Lard

[TanksHill]

gd I'm confused....

When I originally rendered I did use water in the crock pot. Are you saying to use more water to less fat? When skimming some water goes in the jar??? Then how does the second separation happen?

I still have a big chunk of mine in the freezer. I would love to try again. Do you have any kind of a link for your method?

Thanks, gina

 

[ORChick]

gd's description sounds very good, and I have no doubt that the result is excellent. However, speaking as one who has not butchered a hog, and has never rendered more than 5 lbs of fat at a time, using a crockpot set on low, but without water, also works very well. I haven't used a thermometer while doing this, so don't know exactly what temperature things got to, but can state that the end result was very white, and not at all "piggy" in either smell or taste. I prefer this method just because I end up with only one pot to wash, and I don't have to do a secondary straining/filtering/separation of fat and liquid. I put the fat through a meat grinder, to get the pieces very small, and ladle the resulting fat off into jars (through a sieve) as it renders; at the end the cracklings fry in the remaining fat, and this fat is put in its own jar, and not mixed with the white lard, as it is rather stronger in both flavor and color.
I can well imagine though that, when rendering in quantity, using a large kettle with water to keep the temperature even would be the superior choice.