Better late than never! The long awaited Lard post!

 Hello my friends!  I finally got around to posting about how to render lard.  I know.  This is the be all end all "Tell all" article of the year....NOT.  

I have to say, though, when money is tight and you have limited resources, having a source of cooking fat in one way or another is a blessing.  So without further adieu, the "How to".

I'm using as an example, 5 lbs. of ground beef that's 80/20.  In other words 80% meat and 20% fat.  If you're using something like a roast or other meat, just use the fat you trim off.  You can collect it in the freezer if you want,  No matter if it's beef or pork you use: the steps are the same; well except for the browning the ground beef part.  

If using ground beef.

1)  Place a strainer or colander into a large pan.  Set aside.  Put about 2 quarts to a gallon of water on to boil.  

2)  Cook or "Brown" the ground beef.  As it gets cooked, you can remove it from the pan with a slotted spoon, and put it in the strainer lined pan.  Keep doing this until all of the ground beef is cooked. 

3)  Your water should be boiling by now.  Pour the boiling water over the now cooked ground beef; making sure you pour over all of the cooked meat.  Pour slowly and keep an eye on the pan underneath to make sure it doesn't get too full.  

4)  Once you're done pouring water over the meat, let it drain a few seconds.  Set the colander of cooked meat to the side.  Pour fat from the pan used to cook the beef into the larger pot as well.   

5)  Let cool, then refrigerate until it cools completely, the fat rises to the top and solidifies.  

***Make note.  When you remove the pan from the fridge the first time, the fat on the top will be more semi solid than solid.  It will harden as the process goes.

6)  Fill a smaller pan with clean water.  Remove the now semi solid fat from the bigger pan and put in the new smaller pan with clean water.  You're done with the big pan now.  You can dump the old water and wash the pan.  

7)  Place the small pan with the fat on the stove and begin to melt the fat on a low/medium heat.  Let it boil gently a few minutes and then turn off the burner.  Let it cool  then refrigerate.

8)  Once the fat  has cooled completely, and solidified; remove the pan from the fridge.  Remove the now block of fat from the pan.  Dump the water, refill the pan with clean water and repeat step 7.

9)  You will repeat steps 7 and 8 about 4 more times until your block of fat is hard enough for you to break it, white in color, and has no odor.  

*** you will have some stubborn bits that like to stay on the fat, these can be removed by either rinsing in hot water, or scraping with a knife.

I got about 1.5 cups of Tallow/Lard from this batch.  

By doing this I

a)  create a leaner ground beef and get it for much less than what it would cost in the store.  This ends up being more like 90-93% lean ground beef.

b)  cook up the ground beef ahead of time and so it's ready to use at the drop of a hat any time I need it.

c)  Save on buying 12 oz worth of a cooking fat at the store.

d)  Get more bang for my buck because I'm using something we normally throw away.

e)  Get a Tallow/Lard that hasn't been hydrogenated like all of the lards at the store.

If you are using fat trimmings from other cuts of meat, 

1)  Cut fat trimmings into tiny pieces-  In this case it would be prudent to save the fat trimmings in the freezer until you have a good amount to make this process worth your time.

2) Place trimmings in a pot of clean water,  Put on the stove at a low/med heat and let simmer until all or most of the fat is released.  

3)  Strain out any left over bits with a slotted spoon.  Let cool then refrigerate.

4)  Follow steps 7-9 repeatedly until it's the consistency you need.

So there you go!  Yes, there are a lot of steps so to speak, but really it isn't really complicated to do.  Worth a try.  Try it out and let me know how it went!