Our Adventures Rendering Lard

When we ordered our half hog last winter, the final question on the order form asked us to circle the, what you might call, leftover parts that we wanted to keep. Things like liver and heart, which we still have no idea how to use, and lard, which we knew would be very useful. Our share of the hog included 11 pounds of lard, and just recently we decided to do something about it.

That's half of the lard, as it arrived from the locker. It doesn't come in the most attractive package. But then again, we're talking about 5 pounds of frozen ground pork fat, which is kinda hard to dress up. In this state, lard can't really be used for much. It has to be rendered, or cooked down, to get a product that can go into pastries or cooking. We began by opening the package and chopping the frozen chunk into smaller pieces so they'd melt quicker.

We placed the pieces into our stock pot, and set it on the stove on a low heat setting.  It is important to melt the fat slowly without scalding it, otherwise the lard will have a yellowish-brown color and will smell rather "piggy."

After a few hours, the fat had completely melted.  There are lots of little solid bits suspended in the melted fat.  These are commonly referred to as "cracklins," which are basically connective tissue that was in the pig's fat. You can keep these after you're done rendering lard, and fry them up to eat. We tried that with a small portion of our cracklins but didn't really enjoy them enough to do the rest. It must be an acquired taste...

To get the lard which we did want to keep, we needed to filter out the cracklins.  We used two colanders stacked together with a layer of cheesecloth between them.  The cheesecloth allowed us get rid of even the smallest solid bits and using two colanders helped keep the colanders from getting clogged up.

The five pounds of lard that we started with ended up rendering down to about 1 1/2 quarts, which we divided up into two quart-size canning jars. Right out of the stockpot, it was a slightly yellow liquid, which made it easy to pour. Unfortunately, it didn't look terribly appealing straight away. Thankfully that went away as it cooled, and we were left with...

Snow-white, fluffy lard. It has solidified somewhat from its earlier liquid state, but it's still recommended that you store it in the freezer or the fridge so it's easier to scoop and measure it. This is the state in which you can use it in baking or cooking, typically in a place where a recipe would call for shortening.

Which, of course, we just had to try! We had over a quart of brand new lard, and we wanted to make a pie crust with it. Now, as a warning, this lard does retain a little bit of its pork flavor, so you'd probably want to stick to savory pies. Leaf lard, the fat from around the hog's organs, is supposed to be virtually flavorless, so you could use it for a dessert pie, though we haven't gotten around to that just yet.

We followed a recipe from one of our cookbooks (The Good Cook) for a lard-based pie crust. Stacia rolled out a perfect-sized crust, which we then prebaked. This one was going to be used for a quiche, so we filled it with a mixture of scrambled eggs, bacon from the same hog, and a lot of spinach from our garden.

It was so beautiful when it came out of the oven! Thankfully it was just as delicious as it looked. The pastry crust came out light and incredibly flaky, with maybe just a hint of savory pork flavor. A suggestion we found that we definitely want to try next time is to make the crust with half lard and half butter. This yields a best-of-both-worlds result, with the amazing flakiness of the lard, but with the added flavor of butter. That's for next time; for this time we were satisfied enjoying our first of many homemade quiches!

Rendering lard probably isn't for everybody, but it's not really that hard to do. Of course, it starts with having a source of unrendered fat, which you pretty much only end up with if you buy a half hog. But the cooking process was relatively painless, although it did take several hours. There did end up being a little bit of a pork-y aroma in the kitchen, but it wasn't too potent. And we can take a little bit of that if it means we get to eat fantastic quiches and pies! We're certainly glad we checked "yes" on the lard part of our hog order form.

We'd like to thank our farmer for all of the help we got from this great tutorial on rendering lard!

This post has been shared with Simple Lives Thursday.

Eating our Pig - Seared Pork Chops

You may recall our excitement when we purchased a half hog from a local producer, Crooked Gap Farm, back in January. We talked all about what cuts we were getting, what a great deal it was, and how important it is to us to be able to support a small farmer. Then we haven't mentioned it in over three months. Well, don't worry, we've been eating from our half hog, just not necessarily writing about it. That can end today as we document what turned out to be a delicious and mostly local meal.

