily"
as they grew up with in the country.

PORK FAT RULES! 

if you are into lard, jan kwasniewski is your man.

http://homodiet.netfirms.com/

Jen0454 wrote:
Just a thought.
How about making up your own cooking fat
with half Lard, some clarified Butter (grass fed of course)
and a bit of Coconut Oil?
Objections to this may be that Coconut oil is not local.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/coconut-oil-and-ghee/#comment-778956

I heard an 80year old Chinese lady mention that todays supermarket pork is not as "Oily"
as they grew up with in the country.

I eat 3 or 4 tablespoons of Tropical Traditions Organic Virgin Coconut Oil every day along with 2 tablespoons of Organic Virgin Palm Oil from the same company every day.  I cook with both too. 
I have a 1 gallon pail of each of the following: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Lard
I keep a jar of homemade Ghee sitting on the stove.  I mix them sometimes.  Oh yeah I also have a gallon of organic coconut shortening for making coconut flour biscuits.  I tried them with lard but they taste better with the coconut shortening. 
I do use lard for making my sourdough rye "bread" but the reality is that is looks like a somewhat thick soft graham cracker and I only make them once in a while because I hardly ever eat grain. 

Here is some good info on lard:

http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/food-preserving/lard

ytram McCoy wrote:I could not resist my 2 cents worth! My grandad lived to be 100 years old. He had lived with eating bacon and eggs every morning. One of his favorites was pouring warm lard, after butchering a hog on toast. He also said, the secret is eating stuff out of a garden, instead of a tin can from a store. With all of that fat you would think he would have had clogged arteries. Not so. When he would go to a Dr. cause of the aunts thinking he needed to, when the Drs thought he needed a prescription, he would say, "looks to me like you need that a hell of lot worse then I do"! This man resisted even taking an aspirin.

I am reminded about a report that said, 50% of people die from heart attacks with high cholesterol, and 50% die from heart attacks that are not considered high cholesterol. Makes you wonder.

grandad owns respect!

fact - single cell is approximately 50% fat (fat acids)

in one word;

FAcT

!warning; poisons (some are called cures-like antibiotics) are stored and conserved thus are concentrate in fat ... ofc if consumed by fat owner

I have read that homogenizing milk is a leading contender in the cholesterol battle. By homogenizing the milk, the fat particles are permanently broken down into tiny bits which can enter your system, rather than being digested.

John Polk wrote:I have read that homogenizing milk is a leading contender in the cholesterol battle. By homogenizing the milk, the fat particles are permanently broken down into tiny bits which can enter your system, rather than being digested.

Since I remember when our family switched from fresh from the cow a half mile away to glass bottles from the dairy, this idea seems to make plenty of sense to me, John.

cow milk is "the worse" milk but more then one reason make it world wide popular, hail the marketing xD

far "better" is goat ..not mentioning milk from horse or donkey (sorry my english-can't remember female words for them )

now I'm not saying it is good/bad, only that cow milk is harder to digest then other that are produce for general consumption + there are more differences between milks that can be found if some1 is interested

I rest my case

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:

Oh, and Jami, just for you (and ME!): Bacon Fat Mayonnaise.

Mmmmm..... Jocelyn. Just made this bacon fat mayo into tartar sauce and it is awesome! Next time, I will use a little less bacon fat so it's not quite as heavy, but it is delicious!

branimir marold wrote:cow milk is "the worse" milk but more then one reason make it world wide popular, hail the marketing xD

far "better" is goat ..not mentioning milk from horse or donkey (sorry my english-can't remember female words for them )

now I'm not saying it is good/bad, only that cow milk is harder to digest then other that are produce for general consumption + there are more differences between milks that can be found if some1 is interested

I rest my case

I wonder where you got your misinformation. Raw cow's milk is perfectly easy for most people to digest and in fact has served mankind for thousands of years. The earliest Africans of what is now the Sahara were cattle herders and used cow's milk almost exclusively. The problem with Cow's Milk is not that it is hard to digest but rather the Homogenized "modern version" is hard to digest. That is mainly due to it being drastically altered by the homogenization process. People that appear to be lactose intolerant have found that they can drink commercial goat's milk without difficulty and can, in most instances, also drink Raw Cow's Milk. Various cultures from around the world drink the milk of the most commonly kept animal that produces a sufficient quantity and it is not some exclusive preference for health reasons but it is just what they use most often as livestock. Most Mongols drink horse milk because very few of them keep cattle but some do and they drink cow's milk. I have been drinking Raw Cow's Milk for at little over 60 years. There have been periods when I had goats so I drank their milk but mostly it has been raw cow's milk without any problems at all.

Suzy Bean wrote:

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:

Oh, and Jami, just for you (and ME!): Bacon Fat Mayonnaise.

Mmmmm..... Jocelyn. Just made this bacon fat mayo into tartar sauce and it is awesome! Next time, I will use a little less bacon fat so it's not quite as heavy, but it is delicious!

Oh, YUM! That does sound awesome! I love making homemade tartar sauce because I can use all organic ingredients and it tastes far better than the one-and-only organic tartar sauce I can find in the stores. But with bacon mayo...wow!

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:

Suzy Bean wrote:

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:

Oh, and Jami, just for you (and ME!): Bacon Fat Mayonnaise.

Mmmmm..... Jocelyn. Just made this bacon fat mayo into tartar sauce and it is awesome! Next time, I will use a little less bacon fat so it's not quite as heavy, but it is delicious!

Oh, YUM! That does sound awesome! I love making homemade tartar sauce because I can use all organic ingredients and it tastes far better than the one-and-only organic tartar sauce I can find in the stores. But with bacon mayo...wow!

Oh my Jocelyn. Yummmmmmmm.......... I have tried using a variety of fats for my mayonnaise and never tried bacon fat.

us in Romania do not use fat mayonnaise, but fried in lard fries are good.
we also have a product called greaves (skin singed pig fat), cooked cabbage yummmm

cristi draghici wrote:us in Romania do not use fat mayonnaise, but fried in lard fries are good.
we also have a product called greaves (skin singed pig fat), cooked cabbage yummmm

PORK FAT RULES!

not understand what you mean

cristi draghici wrote:not understand what you mean

I was agreeing with your post about pork. I love pork. I use pork fat for adding fat to very lean meats such as rabbit and venison when I grind it for hamburgers. I use it for making soap. I love the flavor for pork fat. In my opinion the very best pie crust requires lard. I hope that my answer here makes sense to you. Peace.

Paul and Jocelyn cover more listener questions in this podcast. Some things they talk about include Paul's food rating system, (similar to Jack Spirko's Agritrue), eco-labeling, nurture vs. nature, recycling, legality of things like the clothes line, and pirating copyrighted material.
They talk about lard.

This is a timely thread for me because we killed one of our pigs a couple of days ago and as we've almost finished preparing and conserve all the meat and I thought I'd pop into the forum while the fat is simmering for the grattons. (You can make wonderful soap too from left-over lard !)



I do sometimes worry about eating so much fat but apart from a bit of grain our pigs eat almost the same diet as us. Our pigs eat a lot of Purslane (portulaca oleracea) as I rip it up and feed it to them whenever I see it taking over.

Rose, you mentioned that it can be poisonous and I can confirm that we've lost four geese because they ate Purslane. It's not exactly a poison but the hairy fibres irritate their gut and they die from internal bleeding. At the time I had no idea what had happened to my geese and I asked the old folk around us who told me to keep them away from Purslane. I searched on the 'net and found a good article which explained what happens but I can't find it now.

How to render lard. So if you can get your hands on some organic pork fat, you can have lard in one simple step