Cooking With Lard

 
NJJoe
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Post by NJJoe » Mon. Jul. 04, 2016 11:03 am

Got it. Thanks Rob

 
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Post by gaw » Fri. Jul. 08, 2016 9:20 pm

tikigeorge wrote:Made in USA, Lodge cast iron, the best. No soap, wash with hot water, dry with paper towel, wipe or spray with oil, and heat pan to remove moisture and open pores to let oil in the the cast iron.
Probably the best and probably the only made in USA cast out there today.

Guys, especially single guys; if your girlfriend or fiancé tells you she never cooked with cast iron and don’t know how to…. SHE DON’T KNOW HOW TO COOK. Deal with it or ditch her.

 
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Post by Photog200 » Tue. Oct. 18, 2016 7:38 am

I use lard in all my pastry doughs, mixed with butter. It gives a great tasting and flaky crust. I also replace the water with unflavored vodka. The alcohol evaporates faster than water and kind of creates mini explosions in the crust, making it even flakier.

Randy

 
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Post by top top » Sat. Mar. 25, 2017 6:21 am

Rob R. wrote:...........We use coconut oil occasionally. It is great for baking things, but in some cases the coconut taste can throw things off.
I like coconut but don't recall my wife ever using the oil for cooking. Coconut shrimp is tasty, maybe battered tautog pan fried in coconut oil.
Last edited by top top on Sat. Mar. 25, 2017 5:17 pm, edited 3 times in total.


 
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Post by CoalHeat » Sat. Mar. 25, 2017 10:34 am

I just saw this thread for the first time. I have cast iron cookware, as a result of careful seasoning and use my Wagner skillet is amazingly non-stick. I really like the Lodge products, I have a Dutch Oven from them.

 
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Post by coalfan » Sat. Mar. 25, 2017 11:30 am

have a wide range of dutch ovens ,pans etc. from griswald wagner and lodge love them all cant beatm !! but yah gotta know how to use them to learned that from my grand parents god bless them !

 
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Post by Rob R. » Sat. Mar. 25, 2017 11:32 am

This morning my wife dug out an old recipe for Maple Syrup muffins. She substituted lard for shortening, and we were very pleased with the result. Crispy exterior, moist interior. These muffins are not overly sweet, but good none the less.

If anyone tries the recipe, let me know what you think.

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Post by Hoytman » Mon. Jan. 28, 2019 2:46 pm

Of all the store bought lards I've tried over the years I always go back to Fischer's Lard. That's what my grandparents and great grandparents used and to me it's still the best. Good clean lard smell … doesn't smell like a hog lot or hog crap like most store bought lards I've tried. I'm sure others have their own favorite. I'm open minded and I've tried many brands in the store. I will drive … and have driven 4 hours to get Lard … not specifically … but picked it up in large quantities while I was in the place I knew I could buy it. I always plan ahead too.

Same for the yellow coarsely stone ground grits I buy from The Old Mill in Pigeon Forge, TN. I think these grits are far superior to any others I've tried and/or tasted anywhere. I buy 2 - 25lb. bags at a time and freeze them in the packages and vacuum packed for freshness.

Fischer's Lard and Nun-Better brand corn meal and flour (can't hardly find it around here … hard to find in eastern KY where we used to get it) makes the best corn bread and biscuits.

We use a lot of bacon fat as well … I mean bacon flavor's nearly everything well.

Always used lard on my cast iron … always. I don't like anything but lard, criscoe, or vegetable oil, but I use Lard 99.999% of the time because it's what I have on hand, what I like to use, and what my family used in my skillets long before I was even born.

I do like the thought of using Avocado oil on them with its high smoke point of 500*F. As long as it wouldn't impart an off flavor on my skillets avocado oil should impart a really durable seasoning. It's just so easy to use the Lard I have or the bacon grease that's always near the stove.


 
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Post by coalnewbie » Mon. Jan. 28, 2019 6:20 pm

A perfect diet for Carotid Artery Disease. Cut the arteries on both sides of the neck and insert a pipe cleaner up to the brain.