To start, we thawed out a package of bone-in Iowa Chops. These are a really nice cut, but it sometimes feels like we're stuck in a rut when it comes to pork chops. For some reason we always default to a bare-bones salt and pepper seasoned chop with a plain pan gravy. With nice pork, this can be tasty, but we figured we ought to know enough about cooking to be able to jazz it up a bit.

With that in mind, we headed out to the garden to see if anything was close to ripe yet. In our lettuce/spinach/radishes box, we were met with this kind of growth.

Those guys in the middle are the radishes we first planted on March 10th. Some of them are almost there, but they're just not quite to size to pick. But, did you know you can eat radish greens, too? That meant we got to have...

Our FIRST HARVEST of the year!!!

With a pair of scissors,we snipped off a leaf or two from each of the biggest and healthiest looking plants. As you can see, this didn't exactly amount to much - 1 ounce altogether. That's fine, since these were always intended to be a garnish or a side, and not a main part of the meal. But keep in mind if you do try radish or any other kind of green that they do cook down a lot, so this one ounce got pretty small by time we ate.

Also, if you have a batch of radishes with their tops, you might feel the leaves and wonder how on earth anyone could eat them. They're very prickly, which would probably be painful to eat raw. Rest assured, once they're cooked, those little spines are no longer discernible, and the greens feel just like spinach or kale.

So we had a vision of pork chops with a small batch of radish greens on top. From there, we just brainstormed with what was available, and what we've enjoyed in the past to make our "recipe." We ended up making pan-seared rosemary pork chops with sauteed radish greens and a sherry demi glace on a garlic cauliflower puree. If we ever open a restaurant, we'll certainly need to shorten that name! But though it sounds complicated, each piece is very simple and better yet, adaptable. Once you've got a few basic methods down, you won't even need a formal recipe. Let's get started!

First we chopped up about a half head of cauliflower. It's a little early yet for these to be in season in Iowa (except maybe with the aid of greenhouses?), so it's from California. We also smashed a few garlic cloves with the side of a knife, which is always fun. And since we don't have any homemade stock at the moment, we used some good boxed stuff. We threw the pieces into a pot, poured in just enough of a stock and water mix to cover them, and simmered.

Like so (but covered), for about 10 minutes or until the cauliflower pieces felt soft when poked with a fork.

Meanwhile, we got the pork out of the fridge, and sprinkled it with salt, pepper, and a lot of dry rosemary. Sadly, our rosemary plant from last year didn't survive a winter of neglect indoors, otherwise we might have had fresh rosemary available. We'll have to hope we're more responsible this year.

 It's actually good to let meat get to room temperature before you cook it, so we kept these guys on the counter for a bit while we got the cauliflower up to a boil. Aren't they beautiful chops?

Next it was time for the main action of the meal - the searing. The concept behind searing is to cook the outsides of the meat at a pretty darn high temperature to seal the juices in, then finish the cooking process either in the oven, or in this case, on the cooktop. You can brown cuts of meat okay in a regular nonstick pan, but for a real sear, we love our All-Clad. Basically, you get your pan plenty hot and throw in some sort of fat/oil - in this case a tablespoon-sized pat of butter per side. When you put the chops in, you should hear a nice sizzle.

The chops will probably stick where they are initially, which might freak you out a bit if you've never used a "non-nonstick" pan before. Don't worry, once each side sears properly, it should release and allow you to flip it. Sometimes it will need a little nudge, but it shouldn't end up being stuck too badly. If memory serves, this took about 3-4 minutes on a side.

By this time the cauliflower was nice and soft, so we pureed it in the blender. We didn't use all of the stock from the pot - just poured in enough to get the right consistency, little by little. It didn't take much blending to get the cauliflower very smooth.

Keep in mind that hot liquids like to expand/splatter when you blend them, so be sure to hold down the top of the blender as you run it. We like to throw a towel over the lid, and hold down on that, so any escaping liquid gets the towel and not your hands (ouch!).

So, a sprinkle of salt and the cauliflower puree was all set; the chops had now been seared on both sides, but the insides were probably still a touch rare. We pulled them out of the pan and deglazed it with a little bit of sherry wine (maybe a quarter cup - it was whatever we had left in the bottle). Here it's nice to grab a whisk and mix in any of the little tasty browned bits from the searing process to get them into the sauce. We had some red onion handy so we minced that and added it, plus enough stock to create a nice amount of sauce.

