Lard

• 1. Introduction

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  Lard, the pale pig fat that cooks once took for granted, helped trigger a so-called "lard crisis" in the United Kingdom in late 2004. The trigger was demand for an ingredient that had spent decades dismissed as old-fashioned. Lard is a semi-solid white fat made by rendering the fatty tissue of a pig. Tallow is a similar product, but it comes from cattle or sheep. How did a fat once as common as butter fall out of favor, and why did it return? What lets a pork product make pastry flakier than butter does? And what separates the block on a supermarket shelf from the lard that chefs hunt for?

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• 2. Rendering and Grades

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  Raw pig fat becomes lard through one of two methods, called wet and dry rendering. In the wet method, the fat is boiled in water or steamed at high temperature. Lard does not dissolve in water, so it can be skimmed from the surface, or an industrial centrifuge can pull it apart from the liquid. Dry rendering uses no water at all. The fat simply sits under high heat in a pan or an oven, much as bacon fries.

  The two methods leave different products behind. Wet-rendered lard is lighter in color, more neutral in flavor, and has a high smoke point. Dry-rendered lard is browner, tastes caramelized, and begins to smoke at a lower temperature. English speakers who ask for plain lard usually mean the wet kind. The dry kind, with its stronger pork taste, is called dripping. Dry rendering also yields cracklings, the deep-fried pieces of meat, skin and membrane that remain.

  Not every part of the pig produces the same quality of lard. The finest grade is leaf lard, taken from the flare, a deposit of visceral fat around the kidneys and inside the loin. It carries very little pork flavor. Fatback, the hard fat lying between the skin and muscle on the pig's back, ranks next. Lowest for rendering is caul fat, the soft fat around organs such as the small intestines. Cooks often skip rendering it and use it raw, wrapping it around lean meats for roasting or working it into pâtés.

  Leaf lard and fatback are exactly what home cooks seek when the shop-bought version will not do.

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• 3. Supermarket Versus Artisan

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  Most lard in supermarkets comes from a blend of high and low quality fat gathered from all over the pig. It is often hydrogenated so that it stays stable at room temperature. A serving of 13 g of hydrogenated consumer lard typically carries fewer than 0.5 g of trans fats. Manufacturers also add bleaching and deodorizing agents, emulsifiers, and antioxidants such as BHT. These treatments make the fat consistent and keep it from spoiling. Untreated lard has to be refrigerated or frozen, or it turns rancid. Refined lard usually reaches shoppers as paper-wrapped blocks.

  China makes more lard than any other country. The 2018 figures list more than 2.5 million tonnes for it. Germany, Brazil, the United States and Russia follow, each producing somewhere between roughly 430,000 and 550,000 tonnes.

  Shoppers who want something better usually turn to artisanal producers. Others render leaf lard or fatback at home themselves.

  What the pig ate before it ever reached a renderer leaves its own mark on the fat.

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• 4. Inside the Fat

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  Chemically, lard consists mostly of triglycerides, each built from three fatty acids that vary from one molecule to the next. Its makeup closely resembles that of tallow. About 20 percent of lard is one particular achiral triglyceride, with palmitic acid on carbon 2 and oleic acid on carbons 1 and 3.

  Peanut-fed hogs produce a somewhat different lard from pigs raised on maize in North American farms. The acorn-fed pigs raised for Jamón ibérico do the same. Diet shifts both the fatty acid content and the iodine value of the fat.

  Lard's high share of saturated fatty acids gives it a relatively high smoke point for an edible oil. Pure lard therefore gives off little smoke when heated and adds a distinct flavor of its own. Many chefs and bakers prize it above other shortenings for that flavor and its range of uses.

  Relatively large fat crystals make lard extremely effective as a shortening in baking. Pie crusts made with it tend to be flakier than those made with butter. Leaf lard's mildness is what makes it ideal for flaky, moist crusts. Many cooks combine lard with butter in pastry, taking the shortening power of one and the flavor of the other.

  British kitchens in particular hold a long list of dishes that depend on this fat.

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• 5. European Tables

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  Mince pies and Christmas puddings are two traditional British dishes that call for lard. So does lardy cake. Lard is also the traditional frying fat for fish and chips.

