15 ms·

Who Killed Lard? (2012)

143 points by bcaulfield 7y ago

kris-s 7y ago
I was inspired to try baking from The Great British Baking Show and was really surprised to find how difficult it was to find lard for my pastry dough. Bring it back!
- departure 7y ago
  Are you in the USA? Try Mexican markets. I always see it there and my grandma used it extensively.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    I've seen lard in the 'ethnic foods' section of normal groceries.
    - zwieback 7y ago
      Yeah, pretty easy to find in US stores but it's the cheap kind that can have pretty strong flavors, not something you can use to replace oil or butter.
  - sevensor 7y ago
    When I lived in Texas, lard was stocked by every HEB.
- baseten 7y ago
  re: great British baking show - caster sugar is also hard to find in the US. (you can buy superfine but it only comes in very small bottles and is very expensive)
  - zwieback 7y ago
    I've heard that you can make it in your food processor, takes a couple minutes. I've never tried it but Bob's Red Mill thinks it can be done.
    - jfk13 7y ago
      Or give it a bit longer and you've got icing sugar (or powdered sugar, as I think it's called in the States). In virtually everything I've baked, though, it works fine to just use granulated. You may have to work a little harder to make sure it's truly all dissolved, that's all.
      - ghaff 7y ago
        The other thing you use caster/superfine sugar for is for some cocktails. Basically, it's a lot easier to dissolve in cold (or at least room temperature) liquids than regular granulated sugar is.
        zinckiwi 7y ago
        Very true, I make homemade lemonade by just stirring it into lemon juice and cold water. No need to go through the simple syrup route.
      - zinckiwi 7y ago
        Icing sugar (at least as I know it in Commonwealth countries) also contains cornstarch/cornflour.
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        As does US powdered/confectioners sugar.
  - fencepost 7y ago
    C&H has superfine sugar in 4 lb packages, but they're the old cardboard milk carton style rather than the paper bag bricks used for granulated. They also have "Bakers Sugar" in fairly large print. Domino also sells it, but the grocery store site I checked only shows it in 12oz plastic bottles. https://www.meijer.com/shop/en/pantry/baking/sugar/ch-superfine-sugar-4-lbs/p/1580003636 https://www.meijer.com/shop/en/pantry/baking/sugar/ch-superf...
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  You can get (organic, not hydrogenated) lard from Whole Foods (or Amazon Prime Now, if you don't want to go to a store and you’re in one of their service areas.)
- tanilama 7y ago
  I ordered one from Amazon...It is surprisingly serviceable
- namdnay 7y ago
  Is that the US name for Bake Off?
nn3 7y ago
What do slaughter houses with the left over pig fat these days instead?
- hinkley 7y ago
  I used to know the answer to that from relatives who had a meat packing plant in town. Tallow, according to the internet. If memory serves, any fat that is mishandled also goes off to make tallow.
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
  They sell it as lard. I live in the Midwest and I'm really surprised to hear all these people saying lard is hard to find. It's in all the grocery stores here.
- linksnapzz 7y ago
  As I understand it, the desire of US meatpackers for leaner "healthier" other-white-meat pork led to breeders selecting for leaner pigs. There may actually be less pig fat left over these days. Of course, this means that your porkchops, pork loin, pork ribs, bacon joints etc. will be leaner and drier and tougher than the ones your grandmother or great-grandmother got from her butcher. I've heard old people remark on this numerous times. This was not universal around the world, though. This place: http://www.ginzabairin.com/ http://www.ginzabairin.com/ seemed to indicate that in Japan, flavor and mouth feel were more important than ever-increasing leanness in porkchops...mmmmmmmmmmm
- analog31 7y ago
  One answer is soap. Maybe a decade or two ago, it was possible to buy bars of "soap" that were made from detergent rather than actual soap. A useful advantage was that it didn't produce soap scum in areas with hard water. Zest advertised this: "You're not really clean, till you're Zest-fully clean." Today, the same brands all list lard and tallow in their ingredients, and the detergent is gone. I'm betting that lard and tallow are cheaper. I use detergent based liquid body wash for this reason, since we have hard water. Animal fats and soaps are still used in some industrial processes as lubricants, because they're non toxic and cheap. An example is some kinds of sheet metal forming and drawing. But I doubt those uses can consume the entire production of lard and tallow, which must be quite a lot.
tropo 7y ago
A good pie crust has both butter and lard, as separate bits that are not mixed. They melt at different temperatures. The best lard comes from near the kidneys. Good luck finding some, or even just lard that isn't adulterated in some way. The lard I can find has been hydrogenated or has added TBHQ or BHT.
- mcfunk 7y ago
  Hydrogenating lard is such a depressing concept-- the entire point would be as a more healthful alternative to hydrogenated and highly processed oils, but I guess processing is a hammer to which everything is a nail...
  - mrob 7y ago
    Perhaps surprisingly, natural lard is mostly unsaturated fat. It's only about 40% saturated, which means it has poor shelf life without hydrogenation to increase the saturated fat percent.
- zwieback 7y ago
  I was obsessed with "leaf lard", the stuff near the kidneys for a while. I was told that it makes a superior pie crust so finally my wife gave me a jar for my birthday. It's very expensive and, in my opinion, totally not worth it. I can make a better tasting crust that's just as flaky with plain old butter. Which isn't to say lard isn't great, I render it out when making slow-cooker pork and use it for tamales or as a frying oil. I just don't like it in pastry.
- msds 7y ago
  If you really care about pie crusts, finding a good source of leaf lard is the #1 requirement. I tried a few pre-rendered brands, and it was all expensive, not particularly fresh, and tastes weird... Eventually I found a farmer who sells unrendered leaf lard, and after a few false starts at rendering it (too hot, and it'll taste too meaty), I've started making essentially perfect pie crusts.
jonny_eh 7y ago
Another relevant podcast on the same topic, this one from Malcolm Gladwell: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke-my-heart http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke-my...
mikece 7y ago
With the rise in popularity of the ketogenic diet I would imagine producers/sellers of lard should be seeing a significant increase in demand for their product. Make it fair-trade, free-range, and organic and you sell for 3x... everyone wins!
ThJ 7y ago
This story doesn't really explain what killed lard in Europe. They don't sell Crisco or any other kind of shortening here in Norway, for example. Norwegian recipes often call for butter, but rarely for lard. Few things are ever deep fried and in pie crusts, we use butter, not lard. The closest thing you can find to shortening in a Norwegian supermarket is coco fat. The only thing I know of that was traditionally cooked in lard is donuts, which are literally named lardrings (smultringer) in Norwegian. What happened in Norway is that butter was rationed because of WWII and they introduced margarine (another product of hydrogenation) as a substitute, and after the war, it was promoted as a healthier alternative to butter. Lard must've been around, especially in other parts of Europe than Norway, but I doubt these domestic American events killed it. I often see Americans attempting to explain why things happen in their country by pointing to domestic events, with said events failing to account for an identical thing happening all over the world.
- tyingq 7y ago
  "The only thing I know of that was traditionally cooked in lard is donuts" Makes a huge difference with cake donuts. They are crispy on the outside, and moist, and hold cinnamon/sugar on the outside. Haven't had one in quite a while though...all the US donut stores use vegetable oil.
- astine 7y ago
  It sounds as if lard was never a very big thing in Norway whereas it was at one point in the United States. It seems as if it could just be a coincidence what happened in the States and in Europe.
- ghaff 7y ago