 
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Post by CoalJockey » Mon. Jan. 28, 2019 6:44 pm

It is my own uneducated opinion that a lot of the dimentia/Alzheimer’s that we see so prevalent in the older generations came from diets beginning in the 1950s that saw whole grains and breakfast cereals replace the hearty farmers breakfasts of generations prior.

Layman’s terms — We don’t eat enough pig fat.

I’m serious, think about it. When the sons and daughters moved off the family homestead and hearty breakfasts were no longer the norm seems to coincide with the rise of a lot of mental disorders later in life. It is very hard for me to eat home fries without them being cooked with lard, those that have never had do not know what they miss.

I haveth no scientific evidence to back this claim up, I’m a truck driver with lots of time to think about things that do not matter. I think it’s a worthwhile discussion though.

 
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Post by Linda Kaufman » Tue. Apr. 02, 2019 5:14 am

I always use lard when cooking pancakes

 
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Post by Photog200 » Sat. Apr. 06, 2019 7:14 am

NJJoe wrote:
Thu. Feb. 11, 2016 9:28 am
Lard is great. Its one of the best cooking fats. Too bad it has a unhealthy stigma. Its actually healthier than butter for you. Less saturated fat, more unsaturated fat and less cholesterol. A baker once told me his secret to the flakiest pie crusts; a mixture of butter and lard. Butter for the rich flavor and lard for the flakiness. Lard has huge fat crystals compared to other fats so it makes the best pastry shortening. When these crystals melt in the oven, that's what leaves behind voids in the pie crust that results in flakiness.

All of this goes without saying though. The store lard you find on a shelf is junk: very unhealthy for you and poor for pastry purposes. It has been bleached, deodorized, treated with preservatives and the fat hydrogenated so it can become shelf stable. The best lard is one that has been slowly rendered from the visceral fat surrounding the loins and kidneys and then stored in the freezer. Anyone who wants to try lard in cooking is best served by befriending a butcher and having him set aside the viceral fat for you and stay away from store shelf lard. It can be rendered in the oven. A great byproduct of the rendering process are the "cracklins". You know the bacon bits salad toppers they sell in the store? Disgusting imitation bacon flavored "bits". You can get the real thing from your own lard production and they are delicious!!
A friend of mine is a baker and he gave me a recipe for pie crust many years ago. I swore I would never give it away, hmmm, here is just the one little secret. He used both butter and lard as described above but instead of water, he uses vodka. The vodka evaporates faster than water in the oven so it makes the crust even flakier. I agree with the shelf lard is horrible, I made a pie one time using it and it was the worst pie crust I ever made (except for the time I forgot to put the shortening in when I was 12 years old. You could have shorn a shoe with the crust). Here in Upstate NY some stores still carry good lard in the refrigerated section right next to the butter.

Randy
Edit: oops, I see I had already responded to this thread over two years ago. Must be from eating Mom's cooking with Crisco for all those years that made me forget :D

 
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Post by Hoytman » Tue. Sep. 10, 2019 12:39 am

coalnewbie wrote:
Mon. Jan. 28, 2019 6:20 pm
A perfect diet for Carotid Artery Disease. Cut the arteries on both sides of the neck and insert a pipe cleaner up to the brain.
Understand the concern, however, the post following your more closely matches the old timers I’ve known. I realize many doctors say exactly what you said.

That’s not saying you’re wrong, but my grandparents lived to be old...mid eighties and nineties. Both had diets containing a lot of animal fats, particularly hog fat.

The truth is there’s so much conflicting information from doctors anymore no one knows what is best. One minute eggs are bad, coffee’s bad, red meat is bad, then they flip flop...the egg one has flip flopped four to five times in my 47 years.

All things in moderation...and I even wrap moderation in bacon.😄

By the way not all shelf lard is bad. In fact, most of the worst lard I’ve tasted and smelled came from butchers. Find yourself some good Fischer’s lard and you won’t be disappointed.

Just use it in moderation...wrapped with a little bacon.

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