What is Lard?

"Just like Grandma used to make" is certainly a compliment and callback to nostalgic Sunday dinners where everything tasted just a bit better than it does nowadays. This feeling is usually attributed to the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia – but what if Grandma really did cook differently? In fact, what if Grandma was cheating? I'm talking, of course, about lard.

The History & Modern Uses of Lard

Back in the day, lard¹ was the cooking fat of choice throughout wide swaths of America, Europe, Mexico, and other places in the world conducive to pig farming. Before every tiny town had a chain grocery store, before companies mass-produced any food you could want, people survived on what could grow around them, and lard was an essential component of many agricultural diets.

The same reason many people shun lard today is the reason it was so prized in the past – lard packs a lot of calories into a small package. Lard made into biscuits could help fuel a farmer's workday, on top of being delicious. Lard was an important and valuable part of a slaughtered pig and would never have been wasted. Now, we avoid it for health reasons that may or may not be valid, or regard it as an old-timey tradition that has fallen out of favor. Are we right to avoid it, or are we missing out? What is lard, anyways?

Lard is rendered pig's fat, a purified form used in baking, frying, and all manner of other cooking processes. Lard² is an excellent fat to use in frying because it has a high smoke point relative to other oils, meaning you lose less of it when you cook.

What is lard made of?

The simple answer? Lard is made of pig fat. More specifically, lard is pure rendered fat from various areas of a slaughtered pig, and different types of lard come from different areas of the pig. It utilizes skin, fat, and other leftover pieces of the pig that wouldn't be used for meat or other purposes. The most prized type of lard,³ called leaf lard, comes from the fat in areas around the kidneys and loin. Leaf lard is the fat of choice for baking, as it does not impart any remnant of the savory, umami flavor of pork into your pie crust.

Traditionally, lard was made from whatever fatty piece of pig was left over after the animal was butchered. Rendering the fat in this way extracted even more nourishment from the valuable animal, making use of “everything but the squeal."

Where Does Lard Come From?

Lard always comes from pig fat. If you have fat from a different animal, it's usually called tallow – for example, rendered cow fat is called beef tallow. Refining lard is easy enough that anyone with extra pig fat laying around can make it at home. All you need to do is dice the fat into cubes and heat them slowly over a long period of time, then strain the resultant liquid through cheesecloth and refrigerate it. The fats will solidify once removed from the heat and leave you with pure, clean lard that can last months in the refrigerator, and longer if you freeze it.

Don't want to deal with making your own lard? Like most food items, lard can be made cheaply in a factory, or carefully by experienced artisans, depending where you get it. If you find locally sourced lard at a farmer's market, for example, you'll know exactly where the pigs, the production, and the shipping came from. However, if you're buying it from a grocery store, you'll want to be more careful.

Hydrogenation

If you see lard for sale in a grocery store and it isn't refrigerated, that lard has probably been hydrogenated to help it keep longer. This chemical process creates a lot of trans fat, which is the kind of fat that our bodies have a hard time breaking down into a workable form, which leaves it clogging arteries and causing other negative health effects. Natural lard contains no trans fats, which makes it healthier in some ways than comparable hydrogenated vegetable oils. Be sure to check the packaging of your lard to see if it has been partially hydrogenated.

What is Lard Used For?

Lard⁴ is used in a wide variety of cooking methods: as a shortening in baking, to add moisture to proteins, in sausage, and as a frying oil, among others. Potatoes fried in lard, vegetables roasted in lard, chicken fried in lard, pie crusts shortened with lard, and biscuits made with lard are all great ways to utilize this traditional fat. If you wanted to maximize the irony of a given dish, replace Crisco with lard.

Lard Substitute (Crisco vs Lard)

Lard was the fat of choice for major portions of America for a long time, especially in Appalachia. Vegetable oil alternatives didn't work as well, were hard to produce, didn't store as well, or just didn't taste as good. However, when the makers of Crisco⁵ discovered a way to make the plentiful cottonseed oil into a usable cooking fat, it became a viable lard substitute.

At the same time, Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle raised concerns about the conditions at commercial meatpacking plants, including a vivid description of a worker falling into a vat of rendering lard. The extent to which the public avoided lard because of supposed contamination is not measurable, but the swap from lard to Crisco and other vegetable oils was unmistakable.

Is Lard Healthy?

Lard was portrayed as unhealthy, less digestible than vegetable oils, and more fattening, which still feels accurate today – after all, vegetables have much fewer calories than the average pig. However, when looking for a cooking fat, both animal and vegetable options are primarily made of, you guessed it, fat. The composition varies, with some having more saturated fat or more trans fat, but fat is calorically dense, so if you are looking to limit caloric intake, either type of fat will need to be used sparingly.

Lard, like most foods, can be enjoyed as part of a healthy diet, especially if your diet is balanced. Natural lard, which has not been hydrogenated for extra shelf life, has no trans fat, making it preferable to some other options which are packed with trans fats. Many cooking fats are moving away from trans fats, including Crisco, which no longer contains any. Lard contains a significant amount of saturated fat, but the proscription against saturated fats is slowly fading. Much like butter and other animal-based fats, lard can be used in small quantities without doing harm.

When used in moderation, lard can be a delicious part of many meals. Just be sure you're considering the actual nutritional content of what you cook – lard will add saturated fat and calories to your food very quickly, which is, of course, what makes it taste good. Lard isn't inherently worse than any cooking fat you might use in its place, and in the right recipes, it can be downright delicious – just like Grandma used to make.

Resources

1. Mas Manteca, More Lard. Southern Foodways. Accessed August 2020.
2. The Return of Lard. Escoffier. Accessed August 2020.
3. Why You'll Want to Cook and Bake with Leaf Lard. Martha Stewart. Accessed December 2022.
4. Why You Should Cook With Lard. Southern Kitchen. Accessed August 2020.
5. Who Killed Lard? NPR. Accessed August 2020.