  >What happened in Norway is that butter was rationed because of WWII and they introduced margarine (another product of hydrogenation) as a substitute, and after the war, it was promoted as a healthier alternative to butter. Margarine was extremely popular in the US for a time (and there's still plenty of it in grocery stores). Among health conscious people, butter was looked on with suspicion as recently as 20 years or so ago. (I ran/run weekend hiking trips sometimes and 20 years ago, I would definitely have gotten dirty looks if I only bought butter. Today no one cares.) Crisco was pretty popular at one point in the US but AFAIK it's receded quite a bit. I don't do a lot of baking but I don't really see it in recipes these days. And lard is still not in mainstream use at all.
sureaboutthis 7y ago
I can walk into either of the two major grocery chains here in St. Louis and buy lard off the shelf. So I find this interesting when comparing my other experience of going to Chicago's big grocery chain, one day a few summers ago, looking to buy a whole turkey and told they only carry those at Thanksgiving. That was shocking to me as that, too, can be bought locally at any time. And, yes, I have a tub of lard in my pantry.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  I'm further west than you, but almost all supermarkets in my area carry lard. I know because I use it in my own cooking.
saikit 7y ago
Lard is still key ingredient in Chinese cuisine, through it's rare to find dishes made with lard outside of China. Here's instructions on how to render your own lard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9KXFgXQG70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9KXFgXQG70
- copperx 7y ago
  Lard is also key to Mexican cuisine. Everything is cooked with a little lard.
  - microwavecamera 7y ago
    It's still commonly used in Southern and Soul food in the US too. I'm staying in Virginia right now and all the local grocery stores have lard and fatback.
CarVac 7y ago
My main experience with lard as a younger person is as the white cubes of deliciousness in mortadella, my favorite sandwich meat. I have never seen lard that I know of aside from that.
pjungwir 7y ago
That's funny, just the other day I needed some lard for a paté. I called around without luck and eventually bought suet from a specialty butcher and left it in the crock pot on low overnight. Then I needed another half-pound and tried calling up the butcher at our local grocery store. He said he could set aside some suet for me, and I picked it up later that day. It was less than a dollar a pound. He said as long as I called in the morning he should have some for me, but otherwise they just tossed it. When I was Googling for how to render lard, the recipe I landed on had a long story about how it was Canadian canola farmers who killed lard. I guess it's always nice having someone to blame. :-) Anyway I'm saving the paté for Sunday, so I can't yet tell you how it turned out. :-)
- zwieback 7y ago
  Is that from beef then? I wonder how the flavor is different from pork fat, which is probably milder tasting.
  - ohiovr 7y ago
    (not op here) I have found that if lard has a flavor it is usually rancid.
    - ohiovr 7y ago
      https://www.southerncastiron.com/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-lard/ https://www.southerncastiron.com/5-things-you-didnt-know-abo... lard has no flavor
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Rancid fats are oxidised. Look for fresh, and well-packaged lard.
  - jfk13 7y ago
    Most likely from beef, yes: suet is to beef as lard is to pork, according to my understanding. (Could also be from mutton, though.) I haven't tried a direct comparison; my local butcher saves me a big hunk of suet (at no charge) from time to time when he's been processing a beef animal, and it's lovely once rendered. Maybe I should ask him about lard next time I'm in there.
amblingalpaca 7y ago
If you’re anywhere near a Mexican meat market/grocery store with a carniceria attached, make sure to try the in house rendered lard (and the chicharrones/crackling!). The white, tubbed, Armour brand lard simply doesn’t compare. Should be caramel colored with some bits in it, sold in a bag, and very, very cheap!
- tyingq 7y ago
  Often labeled as "manteca de puerco" or "manteca de cerdo".
- sridca 7y ago
  Chicharrones are awesome. They call it "pork rinds" elsewhere (eg: in Canada).
  - namdnay 7y ago
    Pork Scratchings in the UK
- teilo 7y ago
  In-house is the key. The Mexican markets around here sell lard in containers on the shelf, but it's all hydrogenated. And there's just no comparison. I used to be able to get pork fat for next to nothing at local grocery store butcher sections, and would render it myself. Now no one has it. Not sure why.
bluedino 7y ago
I remember going to my great-grandmothers house in Indiana. They had a farm, and they had lots of pigs. My mother brought one home as a kid, it was a runt and they kept it in the house and named it peanut butter. Back to the topic at hand. There were pots full of lard in the basement, and they stored pork chops and sausages in the lard! You'd just go down an pull some out like it was a refridgerator. Sliced potatoes, fried in lard, with pork sausages. One of my favorite meals to this day. And I have the cast iron pan my great grandmother used to make the exact same meal. The lard went in the pie crusts as well. And I imagine in countless other things I never knew about.
- xref 7y ago
  Wonder how long the pork lasted in the lard, seeing as even salt pork like ships used to stock for long voyages only lasted a couple months
  - rwmj 7y ago
    It sounds basically the same as the French technique of confit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confit).
    - riku_iki 7y ago
      I think it is different, lard seals food from air and bacteria. I'v seen similar technique in some movie about Chinese way of preserving food.
      - Isamu 7y ago
        Confit is actually the same, it is about sealing and preserving cooked meat with fat. I guess this was widespread. In the US it was maybe more prevalent before refrigeration. I remember it being in a documentary about colonial times.
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  I remember hiking in the mountains when I was like 14 yo when I saw a jar of lard in my friends backpack. I was confused at the time as to how he was going to eat it since most food we carried was canned and had little or no bread with as to cut down on volume. When we reached our destination at night my friend put the jar by the fire, the lard melted and all I could see was a jar filled with sausages in liquid lard. They were absolutely delicious I remember
sparrish 7y ago
My favorite lard story comes from my business partner. Every Sunday night the boarding school he attended in grade school would have an ice cream social. They always got the cheap ice cream from the local ice cream shop cause it tasted 'better'. One Sunday, they forgot to put the leftover ice cream away and by Monday morning, it still hadn't melted. When they asked the shop why, they were told is was mostly made of lard. They got the more expensive ice cream from then on.
- phonypc 7y ago
  Something sounds off about that. Never mind enough lard to keep it solid at room temp, there's usually no added fat in ice cream. Just what's in the cream/milk. I'd expect it to taste/feel wrong and don't see how it could be cheaper.
  - disfadbish 7y ago
    I think you would be surprised how soft and fluffy whipped lard can be.
markstos 7y ago
Animal agriculture is one of the top causes of climate change ( https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank ). As we face a ~10 year deadline to avert climate catastrophe, now is not the time to bring back lard.
- howlin 7y ago
  It's a tough subject. Most saturated fats either come from animals, tropical plants or are produced synthetically via hydrogenation. The trajectory seems to have been animal to partially hydrogenated plant oil to tropical oils. I don't think palm or coconut oil is going to compare favorably to lard from a purely environmental perspective. The world is burning down the last of the rainforest to make room for palm oil plantations. The most rational solution is to go back to hydrogenated oil. The partially hydrogenated oils in Crisco and margarine contain trans fats, which are clearly unhealthy and should be avoided. However fully hydrogenated oil does not have this problem. Unfortunately I doubt the consumer is going to be able to appreciate this difference. I lump this solution with nuclear power: clearly the best solution but too scary to be adopted by the public.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
    >> The most rational solution is to go back to hydrogenated oil. Or just use olive oil that is high in monounsaturated fats and depends on olive trees that are not amenable to industrial production. As a bonus, you won't find any research, old or new, be it the purorted result of "lobbying", conspiracies, etc, or not, claiming that olive oil is bad for you.
