Rendering Leaf Lard (and other animal fats)
Leaf lard is the snow white visceral fat that is found around the kidneys & loin of a hog. It's prized as a superior fat for cooking and baking and it contains a high proportion of saturated fat. When rendered properly, it's nearly odorless/tasteless and shelf stable (though you can keep it up to a year in the refrigerator). It has a high burn point, and won't go rancid as quickly as vegetable oils.
We sell frozen bags of unrendered leaf lard from our pastured hogs. It's actually great that it's frozen, because it's much easier/less messy to cut up the frozen lard in preparation for rendering.
What you'll need for rendering:
Slow cooker/crock pot
OPTIONAL 1/4 cup of water
Slotted spoon
Cheese cloth(s)
Strainer
I used a slow cooker to render the fat. Heating slowly is the key to getting white, tasteless lard. If it gets too hot, or the bits of fat brown too much, it won't ruin the lard, but it may have more of a 'bacon' taste when you cook with it. That's might be a good thing if you are roasting veggies, making savory biscuits, or cooking greens in your lard, but not great for sweet, delicate pastries.
OPTIONAL ADDITION: 1/4 of water. It sounds counterintuitive to add a little water to your pot of fat, because residual moisture in your finished lard could lead to mold. I read several accounts of people using this small amount of water a as 'buffer' on the bottom of the crock pot to prevent to bottom bits of fat from browning before the rest of the fat had melted. Some people are really against the water method... I tried it both ways, with & without the water. I have to say, the batch with water browned a lot less, but it also took longer, because I wanted to make sure the water cooked off. The finished products didn't seem that different. I think LOW & SLOW is the real key...
Overall, the whole process only took about 2-3 hours. I mostly left it alone, except to stir it a few times. The lard does start to bubble, but be careful not to let it boil or you risk overcooking it. You can see in the photo here, that a lot of fat has rendered off. In the end, there were still small, floating 'cracklin's' left behind. These can be scooped out with a slotted spoon and saved for later. I used these a couple of ways: fried them in a cast iron and put them on top of a salad like bacon bits, and added them to a pot of cooked greens.
Use a strainer & cheese cloth to remove the smallest cracklin's and any other bits. Store your lard in glass jars in the refrigerator. Technically, it is shelf stable, but you can store your lard up to a year in the fridge.
A few other notes about animal fats: you can use this same method to render chicken (aka schmaltz) or lamb & beef fats (aka tallow). Use these fats for high heat cooking (roasting veggies, stir fries...) instead of vegetable fats. You can also use tallow for making bird feeder suet. Another interesting note - traditionally, tallow and lard have been infused with medicinal herbs to make salves.