With that made and mixed up, we put the chops back in and simmered them a bit longer.

Again, with the lid on, when we werent't taking pictures. This took about another 5 minutes maybe.

Then it was time for our garden contribution - the radish greens! These are so easy. Heat some olive oil in a pan, throw in your greens (we tore them a bit to get better sized pieces), and stir them around. But keep an eye on them! It will literally take less than a minute or so to get them cooked down, and then you need to get them out of the pan to keep them from shrinking down to nothing.

These looked about ready. The last step was to add a little bit of a cornstarch slurry (corn starch plus a bit of cold water) to our pan sauce to thicken it up. You can use roux (flour and butter) if you have it, to feel more chef-y, but either method yields the same result. Our sauce was just a touch too thin, so a very small amount was needed to keep it from running everywhere.

Then it was time to plate! We put a good-sized dollop of the cauliflower puree in the center of the plate, placed a pork chop on top, and arranged the greens on the chop. We tried to be a little artsy, drizzling the sauce around the edge of the plate rather than on top, but it all gets mixed up when you eat anyway.

By the end of the process (forgiving the amateur photographer), it looked pretty fancy!

And it tasted amazing! It helps when you start with great ingredients, like woodland pastured pork, and home grown garden greens, but what a tasty dinner! We had just enough garlic to kick up the cauliflower puree, the rosemary flavor had seared into the perfectly cooked pork chop, and the radish greens added a touch of earthiness and bite. The demi glace was phenomenal; adding a little sherry to a plain pan gravy sure added a depth of flavor we don't always see in our sauces. Paired with a tasty Four Vines Naked Chardonnay, it made one delicious meal.

And that's part of the fun with cooking with fresh ingredients. We had no idea what we were going to do with our chops to liven them up, so we played with what we had. A puree under a cut of meat is a bit of a modern cooking cliche, but hey, it works. We've done it with sweet potatoes or turnips before, under anything from salmon to chicken. Once you know how to sear a piece of meat and either finish it in the sauce or in the oven, you can make pretty much anything. If it's in season, fresh, or looks great, why not give it a try and see if you like the result. It might not always work out, but when it does, it can be a hit right out of the park!

Half Hog = Full Freezer

You might recall that back in November we stopped by the Winter Farmers Market and started the process of ordering a half hog from Crooked Gap Farm. We figured out how we wanted it cut up, and then last week we were notified that our hog was ready for processing. The farmer took it in to a nearby meat locker, and less than a week later it was ready to be picked up. This morning was the exciting excursion to go see what we'd gotten.

We woke up early on a snowy morning, and drove down to the sleepy hamlet of Milo, Iowa (population 839). It's a quaint little town, just about an hour south of Des Moines.

At the end of Main Street is the Milo Locker, where our hog (and one of the farmers who raised it) were waiting for us. The Milo Locker is a family owned business that processes everything from beef and hogs to deer and lamb. For a small business, they sure do keep busy. The guys in the store commented that they've processed 3,000 deer this season! Pretty impressive for a little place like this:

Our particular half hog had weighed in at a hanging weight of 95 lbs, meaning the entire "meat section" of the animal, including all the bones. This weight is the basis for the customer's fee to the farmer. For example, Crooked Gap charged $2.50 per pound of hanging weight. There's also a smaller fee to the locker for the cutting, curing and packaging of the meat. Ours was around $65 for the half hog.

For that cost, they break down the hog into tidy little paper packages that look like this:

Our half hog pretty much filled two full-size chest coolers to capacity. So, what do you get in two coolers worth of pork? Well, with our choices of cuts, we received:

14.2 lb of shoulder roasts
9.7 lb of pork chops
7.9 lb of sausage patties

7.3 lb of deli-sliced ham
7.3 lb of ground pork
6.2 lb of bacon
4.4 lb of ham steaks
4.3 lb of cured ham hocks
2.5 lb of spareribs
2.2 lb of pork liver
1 lb of jowls
and 11 lb of lard

That's a lot of pork, but it fit neatly into our 5 cubic foot deep freezer without any trouble. It's also going to keep our stomachs full of bacon, pork chops, and carnitas for some time to come, which is exciting to think about. You probably won't see us at the grocery store meat counter any time soon!