    - howlin 7y ago
      Olive oil works ok for most purposes but it is fairly expensive and much fussier to work with given the lower sat. fat content. Though it is very stable when pure, olive oil can go rancid fairly quickly when incorporated into processed foods or baked goods. Lard, margarine and tropical oils have the benefit of being shelf stable even when part of some other baked good (e.g. Oreos).
protomyth 7y ago
Well, lard is still used heavily for frybread[1]. Not the healthiest food, but it has an interesting evolution. 1) http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9022063/ns/us_news-life/t/icon-or-hazard-great-debate-over-fry-bread/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9022063/ns/us_news-life/t/icon-or-...
busterarm 7y ago
I used to order from US Wellness Meats a lot and would frequently purchase both their pork lard and beef tallow. Quality stuff.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Duck fat is also really good for some things like frying potatoes. Relatively hard to find and expensive though.
  - deadmetheny 7y ago
    Duck fat is sublime for frying potatoes and things like Yorkshire puddings. It's also quite easy to procure - all you need to do is get a whole duck, score the skin with a knife, and roast it in the oven (flipping it and draining the fat every hour or so) until you've rendered as much as you can out. Not only do you get a pint of delicious fat that will keep for ages in the freezer, you also get roasted duck meat that you can do whatever you please with (personally, I like to shred them up and eat them with a bit of slaw and hoisin as street tacos).
    - sridca 7y ago
      Do you pass the rendered out duck fat through a filter of some sort? To separate the solids? I normally buy duck fat from stores, but maybe I should try it.
      - wil421 7y ago
        I can find a farmers market that sells pieces of the skin. A few pieces of dark will be give you a decent amount and a tasty snack. Pass it through a coffee filter for best results. Do it while the fat is very warm if not somewhat hot.
      - deadmetheny 7y ago
        You can if you want, but I don't usually bother. All of the solids will settle out to the bottom anyway if you let it cool down to room temperature before freezing. If you want to go the filter route, a cheesecloth would likely be good enough.
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> "It seems funny," Silver says, "but for thousands of years this was the thing that people cooked with. Some people, but not all by any means. In the Mediterrannean, for example, olive oil was the shortening of choice since around 6000 BC.
scotty79 7y ago
For me frying anything on lard smells just horrible and I still remember, from my late childhood, meat and onions fried on lard that gave me huge stomach ache every time I ate them. When it comes to frying I prefer anything other than lard. It's only slightly above used motor oil.
yantrams 7y ago
That Upton Sinclair's novel bit on people falling into vats reminded me of Ambrose Bierce's macabre short story 'Oil of Dog'. [1] There is even a beautiful animated adaption of this tale titled "My name is Boffer Bings" on Vimeo that was released few years back [2] [1] - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3715/3715-h/3715-h.htm#oil http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3715/3715-h/3715-h.htm#oil [2] - https://vimeo.com/41718840 https://vimeo.com/41718840
MagicPropmaker 7y ago
I don't eat lard, but I do render the fat from chickens I cook and keep it. I'll cook with chicken fat. And when you render it with onions, you can fry the skin as "gribenes" or spread the onion/fat mixture on toast as you would butter. For people who don't eat dairy and meat in the same meal, chicken fat is widely used. I'd imagine it has some similar qualities to pork fat.
rdtsc 7y ago
Besides P&G, sugar industry also killed lard https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in... Just the other day I saw a pack of gummy "fruit" candy which is basically gelatin and sugar in the store. It was advertised with pictures of fruit with a large label that said how it is fat free. "Look how healthy this is for you kid, it's just like real fruit and it doesn't have any fat, perfect!".
jimmysong 7y ago
The main reason lard wasn't sold was because the health industrial complex blamed fat for heart disease and a whole host of other health conditions. This started the low-fat food trend which brought way more carbs into our diet which eventually led to the low-carb diets which spurred a renewed interest in animal fat like lard. In other words, there was a lot of argument from authority that precipitated this, not just corporate profit seeking (which was also significant).
- bcaulfield 7y ago
  And those authorities often worked as scientists funded by and regulators captured by their respective industries, no?
- jiveturkey 7y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in... would disagree with you. The argument from authority was paid for by the sugar industry. The health industrial complex, whatever that is, was also profit-seeking.
- sridca 7y ago
  Now we are doing the same to meat, in order to valorize "plant-based" foods.
  - wheels 7y ago
    That's patently false on two charges: - Vegan dishes enjoy nowhere near the popularity of low-fat foods in the anti-fat wave of the 80s and 90s. Not even close. It's still a minority of restaurants that offer any vegan options. - The main argument for plant-based diets isn't that they're healthier (though a minority of folks do argue such), but that they're less cruel to animals and are more environmentally friendly. In contrast to arguing that low-fat diets are healthier, both of those assertions are uncontroversial. Personally, I still eat meat, but have moved (aside from eating out, which I do rarely) to buying all of my animal products from farms that are certified for specific animal welfare conditions. And, well, I also always have some lard in the fridge. Where I'm from, people tended to save rendered pork fat in their fridges.
drngdds 7y ago
With any luck, animal-based meat (as opposed to lab-designed meat or plant-based imitations) in general will suffer a similar fate.
mises 7y ago
Lard is still good to cook with. Cook bacon and store the grease in jars in the fridge, and it can last for ages. Wonderful for scrambling eggs, and pies crusts made with anything but lard just don't compare.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- analog31 7y ago
  My family always had a jar of bacon grease in the fridge when I was growing up. It was great for eggs.
rayiner 7y ago
The whole history of lard is a microcosm of how media sensationalism can mislead the public. It starts with Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." As the article notes, the book describes how meat-packing workers in turn-of-the-century America would sometimes fall into vats of rendering lard and be incorporated into the final product. Such stories are, of course, complete fabrication. But more broadly, contemporary sources suggest that The Jungle was largely sensationalism: https://journals.ku.edu/amerstud/article/view/2885/2844 https://journals.ku.edu/amerstud/article/view/2885/2844 > Journalist Mark Sullivan warned readers of Our Times to avoid "the error, practically universal, of classifying Sinclair and his 'Jungle' with the 'Muckrackers.'" They are "utterly different... in their methods." The best of the muckrakers "confirmed everything," while Sinclair was a "propagandist" whose account of "conditions in the stockyards did not purport to have any more than the loose standard of accuracy that fiction demands for local color and background." Even that was rejected by Ralph Chaplin, a socialist who grew up in the vicinity of the yards and packinghouses and was living there when the novel appeared. In his autobiography Wobbly, Chaplin said of The Jungle, "I thought it a very inaccurate picture of the stockyards district which I knew so well." Decades later, journalists did another hit job on lard, sensationalizing thin research on nutrition until it turned into a national panic.
Tade0 7y ago
Lard is pretty much alive and kicking in eastern Europe.
tathougies 7y ago
We make our own lard, rendered from pig fat (usually from around the kidneys), which is readily available for cheap (I buy 5 lbs for a few dollars from a pasture-based farm, so likely cheaper if you get it from a more industrial farm). We also render our own suet. Haven't needed to use vegetable oil for a while now. Love lard, makes all vegetables taste 10000 times better.
lg 7y ago
it's also more inclusive to cook fries and pastries and such in a way that jews and muslims can eat them too.
- whenchamenia 7y ago
  Its their choice to avoid pork. Its not somehow noble to deny yourself something healthy and delicious just because others do.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
