Barbecue (alt.food.barbecue) Discuss barbecue and grilling--southern style "low and slow" smoking of ribs, shoulders and briskets, as well as direct heat grilling of everything from burgers to salmon to vegetables.

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Default In praise of lard...

Amen and Amen. Have said for years all this artificial stuff is not good
for you, when you put a sick of Butter and a stick of margarine on the same
plate and the butter melts but the other stays in it's shape, how can that
be good for you.
"piedmont" > wrote in message
...
> Great article about lard,
> michael (piedmont)
>
> August 12, 2005
> High on the Hog
> By CORBY KUMMER
> Boston
>
> WHEN the New York City health department asked restaurants to stop serving
> food containing trans fats this week, it aroused anxiety in some diners
> but joyful anticipation in me. The stage might be set at last for the
> comeback of the great misunderstood fat: lard.
>
> Every baker knows that despite lard's heavy reputation (it is pig fat,
> after all), nothing makes a flakier or better-tasting pie crust. Lard also
> makes the lightest and tastiest fried chicken: buttermilk, secret spices
> and ancient cast-iron skillets are all well and good, but the key to fried
> chicken greatness is lard.
>
> Dainty eaters who pay dearly for prosciutto but leave the ivory-colored
> ribbon of fat on the plate infuriate Italians, who know that's where the
> flavor and succulence are. Italian food lovers now live for the recently
> revived lardo - salt-and-pepper-cured fatback, heaven on bread.
>
> In the United States though, lard has long been demonized. Whenever I
> enter a bakery (and I enter every one I find), I ask if anything is made
> with lard. Even in Mexican and Latin American bakeries with
> Spanish-spoken-only signs, where the bakers surely know that in their
> native countries the most savory empanadas and the airiest tamales rely on
> lard, my hopes are usually dashed.
>
> I recently got lucky at the wonderfully antiquated LeJeune's Bakery in
> Jeanerette, La. LeJeune's is famous for its French bread, which in
> Louisiana means a puffy white loaf particularly suited to muffalettas -
> the Louisiana version of the hero sandwich whose bread is soaked with
> olive salad and layered with provolone and meats like salami and ham. I
> wasn't surprised to hear the secret of LeJeune's exceptional flavor and
> soft but pliant crumb, but I was delighted: lard. The baker proudly led me
> to a tub of golden lard he had bought from the farm down the road. I was
> looking at a tub of joy.
>
> But when I went deeper into Cajun country, to bakeries down the highway
> from LeJeune's, or asked at restaurants where cooks once swore by lard for
> the lightest biscuits and fried catfish, I was met with the same
> misbegotten pride: "We only use vegetable fat, it's so much healthier."
>
> Vegetable shortening, of course, tastes like greasy nothing. And there is
> ample evidence, as the city health department knows, that it is anything
> but good for you. Vegetable shortening (vegetable oil that is partially
> hydrogenated to make it solid - the "trans" in "trans fat") did seem like
> a miracle in the early days of industrialized food. Indeed, early in my
> mother's marriage when she spent a month making a pie a day to perfect her
> crust-making skills, she used the fat she grew up on: Crisco, developed by
> industry to mimic the virtues of lard but relieve housewives of the burden
> of rendering their own fat. It was useful not just to kosher-keeping cooks
> like my mother but to city dwellers, who lived far from a reliable source
> of lard (any Italian cook will still tell you that the only trustworthy
> lard comes from a pig you know). Crisco could be used solid for baking, or
> melted for frying. It didn't need refrigeration, and it was inexpensive.
>
> Then came the damning conclusions of the first long-range studies of the
> national postwar epidemic of heart disease, and the countrywide fear of
> saturated fats. Butter, cream and egg yolks were the first to go, to the
> heartbreak of cooks just learning the glories of French cuisine, and lard
> soon followed. Besides, lard seemed old-fashioned - redolent of poverty
> and its companion cuisines.
>
> Now trans fats are considered the devil, and vegetable shortening is worse
> than butter could ever dream of being. After prodding by nutrition
> advocates, the Food and Drug Administration has taken the stand that there
> is no healthy level of trans fat in the diet, and as of January will
> require manufacturers to state the presence of trans fats on every food
> label. Now comes the call from Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, New York's health
> commissioner, for restaurants to "voluntarily make an oil change and
> remove artificial trans fat from their kitchens." What are beleaguered
> manufacturers and cooks to do? The loss of trans fats makes things tough.
> It makes pastry tough too.
>
> I have a suggestion for those Old World cooks who are wrestling with New
> World advice: take another look at the fat profile of lard. It has half
> the level of saturated fat of palm kernel oil (about 80 percent saturated
> fat) or coconut oil (about 85 percent) and its approximately 40 percent
> saturated fat is lower than butter's nearly 60 percent. Today's miracle,
> olive oil, is much lower in saturated fat, as everyone knows, but it does
> have some: about 13 percent. As for monounsaturated fat, the current
> savior, olive oil contains a saintly 74 percent, yes. But scorned lard
> contains a very respectable 45 percent monounsaturated fat - double
> butter's paltry 23 or so percent.
>
> As with all dietary advice, the fat of the day will change. But eternal
> truths will remain: food is always best with little or no processing and
> eaten as close as possible to where it is grown. This goes for lard, too.
> The artisan pig farmers whose fortunes have been revived by a new market
> for pork with real flavor should look into selling lard because the
> supermarket kind is processed and dismal. And Dr. Frieden's request may
> produce a burgeoning metropolitan market.
>
> The health department is suggesting alternative oils including olive oil
> and neutral oils like peanut, sunflower and cottonseed. Olive oil is a
> true gift of nature, of course, and good for anything on a grill or from
> the garden. But when it comes to cherry pie or fried chicken or French
> fries, excessive reliance on these oils has the potential to clear both
> arteries and restaurants. Chefs and short-order cooks can do everyone a
> favor - even the guardians of the public health - by reaching for the fat
> that everyone knows tastes the best: lard.
>
> Corby Kummer is a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.