  In Scandinavia, lard is traditionally one of the main ingredients of leverpostej, a pâté. Spain offers a breakfast spread: one popular version of the Andalusian breakfast features several seasoned kinds of manteca on toasted bread. Manteca colorá is lard with paprika, and zurrapa de lomo is lard with pork flakes. In Catalan cuisine, lard goes into the dough for the pastry called coca. In the Balearic Islands, ensaïmada dough contains it too.

  Germans call lard Schweineschmalz, literally "rendered fat from swine," and have long favored it as a spread. Adding Grieben, small pieces of pork skin, makes Griebenschmalz. Other recipes use bits of apple or onion. Those vegetarian Grieben began as a makeshift way to stretch Schmalz in lean times. They proved popular on their own, since they give a particular taste and less fat. Germany forbids calling a non-lard product Schmalz. In English, schmaltz instead means kosher fat rendered from chicken, duck or goose.

  Hungary has zsíroskenyér, "lardy bread," and zsírosdeszka, "lardy plank." Germany has the "Fettbemme." Similar snacks appear with beer in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, usually topped with onions and served with salt and paprika. Menus often translate them as lard sandwiches, though the fat is really dripping. A cook who swaps Hungarian zsír or Polish smalec into a British recipe that calls for lard will notice the difference. In Poland, the spread is often simply paired with salt, and lard also goes into Toruń gingerbread.

  Lard spread on bread was once very common across Europe and North America, especially where dairy fats and vegetable oils were scarce. In Ukrainian cuisine, it was historically used to preserve sausages.

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• 6. Lard Beyond Europe

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  In Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, and in many parts of China, a bowl of rice could once arrive with lard stirred in along with soy sauce. The dish is called lard rice, written 豬油拌飯 or 豬油撈飯. Across Asia, lard has traditionally served as a general-purpose cooking oil beside peanut oil, especially for stir-fries and deep-frying.

  In Japan, ramen cooks frequently use lard from the back loin, which is fatback. It gives the dish a thick, nutty, slightly sweet and very hearty character.

  Mexican cooking is another place where lard still plays a significant role. One American chef has become a prominent champion of lard in just that kind of cooking.

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• 7. Fall and Return

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  In the 19th century, North America and many European nations used lard in much the same way as butter. In cultures where pork mattered at the table, pig fat was often as valuable as the meat. Lard stayed about as popular as butter into the early 20th century, and it served as a stand-in for butter during World War II. Because modern pork production produced it as a readily available by-product, it was cheaper than most vegetable oils. That lasted until the Industrial Revolution made vegetable oils common and more affordable.

  Vegetable shortenings arrived in the early 1900s and made it possible to bake with plant-based solid fats. Around the same time, Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle did lard no favors. The book was fiction, yet it portrayed men falling into rendering vats and being sold as lard, and the resulting publicity was damaging.

  By the late 20th century, lard's saturated fatty acids and cholesterol had made it look less healthy than olive or sunflower oil. People also came to regard it as a "poverty food." Yet by weight, lard has less saturated fat, more unsaturated fat and less cholesterol than butter. Unhydrogenated lard contains no trans fats.

  In the 1990s and early 2000s, chefs and bakers rediscovered what lard could do, which partly rehabilitated it among "foodies." Bad publicity over the trans fats in partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening drove part of that shift. The chef and food writer Rick Bayless became a prominent voice for lard in certain kinds of cooking.

  Restaurant demand has even reshaped farming. Small farmers have begun specializing in heritage hog breeds, which carry more body fat than the leaner modern hog. Hungary's Mangalitsa and Great Britain's Large Black are enjoying such a resurgence that breeders cannot keep up with orders.

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• 8. Beyond the Kitchen

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  Rendered lard can be turned into soap or into biofuel, two uses that have nothing to do with eating.

  Machinists once relied on it as a cutting fluid. Since the mid-20th century, specially engineered cutting fluids have taken much of that work. Even so, lard remains a viable option in the shop.

  Brewers and other industrial fermenters formerly added lard and other animal fats to suppress foam. In that job, a class of chemicals called polyethers has since replaced the animal fats entirely.

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