tptacek 7y ago
Lard is pretty easy to make, and homemade lard is _much_ better than the hydrogenated stuff you get in the grocery store. It's as simple as dicing up pork fat, covering with water, and simmering until what was left of the diced chunks starts to sizzle and brown a little (those chunks, btw, are incipient pork cracklins, which are their own reason to make lard). A good reason to end up with a whole bunch of pork fat is to buy a whole skin-on pork shoulder, which also gives you the skin to cook with the fat and then fry.
- philliphaydon 7y ago
  My mum used to make her own. She said her mum used to cook with lard and food just didn’t taste as good with alternatives. She also felt it was healthier to use animal fat than chemicals. Now I see signs for “no pork, no lard, no msg” and it makes me sad. All the best things and I can’t have any of it :(
- likpok 7y ago
  How porky is homemade lard? One challenge I heard of for lard crusts for pie is that sweet pies don’t do well with a strong savory pork flavor. (They recommended leaf lard, which is made from specific pork fat and pretty tricky to find).
edgarvaldes 7y ago
Lard is common in the preparation of many dishes of Mexican food (it is known as manteca de cerdo), but it is not as common as it used to be.
dang 7y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8317359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8317359
wessorh 7y ago
farmer here. We grew pigs last year an saved their fat. Just started rendering it wit plans for lard bisquest and gravy this weekend. Think for your self. Its as critical the information you put in your head as the food you put in your belly. Consider an information diet and stop eating man made transfats.
tomohawk 7y ago
Soy beans are a top 5 food allergen. In the US, soy beans get into almost everything because most "vegetable oil" and margarine is made from it. We had to remove soy beans from our diet and we are much healthier as a result. A lot of people who have digestive issues could probably trace the problem back to an intolerance of soy beans. It took us a lot of trial and error to figure this out in our case. We found we could only get decent lard off of etsy.com, or from an rural butcher. The best lard is from grass fed animals, which has better taste/nutrition.
- 01100011 7y ago
  I only have one food allergy that I'm aware of - soy protein. AFAIK, it was caused by my mom following a fad in the 70s and giving me soy milk or soy-based formula. I was sick all the time until my dad got fed up and gave me cows milk. It's too bad, I like tofu.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  While soy oil is quite common, soy allergies seem to be to the protein, not the oil (or lecithin for the chocolate lovers out there). According to wikipedia, > Some food contains soy-based ingredients that are not considered allergens under national regulations, and thus not labeled, for example, foods cooked in highly refined soy oil, which is considered safe due to absence of soy protein.
ggm 7y ago
In Australia it never went away. Copha is a natural part of truly awful family recipies like rice-crispie choc cakes, or christmas treats made with dried fruit and suger. We also have a huge immigrant diaspora (40% of the population either are from overseas or within 1 or 2 generations) and a huge amount of traditional cookery is preserved in aspic here, whilst the homeland has gone full burger, you can still get echt-lard recipe cooking from nonna or her cousins. The CSIRO diet and nutritionists tried very hard to make lard punishable. They basically failed. Now keto is fashionable its going to be even harder (like my arteries)
- oska 7y ago
  Copha is hydrogenated coconut oil.
  - ggm 7y ago
    Whoops! Having said which. The shelf where copha is sold in Coles and Woolies has beef dripping including organic beef dripping. Three choices. Virtually every link matching a search on "substitute" and "copha" is of course arguing for using vegetable shortening in place of lard but the reverse clearly works: if you know how to use copha, you can substitute lard for a more intense flavour.
saagarjha 7y ago
> “[Sinclair definitely wanted people to be grossed out by the entire meat-packing industry," Shurtleff says. I thought his intention was to show the improve labor conditions?
wsdfsayy 7y ago
Things have changed a lot since 2012. The Keto/Paleo/LCHF movement has definitely increased demand for new cooking oils, including animal fats. At Whole Foods, I regularly see beef and duck tallow + pork (lard) prominently displayed now.
jonstewart 7y ago
Lard pie crusts > butter pie crusts. My mom still uses lard (in the Midwest). When I’ve gotten it here in DC, it’s sometimes been a tinge rancid.
thrwoasdf213 7y ago
Interestingly, it's still going strong in Japan. It's one of the factors that make it so difficult to be vegetarian/vegan in Japan - even Bread may contain 'shortening' (generally made of lard). It's a bit strange; you'd think the land of 'harmony' would be having a large vegan population, but nearly everything in the country, from chips to bread have some form of animal product in them.
- qalmakka 7y ago
  Northern Italy too. In Emilia everything contains lard, including bread. Town fairs still feature prominently a special kind of bread fried in lard, and it is considered a delicacy. I cannot imagine how vegetarians or Muslims can actually survive here.
mtarnovan 7y ago
Lard is still very popular here in Romania. It's used extensively for cooking and frying. It's also consumed as a bread spread (salted and topped with onions, paprika etc). Meat and sausages stored in lard are also a delicacy. The lard preserves and tenderises the meat.
mateo1 7y ago
Every time I see yet another article claiming lard and saturated fats aren't bad for your cardiovascular system, I feel like I have the ethical obligation to remind everyone how this is false. Please don't fall for fads, ask your doctor or take professional advice on this issue. Everyone would like to eat more fatty meat and lard-fried potatoes, but they will clog your arteries. It's an annoyance but it's a fact. Don't die following a dumb trend.
- eykanspelgud 7y ago
  I appreciate your concern, and your moral obligation to try and tell people. I do not mean to be rude to you, but your understanding is outdated and wrong. Saturated fats are actually good for you as these fats are required for a healthy metabolism and endocrine system. They also comprise a good portion of your cell membrane. Saturated fats and cholesterol do not clog your arteries. We initially thought that because it was present in atherosclerosis, but it turns out we were blaming the responders to the crime scene, and not the actual cause: inflammation brought on by high carbohydrate diets. Note: if you read further into this, big food companies were also involved in influencing the negative stance on fats by our politicians back in the 50s, helping create our current obesity epidemic. I'm on mobile, but will link to current research when I remember. Also, source: I do research at a medical research university in the div of cardiology/endocrinology.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  This advice is a trend from the 80s.
4e1a 7y ago
After skimming the comments i was upset it was not about the band Lard.
baud147258 7y ago
As a French, I was really confused by the conversation here, until I realized, unlike other words common to English and French, the English word for lard does not have the same meaning as the French word for lard, where it means bacon. Here in France lard is used a lot, most replaced by butter (and olive oil in the South) in recipes.
- slau 7y ago
  I guess "saindoux" is the closest translation for lard. I've more often seen people cook with animal fat (goose and beef, mainly) as opposed to "saindoux". That was only for specialty recipes, though. As you've indicated, in the south where I grew up, olive oil was by far the fatty substance of choice. In ratios of 10-20 to 1, I would estimate.
mourner 7y ago
Welcome to Ukraine! Lard and Salo [1] are pretty much the main national dishes here. A healthy delicacy that's welcome on any table and is sold on every meat market. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salo_(food) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salo_(food)
- prevedmedved 7y ago
  Salo is not lard. Salo is cured bacon without the thin strips of meat. Lard is closer to margarine.
- namdnay 7y ago
  Interesting, very similar to the Italian Lardo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lardo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lardo
oliwarner 7y ago
We're slaughtering more pigs than ever so what's happening with all the lard? Or are we just raising leaner pigs?