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Default In praise of lard...

"Granby" > wrote:
> Amen and Amen. Have said for years all this artificial stuff is not good
> for you, when you put a sick of Butter and a stick of margarine on the
> same plate and the butter melts but the other stays in it's shape, how
> can that be good for you.
> "piedmont" > wrote in message
> [ . . . ]


Apparently, the best pig lard is from Bob & Ginger's in GA. Big Jim can
tell ya more.

Sheep suet (surrounds the kidneys) for the Haggis.

For Fish & Chips, I quote Graeme Walker: "The only advice I can pass on is
this. Fry everything in beef dripping [Nick note: fat]. "Just dripping?
Only dripping!" Beef dripping is everything, in terms of both chemistry and
gastronomy. Only animal fat burns hot enough to seal the batter instantly
into a light crisp coat. Inside, the fish doesn't fry - it steams itself in
its own hermetic juiciness."

Someone highly recommended horse tallow for something, but I don't remember
who or for what.

I like pan frying in bacon fat or in EVOO and butter, about 2:1.

--
Nick, KI6VAV. Support severely wounded and disabled Veterans and their
families: https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/ Thank a Veteran!
Support Our Troops: http://anymarine.com/ You are not forgotten.
Thanks ! ! ~Semper Fi~ USMC 1365061
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Default In praise of lard...


On 11-Jul-2009, Nick Cramer > wrote:

> "Granby" > wrote:
> > Amen and Amen.
> > "piedmont" > wrote in message
> > [ . . . ]

>
> Apparently, the best pig lard is from Bob & Ginger's in GA. Big Jim can
> tell ya more.


Bob and Ginger produce raw pure hog lard as a natural result of hog
butchering. Their business is high end retail pork production on a
limited scale. Their lard is pure filtered (only) pork fat. It's as good as
it gets.

.. . .

>
> I like pan frying in bacon fat or in EVOO and butter, about 2:1.
>
> --
> Nick,


I too favor bacon fat when I have enough or EVOO and butter.
If it's going to kill me, it better hurry up because I'm already past 72.

--
Brick (Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess.
They always run out of other people's money.
Magaret Thatcher, 5 Feb 1976)
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