I’m sure you’ve noticed prices inching up at the grocery store and have been experiencing shortages of random items on the shelves. It’s definitely been apparent on our recent trips to stock up the pantry! In a recent article in our local newspaper,* an article mentioned that wholesale shortening and cooking oil prices have increased 43.5% over the past year! YIKES! It has made us more thankful than ever that we’ve learned how to use lard as a cooking and baking alternative.
What is lard?
Lard is 100% pork fat that has been rendered. While rendering sounds super fancy, it is just heating up the fatback or leaf lard to separate the fat from the remaining meaty bits. Easy peasy and can even be done in your slow cooker. We have a step-by-step blog and vlog tutorial on how to make your own at home.
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Crisco Background
When you hear the word shortening, you’re probably thinking of the mini-blue tub of Crisco that you or your mother probably has in the pantry. In 1911, Procter & Gamble discovered that hydrogenating cottonseed oil (aka adding hydrogen molecules) prevented it from going rancid as quickly. That combined with clever marketing describing it as purer, healthier, and more convenient made it become a staple in our family’s pantries.
But was it really healthier than lard? Turns out hydrogenating oil makes artificial trans fats. The kind of fat that lowers the good cholesterol and increases the bad. Oops! Maybe natural cooking fats/oils were better for us after all. If you’re concerned about saturated fats, it is actually not as scary of a picture as some recent diet fads have painted animal fats. Coconut oil is 83% saturated fat, olive oil is 14% saturated fat, and lard is right in the middle at 41% saturated fat.
If you’d like to know more about all sorts of cooking fats, I’d highly recommend checking out Andrea Chesman’s book The Fat Kitchen.
Pasture-raised Matters
You know the saying: “You are what you eat.” The same goes for animals, so the source of the fat we eat matters. The health and diet of the animal that ultimately provides our cooking fat is directly correlated to the quality of the fat. Animals store some nutrients (and toxins) in their fat. So eating a sickly animal will not provide us with optimal nutrition as we go up the food chain. For example, omega-3s are found in higher quantities in animals raised on grass or in a pasture. Feedlot animals lose these healthy fatty acids due to poor diet and conditions. If you want to read more about some of the science and data around pastured-pork check out this blog post.
So where do you get high-quality fat? If you’re not raising your own hogs, contact some local farmers and butcher shops and ask questions. Our favorite local butcher is happy to share where he sourced his pigs from and how they were raised. Plus, many small local farms are happy to have you visit and learn more about their livestock-raising practices.
How to cook with lard
Lard is super versatile and can be used to roast, fry, bake, saute, and more. It has a high smoke point which makes it great for deep frying. Melt it to drizzle over roasting veggies, replace that 1 TBS of oil to saute your onion with some lard. We love to use it when frying tortillas for Mexican dishes, greasing our cast iron pans, and even frying up our eggs in the morning.
How to bake with lard
Lard can be used just like butter or shortening (aka crisco) is your baking recipes. Once you try it in your pie crusts and biscuits, you’ll never want to go back to hydrogenated cottonseed oil! So flaky! If a recipe calls for shortening, coconut oil, or olive oil, it’s 1:1 ratio with lard.
If the recipe calls for butter you’ll need a little less lard. Butter is only 80% fat (20% water), so you’ll need to adjust your amount of lard accordingly. If you’re measuring by weight, just reduce the lard 20%. If you’re measuring by volume here’s a handy chart for lard conversion:
| Butter | Lard |
| 1/8 cup | 1/8 cup |
| 1/4 cup | 1/4 cup (scant) |
| 1/3 cup | 1/4 cup (heaped) |
| 1/2 cup | 3/8 cup (6 TBS) |
| 1/3 cup | 1/2 cup |
| 3/4 cup | 5/8 cup (10 TBS) |
| 1 cup | 3/4 cup |
Hope this post has helped you learn how to use lard as a cooking and baking alternative during these peculiar times of high food prices and grocery store shortages.
*Greenville News, 9/21/2021