143 points by bcaulfield 7y ago

I was inspired to try baking from The Great British Baking Show and was really surprised to find how difficult it was to find lard for my pastry dough. Bring it back!

departure 7y ago
Are you in the USA? Try Mexican markets. I always see it there and my grandma used it extensively.
- hinkley 7y ago
  I've seen lard in the 'ethnic foods' section of normal groceries.
  - zwieback 7y ago
    Yeah, pretty easy to find in US stores but it's the cheap kind that can have pretty strong flavors, not something you can use to replace oil or butter.
- sevensor 7y ago
  When I lived in Texas, lard was stocked by every HEB.
baseten 7y ago
re: great British baking show - caster sugar is also hard to find in the US. (you can buy superfine but it only comes in very small bottles and is very expensive)
- zwieback 7y ago
  I've heard that you can make it in your food processor, takes a couple minutes. I've never tried it but Bob's Red Mill thinks it can be done.
  - jfk13 7y ago
    Or give it a bit longer and you've got icing sugar (or powdered sugar, as I think it's called in the States). In virtually everything I've baked, though, it works fine to just use granulated. You may have to work a little harder to make sure it's truly all dissolved, that's all.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      The other thing you use caster/superfine sugar for is for some cocktails. Basically, it's a lot easier to dissolve in cold (or at least room temperature) liquids than regular granulated sugar is.
      - zinckiwi 7y ago
        Very true, I make homemade lemonade by just stirring it into lemon juice and cold water. No need to go through the simple syrup route.
    - zinckiwi 7y ago
      Icing sugar (at least as I know it in Commonwealth countries) also contains cornstarch/cornflour.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        As does US powdered/confectioners sugar.
- fencepost 7y ago
  C&H has superfine sugar in 4 lb packages, but they're the old cardboard milk carton style rather than the paper bag bricks used for granulated. They also have "Bakers Sugar" in fairly large print. Domino also sells it, but the grocery store site I checked only shows it in 12oz plastic bottles. https://www.meijer.com/shop/en/pantry/baking/sugar/ch-superfine-sugar-4-lbs/p/1580003636 https://www.meijer.com/shop/en/pantry/baking/sugar/ch-superf...
dragonwriter 7y ago
You can get (organic, not hydrogenated) lard from Whole Foods (or Amazon Prime Now, if you don't want to go to a store and you’re in one of their service areas.)
tanilama 7y ago
I ordered one from Amazon...It is surprisingly serviceable
namdnay 7y ago
Is that the US name for Bake Off?

nn3 7y ago

What do slaughter houses with the left over pig fat these days instead?

hinkley 7y ago
I used to know the answer to that from relatives who had a meat packing plant in town. Tallow, according to the internet. If memory serves, any fat that is mishandled also goes off to make tallow.
HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
They sell it as lard. I live in the Midwest and I'm really surprised to hear all these people saying lard is hard to find. It's in all the grocery stores here.
linksnapzz 7y ago
As I understand it, the desire of US meatpackers for leaner "healthier" other-white-meat pork led to breeders selecting for leaner pigs. There may actually be less pig fat left over these days. Of course, this means that your porkchops, pork loin, pork ribs, bacon joints etc. will be leaner and drier and tougher than the ones your grandmother or great-grandmother got from her butcher. I've heard old people remark on this numerous times. This was not universal around the world, though. This place: http://www.ginzabairin.com/ http://www.ginzabairin.com/ seemed to indicate that in Japan, flavor and mouth feel were more important than ever-increasing leanness in porkchops...mmmmmmmmmmm
analog31 7y ago
One answer is soap. Maybe a decade or two ago, it was possible to buy bars of "soap" that were made from detergent rather than actual soap. A useful advantage was that it didn't produce soap scum in areas with hard water. Zest advertised this: "You're not really clean, till you're Zest-fully clean." Today, the same brands all list lard and tallow in their ingredients, and the detergent is gone. I'm betting that lard and tallow are cheaper. I use detergent based liquid body wash for this reason, since we have hard water. Animal fats and soaps are still used in some industrial processes as lubricants, because they're non toxic and cheap. An example is some kinds of sheet metal forming and drawing. But I doubt those uses can consume the entire production of lard and tallow, which must be quite a lot.

tropo 7y ago

A good pie crust has both butter and lard, as separate bits that are not mixed. They melt at different temperatures. The best lard comes from near the kidneys. Good luck finding some, or even just lard that isn't adulterated in some way. The lard I can find has been hydrogenated or has added TBHQ or BHT.

mcfunk 7y ago
Hydrogenating lard is such a depressing concept-- the entire point would be as a more healthful alternative to hydrogenated and highly processed oils, but I guess processing is a hammer to which everything is a nail...
- mrob 7y ago
  Perhaps surprisingly, natural lard is mostly unsaturated fat. It's only about 40% saturated, which means it has poor shelf life without hydrogenation to increase the saturated fat percent.
zwieback 7y ago
I was obsessed with "leaf lard", the stuff near the kidneys for a while. I was told that it makes a superior pie crust so finally my wife gave me a jar for my birthday. It's very expensive and, in my opinion, totally not worth it. I can make a better tasting crust that's just as flaky with plain old butter. Which isn't to say lard isn't great, I render it out when making slow-cooker pork and use it for tamales or as a frying oil. I just don't like it in pastry.
msds 7y ago
If you really care about pie crusts, finding a good source of leaf lard is the #1 requirement. I tried a few pre-rendered brands, and it was all expensive, not particularly fresh, and tastes weird... Eventually I found a farmer who sells unrendered leaf lard, and after a few false starts at rendering it (too hot, and it'll taste too meaty), I've started making essentially perfect pie crusts.

jonny_eh 7y ago

Another relevant podcast on the same topic, this one from Malcolm Gladwell: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke-my-heart http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke-my...

mikece 7y ago

With the rise in popularity of the ketogenic diet I would imagine producers/sellers of lard should be seeing a significant increase in demand for their product. Make it fair-trade, free-range, and organic and you sell for 3x... everyone wins!

ThJ 7y ago

This story doesn't really explain what killed lard in Europe. They don't sell Crisco or any other kind of shortening here in Norway, for example. Norwegian recipes often call for butter, but rarely for lard. Few things are ever deep fried and in pie crusts, we use butter, not lard. The closest thing you can find to shortening in a Norwegian supermarket is coco fat. The only thing I know of that was traditionally cooked in lard is donuts, which are literally named lardrings (smultringer) in Norwegian. What happened in Norway is that butter was rationed because of WWII and they introduced margarine (another product of hydrogenation) as a substitute, and after the war, it was promoted as a healthier alternative to butter. Lard must've been around, especially in other parts of Europe than Norway, but I doubt these domestic American events killed it. I often see Americans attempting to explain why things happen in their country by pointing to domestic events, with said events failing to account for an identical thing happening all over the world.

tyingq 7y ago
"The only thing I know of that was traditionally cooked in lard is donuts" Makes a huge difference with cake donuts. They are crispy on the outside, and moist, and hold cinnamon/sugar on the outside. Haven't had one in quite a while though...all the US donut stores use vegetable oil.
astine 7y ago
It sounds as if lard was never a very big thing in Norway whereas it was at one point in the United States. It seems as if it could just be a coincidence what happened in the States and in Europe.
ghaff 7y ago
>What happened in Norway is that butter was rationed because of WWII and they introduced margarine (another product of hydrogenation) as a substitute, and after the war, it was promoted as a healthier alternative to butter. Margarine was extremely popular in the US for a time (and there's still plenty of it in grocery stores). Among health conscious people, butter was looked on with suspicion as recently as 20 years or so ago. (I ran/run weekend hiking trips sometimes and 20 years ago, I would definitely have gotten dirty looks if I only bought butter. Today no one cares.) Crisco was pretty popular at one point in the US but AFAIK it's receded quite a bit. I don't do a lot of baking but I don't really see it in recipes these days. And lard is still not in mainstream use at all.

sureaboutthis 7y ago

I can walk into either of the two major grocery chains here in St. Louis and buy lard off the shelf. So I find this interesting when comparing my other experience of going to Chicago's big grocery chain, one day a few summers ago, looking to buy a whole turkey and told they only carry those at Thanksgiving. That was shocking to me as that, too, can be bought locally at any time. And, yes, I have a tub of lard in my pantry.