This was our first time ordering a half of any kind of meat (hog, beef or otherwise) and it's gone really well. Crooked Gap was great to work with, thoroughly explaining the process and answering any questions we had along the way. The folks at Milo were cheerful and friendly, and helped load up our pork without us even asking. Each package is clearly labeled, and in the weight/size increments we asked for when we ordered. Plus it's from a great local farm, where "pigs get to be pigs." Going half-hog is definitely an option to think about if you've got the freezer space and want to know just where your meat came from. We're likely to do it again (whenever we finish all this pork!).

Going Whole Hog

Believe it or not, there are a few things that you simply can't grow/raise on a half-acre urban farm. We're willing to push the limits on some unconventional backyard additions, but neither the city of Des Moines nor our consciences would allow us to try to keep pigs, for example. When that happens, you do the next best thing - find a small (non-urban) farm that you know and trust, and buy your beef, pork, etc there. That's what we do during the farmers market season, albeit in a piecemeal manner. Need pork chops? Buy a pack or two. Short on chicken breasts? Pick up a few pounds. But winter is coming, and with it, a long cold stretch with no markets.

Which brings us to the exciting electronic arrival that came while we were out of town for the holidays. Confirmation and instructions for our purchase of half a hog! Maybe we neglected to tell you all, but when we went To Market, To Market a few weeks back, one of the things we did was Buy A Fat Pig! To be more specific, we put down a deposit on a half hog from Crooked Gap Farm. Crooked Gap is a small farm not far from Des Moines that is owned by a couple relatively new to the farming trade, and who we could have visited this summer if our schedules had worked out better. They raise heritage breeds of pork, much unlike the bland mass-produced kind found in stores, and have a strong focus on the welfare and happiness of the animals. A perfect match for us! Oh, and we've purchased individual cuts of their pork at the farmers market this summer, and it's delicious, so that helps too.

Now if you're a city slicker like Greg, you might hear "half hog" and imagine an entire pig sliced in half (no joke, that's kind of what I thought -G). Not to worry, all it means is that the farmer takes the pig to the meat locker to be processed normally, and all of the meat from one half of the pig is ours. It will come in neatly wrapped white paper packages, which hopefully will fit into our chest freezer without overflowing.

So, why buy a half hog in the first place? If we wanted to stock up, we could have tried to buy a bunch of packages of individual cuts to last us through the winter. But that's not really sustainable, and it's not great for the farmer. Sure, everyone loves pork chops, but the farmer isn't raising chops; he's raising pigs. So if everyone just buys chops, there's a lot of perfectly good meat that isn't being sold and could be going to waste. Think about it next time you're at the meat counter and see those rows and rows of nice pink pork chops. Where's the rest of all those pigs? Whole (or half) hog is win-win. The farmer sells an entire hog, and in return we get a pretty favorable price compared to just buying hundreds of pork chops. Which brings us to the exciting arrival this week.

Crooked Gap breaks down the hog by section, then lets us choose how each section is processed and cut. For example, in the loin area, we can get the entire loin, or it can be cut into roasts, chops, or tenderloins. Same for all the other parts of the pig: shoulder, ham, ribs, and side (meaning bacon!). Most of these cuts we know pretty well, but some are things we've never tried. Then there's all the parts we'll call "less desirable." Buy purchasing the hog as a half, we can receive pieces like hocks, heart, liver, jowls and lard. What on earth do you do with a pork heart, or liver? We don't know, but it sounds like it might be worth exploring. This half hog could be a big crash course in many new ways of cooking. We'll try to be like the proverbial Indians using every part of the buffalo, and document our adventures here.

If any of that offal stuff (hahaha) bothers you, you can still buy a half hog and respectfully decline the organs. You'd still be doing a service to the farmer by buying some of the less popular cuts and you'll expose yourself to some delicious new flavors; shoulder roast carnitas anyone? Who knows what the next pork-y discovery will be? The farmer says jowls taste like bacon, and it's hard not to be excited to try that. We may never be able to raise a hog in our backyard, but this comes pretty close!