Unbeknownst to me, there was already some kind of lard revolution afoot before I started rendering my opinions on it. (Sorry.)
Last August in the New York Times, Corby Kummer noted that NYC health officials have advised restaurants to stop cooking with trans fats. Great, says Kummer: bring back lard.
> 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.
Then Pete Wells, writing in the December Food & Wine, called lard “the new health food” and starting cooking everything in it:
> From my experience with bacon grease and some memorably fatty Flying Pigs Farm loin roasts, I had the idea that anything fried in lard would take on a sweet, rich, porky essence. Yet my friends and I agreed that our food bore no trace of pig. The chicken tasted exactly like chicken and the scrod just like scrod (whatever scrod is; I’ve never been sure). We might have wondered why I had bothered if we hadn’t been completely entranced by something else: the texture.
The texture is due to lard’s fatty acid profile–its mix of saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fats. All lard is good in this respect, but the best lard for frying, the mildest but most conducive to crispy goodness, comes from leaf fat, the soft fat surrounding the pig’s kidneys.
My upcoming winter cooking season is looking lardier than ever. Our Broadway farmers market finished a couple of weeks ago, so we’ve been going to the University market on Saturdays. I asked the woman at Skagit River Ranch if she had leaf fat, and she brought me some the following week, two and a half pounds for about $6. It’s even organic.
Here’s what I’m thinking about. Lard piecrust, of course. Empanadas. Sweet potato fries, an Iris favorite. Maybe some *rillons de porc,* crunchy pork confit as served at Le Pichet; the recipe is in the new book Charcuterie, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.
Of course, not everyone is jumping on the lardwagon. Here’s nutritionist Ed Blonz:
> For example, if given a choice I would prefer using tortillas made with lard than ones made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. If, however, ones were available that were made from (un-hydrogenated) vegetable oil, I would choose those above the others.
I have just the cookie to bring to Ed’s holiday party.
I would rather see Crisco used than lard, but olive oil or another natural vegetable oil over both. There are many hundreds of thousands of people worldwide other than Jews who do NOT eat pork products, because of the fact that pigs are scavenger animals, as opposed to other, cleaner animals such as cows. Many of us would not eat anything cooked in lard, and we are not vegetarian, or worried about Kosher concerns.
A wild pig may indeed be scavenger, but the pig raise for the table is not. As for lard, it is far healthier than butter. More so, there is substantial research that says not only are saturated fats GOOD for you but artifical fats like Crisco are in fact what is causing our national epidemics of heart disease, cancer et cetera. Do a search for “Dr. Mary Enig” and educate yourself. I make my own pork lard, eat it as I want along with butter, coconut oil, palm oil, full fat milk and eggs from range chickens. I’m 55 and my cholesterol count is 136.