JohnFen 7y ago
I'm further west than you, but almost all supermarkets in my area carry lard. I know because I use it in my own cooking.

saikit 7y ago

Lard is still key ingredient in Chinese cuisine, through it's rare to find dishes made with lard outside of China. Here's instructions on how to render your own lard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9KXFgXQG70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9KXFgXQG70

copperx 7y ago
Lard is also key to Mexican cuisine. Everything is cooked with a little lard.
- microwavecamera 7y ago
  It's still commonly used in Southern and Soul food in the US too. I'm staying in Virginia right now and all the local grocery stores have lard and fatback.

CarVac 7y ago

My main experience with lard as a younger person is as the white cubes of deliciousness in mortadella, my favorite sandwich meat. I have never seen lard that I know of aside from that.

pjungwir 7y ago

That's funny, just the other day I needed some lard for a paté. I called around without luck and eventually bought suet from a specialty butcher and left it in the crock pot on low overnight. Then I needed another half-pound and tried calling up the butcher at our local grocery store. He said he could set aside some suet for me, and I picked it up later that day. It was less than a dollar a pound. He said as long as I called in the morning he should have some for me, but otherwise they just tossed it. When I was Googling for how to render lard, the recipe I landed on had a long story about how it was Canadian canola farmers who killed lard. I guess it's always nice having someone to blame. :-) Anyway I'm saving the paté for Sunday, so I can't yet tell you how it turned out. :-)

zwieback 7y ago
Is that from beef then? I wonder how the flavor is different from pork fat, which is probably milder tasting.
- ohiovr 7y ago
  (not op here) I have found that if lard has a flavor it is usually rancid.
  - ohiovr 7y ago
    https://www.southerncastiron.com/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-lard/ https://www.southerncastiron.com/5-things-you-didnt-know-abo... lard has no flavor
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Rancid fats are oxidised. Look for fresh, and well-packaged lard.
- jfk13 7y ago
  Most likely from beef, yes: suet is to beef as lard is to pork, according to my understanding. (Could also be from mutton, though.) I haven't tried a direct comparison; my local butcher saves me a big hunk of suet (at no charge) from time to time when he's been processing a beef animal, and it's lovely once rendered. Maybe I should ask him about lard next time I'm in there.

amblingalpaca 7y ago

If you’re anywhere near a Mexican meat market/grocery store with a carniceria attached, make sure to try the in house rendered lard (and the chicharrones/crackling!). The white, tubbed, Armour brand lard simply doesn’t compare. Should be caramel colored with some bits in it, sold in a bag, and very, very cheap!

tyingq 7y ago
Often labeled as "manteca de puerco" or "manteca de cerdo".
sridca 7y ago
Chicharrones are awesome. They call it "pork rinds" elsewhere (eg: in Canada).
- namdnay 7y ago
  Pork Scratchings in the UK
teilo 7y ago
In-house is the key. The Mexican markets around here sell lard in containers on the shelf, but it's all hydrogenated. And there's just no comparison. I used to be able to get pork fat for next to nothing at local grocery store butcher sections, and would render it myself. Now no one has it. Not sure why.

bluedino 7y ago

I remember going to my great-grandmothers house in Indiana. They had a farm, and they had lots of pigs. My mother brought one home as a kid, it was a runt and they kept it in the house and named it peanut butter. Back to the topic at hand. There were pots full of lard in the basement, and they stored pork chops and sausages in the lard! You'd just go down an pull some out like it was a refridgerator. Sliced potatoes, fried in lard, with pork sausages. One of my favorite meals to this day. And I have the cast iron pan my great grandmother used to make the exact same meal. The lard went in the pie crusts as well. And I imagine in countless other things I never knew about.

xref 7y ago
Wonder how long the pork lasted in the lard, seeing as even salt pork like ships used to stock for long voyages only lasted a couple months
- rwmj 7y ago
  It sounds basically the same as the French technique of confit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confit).
  - riku_iki 7y ago
    I think it is different, lard seals food from air and bacteria. I'v seen similar technique in some movie about Chinese way of preserving food.
    - Isamu 7y ago
      Confit is actually the same, it is about sealing and preserving cooked meat with fat. I guess this was widespread. In the US it was maybe more prevalent before refrigeration. I remember it being in a documentary about colonial times.
onemoresoop 7y ago
I remember hiking in the mountains when I was like 14 yo when I saw a jar of lard in my friends backpack. I was confused at the time as to how he was going to eat it since most food we carried was canned and had little or no bread with as to cut down on volume. When we reached our destination at night my friend put the jar by the fire, the lard melted and all I could see was a jar filled with sausages in liquid lard. They were absolutely delicious I remember

sparrish 7y ago

My favorite lard story comes from my business partner. Every Sunday night the boarding school he attended in grade school would have an ice cream social. They always got the cheap ice cream from the local ice cream shop cause it tasted 'better'. One Sunday, they forgot to put the leftover ice cream away and by Monday morning, it still hadn't melted. When they asked the shop why, they were told is was mostly made of lard. They got the more expensive ice cream from then on.

phonypc 7y ago
Something sounds off about that. Never mind enough lard to keep it solid at room temp, there's usually no added fat in ice cream. Just what's in the cream/milk. I'd expect it to taste/feel wrong and don't see how it could be cheaper.
- disfadbish 7y ago
  I think you would be surprised how soft and fluffy whipped lard can be.

markstos 7y ago

Animal agriculture is one of the top causes of climate change ( https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank ). As we face a ~10 year deadline to avert climate catastrophe, now is not the time to bring back lard.

howlin 7y ago
It's a tough subject. Most saturated fats either come from animals, tropical plants or are produced synthetically via hydrogenation. The trajectory seems to have been animal to partially hydrogenated plant oil to tropical oils. I don't think palm or coconut oil is going to compare favorably to lard from a purely environmental perspective. The world is burning down the last of the rainforest to make room for palm oil plantations. The most rational solution is to go back to hydrogenated oil. The partially hydrogenated oils in Crisco and margarine contain trans fats, which are clearly unhealthy and should be avoided. However fully hydrogenated oil does not have this problem. Unfortunately I doubt the consumer is going to be able to appreciate this difference. I lump this solution with nuclear power: clearly the best solution but too scary to be adopted by the public.
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
  >> The most rational solution is to go back to hydrogenated oil. Or just use olive oil that is high in monounsaturated fats and depends on olive trees that are not amenable to industrial production. As a bonus, you won't find any research, old or new, be it the purorted result of "lobbying", conspiracies, etc, or not, claiming that olive oil is bad for you.
  - howlin 7y ago
    Olive oil works ok for most purposes but it is fairly expensive and much fussier to work with given the lower sat. fat content. Though it is very stable when pure, olive oil can go rancid fairly quickly when incorporated into processed foods or baked goods. Lard, margarine and tropical oils have the benefit of being shelf stable even when part of some other baked good (e.g. Oreos).

