Excellent Tutorial on Rendering Lard....

    Nice article Tas!  

AK1 wrote: Actually, I did do it outside and did use back fat.. It still stank.

Have you done it with leaf lard, which smells less?

Now here is a thing
In my quest for a sustainable lifestyle I render fat quite often. Nothing goes to waste.
In my fridge I have beef dripping, bacon fat, duck fat, lard(when I can get it) and hogget dripping. The bones and scraps that do not get rendered go into the stockpot.
I often wonder about why chefs don't use these tasty fats more, to me they are full of flavour. By comparison 'cooking oil' can give an unpleasant tasteless oiliness. I love EVO as much as the next person, but like these other fats, it is an ingredient with its own distinct flavour. I try to match up the flavour of the fat I am using with the ingredients of the dish when fat for frying or browning is required. I certainly would never consider to use dripping or lard for an Asian recipe, so why use oil in a recipe that has traditionally always been made with animal fat?
I think we have enough history to know now that it isn't dripping that causes heart attacks - it is lifestyle choices, so why not get back to using them? Of course of you are using kilo's of fat to cook your food everyday -that could be different, but we don't, and we eat proper sized portions. Neither of us are overweight nor is our son and he has been raised on animal fats and preservative free home produce, he has no allergies or health issues.
There is nothing like crispy roast potato from your garden - all hot and fluffy inside - that has been cooked in duck fat, but stop at just one or two small to medium, and not every day.

I can't get back to them, Ann, cuz I never left them. Schmaltz of various kinds has always been a staple in my house.

The evil rap given animal fats can be laid squarely at the feet of the "healthy eating" faddists. Somehow or other, fat, per se, became evil. And there's a knee-jerk reaction to it by those folks.

Suddenly, with real nutritionists getting involved in the battle, there's been a change for the better. Butter and eggs, for instance, are now back on the "good" list. Hopefully, that trend will continue.

   chicken fat is one under rated fat...yum!