protomyth 7y ago

Well, lard is still used heavily for frybread[1]. Not the healthiest food, but it has an interesting evolution. 1) http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9022063/ns/us_news-life/t/icon-or-hazard-great-debate-over-fry-bread/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9022063/ns/us_news-life/t/icon-or-...

busterarm 7y ago

I used to order from US Wellness Meats a lot and would frequently purchase both their pork lard and beef tallow. Quality stuff.

ghaff 7y ago
Duck fat is also really good for some things like frying potatoes. Relatively hard to find and expensive though.
- deadmetheny 7y ago
  Duck fat is sublime for frying potatoes and things like Yorkshire puddings. It's also quite easy to procure - all you need to do is get a whole duck, score the skin with a knife, and roast it in the oven (flipping it and draining the fat every hour or so) until you've rendered as much as you can out. Not only do you get a pint of delicious fat that will keep for ages in the freezer, you also get roasted duck meat that you can do whatever you please with (personally, I like to shred them up and eat them with a bit of slaw and hoisin as street tacos).
  - sridca 7y ago
    Do you pass the rendered out duck fat through a filter of some sort? To separate the solids? I normally buy duck fat from stores, but maybe I should try it.
    - wil421 7y ago
      I can find a farmers market that sells pieces of the skin. A few pieces of dark will be give you a decent amount and a tasty snack. Pass it through a coffee filter for best results. Do it while the fat is very warm if not somewhat hot.
    - deadmetheny 7y ago
      You can if you want, but I don't usually bother. All of the solids will settle out to the bottom anyway if you let it cool down to room temperature before freezing. If you want to go the filter route, a cheesecloth would likely be good enough.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

>> "It seems funny," Silver says, "but for thousands of years this was the thing that people cooked with. Some people, but not all by any means. In the Mediterrannean, for example, olive oil was the shortening of choice since around 6000 BC.

scotty79 7y ago

For me frying anything on lard smells just horrible and I still remember, from my late childhood, meat and onions fried on lard that gave me huge stomach ache every time I ate them. When it comes to frying I prefer anything other than lard. It's only slightly above used motor oil.

yantrams 7y ago

That Upton Sinclair's novel bit on people falling into vats reminded me of Ambrose Bierce's macabre short story 'Oil of Dog'. [1] There is even a beautiful animated adaption of this tale titled "My name is Boffer Bings" on Vimeo that was released few years back [2] [1] - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3715/3715-h/3715-h.htm#oil http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3715/3715-h/3715-h.htm#oil [2] - https://vimeo.com/41718840 https://vimeo.com/41718840

MagicPropmaker 7y ago

I don't eat lard, but I do render the fat from chickens I cook and keep it. I'll cook with chicken fat. And when you render it with onions, you can fry the skin as "gribenes" or spread the onion/fat mixture on toast as you would butter. For people who don't eat dairy and meat in the same meal, chicken fat is widely used. I'd imagine it has some similar qualities to pork fat.

rdtsc 7y ago

Besides P&G, sugar industry also killed lard https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in... Just the other day I saw a pack of gummy "fruit" candy which is basically gelatin and sugar in the store. It was advertised with pictures of fruit with a large label that said how it is fat free. "Look how healthy this is for you kid, it's just like real fruit and it doesn't have any fat, perfect!".

jimmysong 7y ago

The main reason lard wasn't sold was because the health industrial complex blamed fat for heart disease and a whole host of other health conditions. This started the low-fat food trend which brought way more carbs into our diet which eventually led to the low-carb diets which spurred a renewed interest in animal fat like lard. In other words, there was a lot of argument from authority that precipitated this, not just corporate profit seeking (which was also significant).

bcaulfield 7y ago
And those authorities often worked as scientists funded by and regulators captured by their respective industries, no?
jiveturkey 7y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in... would disagree with you. The argument from authority was paid for by the sugar industry. The health industrial complex, whatever that is, was also profit-seeking.
sridca 7y ago
Now we are doing the same to meat, in order to valorize "plant-based" foods.
- wheels 7y ago
  That's patently false on two charges: - Vegan dishes enjoy nowhere near the popularity of low-fat foods in the anti-fat wave of the 80s and 90s. Not even close. It's still a minority of restaurants that offer any vegan options. - The main argument for plant-based diets isn't that they're healthier (though a minority of folks do argue such), but that they're less cruel to animals and are more environmentally friendly. In contrast to arguing that low-fat diets are healthier, both of those assertions are uncontroversial. Personally, I still eat meat, but have moved (aside from eating out, which I do rarely) to buying all of my animal products from farms that are certified for specific animal welfare conditions. And, well, I also always have some lard in the fridge. Where I'm from, people tended to save rendered pork fat in their fridges.

drngdds 7y ago

With any luck, animal-based meat (as opposed to lab-designed meat or plant-based imitations) in general will suffer a similar fate.

mises 7y ago

Lard is still good to cook with. Cook bacon and store the grease in jars in the fridge, and it can last for ages. Wonderful for scrambling eggs, and pies crusts made with anything but lard just don't compare.

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analog31 7y ago
My family always had a jar of bacon grease in the fridge when I was growing up. It was great for eggs.

rayiner 7y ago

The whole history of lard is a microcosm of how media sensationalism can mislead the public. It starts with Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." As the article notes, the book describes how meat-packing workers in turn-of-the-century America would sometimes fall into vats of rendering lard and be incorporated into the final product. Such stories are, of course, complete fabrication. But more broadly, contemporary sources suggest that The Jungle was largely sensationalism: https://journals.ku.edu/amerstud/article/view/2885/2844 https://journals.ku.edu/amerstud/article/view/2885/2844 > Journalist Mark Sullivan warned readers of Our Times to avoid "the error, practically universal, of classifying Sinclair and his 'Jungle' with the 'Muckrackers.'" They are "utterly different... in their methods." The best of the muckrakers "confirmed everything," while Sinclair was a "propagandist" whose account of "conditions in the stockyards did not purport to have any more than the loose standard of accuracy that fiction demands for local color and background." Even that was rejected by Ralph Chaplin, a socialist who grew up in the vicinity of the yards and packinghouses and was living there when the novel appeared. In his autobiography Wobbly, Chaplin said of The Jungle, "I thought it a very inaccurate picture of the stockyards district which I knew so well." Decades later, journalists did another hit job on lard, sensationalizing thin research on nutrition until it turned into a national panic.

Tade0 7y ago

Lard is pretty much alive and kicking in eastern Europe.

tathougies 7y ago

We make our own lard, rendered from pig fat (usually from around the kidneys), which is readily available for cheap (I buy 5 lbs for a few dollars from a pasture-based farm, so likely cheaper if you get it from a more industrial farm). We also render our own suet. Haven't needed to use vegetable oil for a while now. Love lard, makes all vegetables taste 10000 times better.

lg 7y ago

it's also more inclusive to cook fries and pastries and such in a way that jews and muslims can eat them too.

whenchamenia 7y ago
Its their choice to avoid pork. Its not somehow noble to deny yourself something healthy and delicious just because others do.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

tptacek 7y ago

Lard is pretty easy to make, and homemade lard is _much_ better than the hydrogenated stuff you get in the grocery store. It's as simple as dicing up pork fat, covering with water, and simmering until what was left of the diced chunks starts to sizzle and brown a little (those chunks, btw, are incipient pork cracklins, which are their own reason to make lard). A good reason to end up with a whole bunch of pork fat is to buy a whole skin-on pork shoulder, which also gives you the skin to cook with the fat and then fry.

philliphaydon 7y ago
My mum used to make her own. She said her mum used to cook with lard and food just didn’t taste as good with alternatives. She also felt it was healthier to use animal fat than chemicals. Now I see signs for “no pork, no lard, no msg” and it makes me sad. All the best things and I can’t have any of it :(
likpok 7y ago
How porky is homemade lard? One challenge I heard of for lard crusts for pie is that sweet pies don’t do well with a strong savory pork flavor. (They recommended leaf lard, which is made from specific pork fat and pretty tricky to find).

edgarvaldes 7y ago

Lard is common in the preparation of many dishes of Mexican food (it is known as manteca de cerdo), but it is not as common as it used to be.

dang 7y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8317359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8317359

wessorh 7y ago

farmer here. We grew pigs last year an saved their fat. Just started rendering it wit plans for lard bisquest and gravy this weekend. Think for your self. Its as critical the information you put in your head as the food you put in your belly. Consider an information diet and stop eating man made transfats.

tomohawk 7y ago

Soy beans are a top 5 food allergen. In the US, soy beans get into almost everything because most "vegetable oil" and margarine is made from it. We had to remove soy beans from our diet and we are much healthier as a result. A lot of people who have digestive issues could probably trace the problem back to an intolerance of soy beans. It took us a lot of trial and error to figure this out in our case. We found we could only get decent lard off of etsy.com, or from an rural butcher. The best lard is from grass fed animals, which has better taste/nutrition.

01100011 7y ago
I only have one food allergy that I'm aware of - soy protein. AFAIK, it was caused by my mom following a fad in the 70s and giving me soy milk or soy-based formula. I was sick all the time until my dad got fed up and gave me cows milk. It's too bad, I like tofu.
dehrmann 7y ago
While soy oil is quite common, soy allergies seem to be to the protein, not the oil (or lecithin for the chocolate lovers out there). According to wikipedia, > Some food contains soy-based ingredients that are not considered allergens under national regulations, and thus not labeled, for example, foods cooked in highly refined soy oil, which is considered safe due to absence of soy protein.

ggm 7y ago

In Australia it never went away. Copha is a natural part of truly awful family recipies like rice-crispie choc cakes, or christmas treats made with dried fruit and suger. We also have a huge immigrant diaspora (40% of the population either are from overseas or within 1 or 2 generations) and a huge amount of traditional cookery is preserved in aspic here, whilst the homeland has gone full burger, you can still get echt-lard recipe cooking from nonna or her cousins. The CSIRO diet and nutritionists tried very hard to make lard punishable. They basically failed. Now keto is fashionable its going to be even harder (like my arteries)

oska 7y ago
Copha is hydrogenated coconut oil.
- ggm 7y ago
  Whoops! Having said which. The shelf where copha is sold in Coles and Woolies has beef dripping including organic beef dripping. Three choices. Virtually every link matching a search on "substitute" and "copha" is of course arguing for using vegetable shortening in place of lard but the reverse clearly works: if you know how to use copha, you can substitute lard for a more intense flavour.

saagarjha 7y ago

> “[Sinclair definitely wanted people to be grossed out by the entire meat-packing industry," Shurtleff says. I thought his intention was to show the improve labor conditions?

wsdfsayy 7y ago

Things have changed a lot since 2012. The Keto/Paleo/LCHF movement has definitely increased demand for new cooking oils, including animal fats. At Whole Foods, I regularly see beef and duck tallow + pork (lard) prominently displayed now.

jonstewart 7y ago

Lard pie crusts > butter pie crusts. My mom still uses lard (in the Midwest). When I’ve gotten it here in DC, it’s sometimes been a tinge rancid.

thrwoasdf213 7y ago

Interestingly, it's still going strong in Japan. It's one of the factors that make it so difficult to be vegetarian/vegan in Japan - even Bread may contain 'shortening' (generally made of lard). It's a bit strange; you'd think the land of 'harmony' would be having a large vegan population, but nearly everything in the country, from chips to bread have some form of animal product in them.

qalmakka 7y ago
Northern Italy too. In Emilia everything contains lard, including bread. Town fairs still feature prominently a special kind of bread fried in lard, and it is considered a delicacy. I cannot imagine how vegetarians or Muslims can actually survive here.

mtarnovan 7y ago

Lard is still very popular here in Romania. It's used extensively for cooking and frying. It's also consumed as a bread spread (salted and topped with onions, paprika etc). Meat and sausages stored in lard are also a delicacy. The lard preserves and tenderises the meat.

mateo1 7y ago

Every time I see yet another article claiming lard and saturated fats aren't bad for your cardiovascular system, I feel like I have the ethical obligation to remind everyone how this is false. Please don't fall for fads, ask your doctor or take professional advice on this issue. Everyone would like to eat more fatty meat and lard-fried potatoes, but they will clog your arteries. It's an annoyance but it's a fact. Don't die following a dumb trend.

eykanspelgud 7y ago
I appreciate your concern, and your moral obligation to try and tell people. I do not mean to be rude to you, but your understanding is outdated and wrong. Saturated fats are actually good for you as these fats are required for a healthy metabolism and endocrine system. They also comprise a good portion of your cell membrane. Saturated fats and cholesterol do not clog your arteries. We initially thought that because it was present in atherosclerosis, but it turns out we were blaming the responders to the crime scene, and not the actual cause: inflammation brought on by high carbohydrate diets. Note: if you read further into this, big food companies were also involved in influencing the negative stance on fats by our politicians back in the 50s, helping create our current obesity epidemic. I'm on mobile, but will link to current research when I remember. Also, source: I do research at a medical research university in the div of cardiology/endocrinology.
mixmastamyk 7y ago
This advice is a trend from the 80s.

4e1a 7y ago

After skimming the comments i was upset it was not about the band Lard.

baud147258 7y ago

As a French, I was really confused by the conversation here, until I realized, unlike other words common to English and French, the English word for lard does not have the same meaning as the French word for lard, where it means bacon. Here in France lard is used a lot, most replaced by butter (and olive oil in the South) in recipes.

slau 7y ago
I guess "saindoux" is the closest translation for lard. I've more often seen people cook with animal fat (goose and beef, mainly) as opposed to "saindoux". That was only for specialty recipes, though. As you've indicated, in the south where I grew up, olive oil was by far the fatty substance of choice. In ratios of 10-20 to 1, I would estimate.

mourner 7y ago

Welcome to Ukraine! Lard and Salo [1] are pretty much the main national dishes here. A healthy delicacy that's welcome on any table and is sold on every meat market. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salo_(food) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salo_(food)

prevedmedved 7y ago
Salo is not lard. Salo is cured bacon without the thin strips of meat. Lard is closer to margarine.
namdnay 7y ago
Interesting, very similar to the Italian Lardo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lardo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lardo

oliwarner 7y ago

We're slaughtering more pigs than ever so what's happening with all the lard? Or are we just raising leaner pigs?