I want to share with you a great, but little-known joy in my life. Hear me out: lard is lovely!
I have respect for pork-free lifestyles and plant-based happiness but for those of us that do partake in pig, allow me to educate and hope to entertain the idea of using more lard in your life too.
We raise pastured pigs here at Glade Road Growing. They live outdoors and are rotated around the farm to root and soak up sunshine throughout their lives here. At harvest, we have a variety of pork cuts (sausages, roasts, chops, bacon, etc) and also a large amount of pork fat, upwards of 12% of the total weight we get back from our butchers. In our strive to utilize all that comes back, we have discovered some pretty versatile uses for the pork fat, which otherwise would essentially be a waste product.
Lard is simply the fat rendered down from pigs. I’m not talking just any pigs and I’m not talking grocery store lard.
I’m talking happy, healthy hogs raised locally, living outside, soaking up lots of sunshine. A lot like the pigs we raise here.
I’m talking about lard made in small batches, is minimally processed with no added ingredients and is not artificially hydrogenated.
Lard was once revered, then suddenly and unfairly got a bad health wrap. But that is starting to change. Besides its nutritional and cooking qualities, it’s an oil that we can produce locally as opposed to olive oil, coconut oil, and palm oil which are typically imported from overseas. Oils and fats for foods and soaps are essential and have to come from somewhere! Why not from here? 
We sell rendered lard to use as a cooking oil and for years our friend Elisabeth Swindell of Antonina’s Garden has been making handmade soaps with lard from here as the main ingredient.
As a soap base, lard has many benefits.
Lard soaps are especially mild and moisturizing because the cellular make up of lard is very similar to our own skin. The soaps produce a light lather that doesn’t strip your skin’s natural oils like many other soaps on the market. Lard soap bars are especially long-lasting and do not turn to mush in your soap dish. Animal fats in soaps is not a new concept. Most commercial bar soap (Dial, Ivory, Dove, Jergens) are all made with tallow. Fancy designer soaps usually use coconut oil, palm oil, or olive oil.
Lard soaps clean well yet are mild enough for my face and my kids. Our soaps are scented with an assortment of essential oils (options include lavender, tea tree, patchouli, atlas cedar, spearmint, tangerine, rosemary, and unscented) and available in bulk without needless packaging. They’re available for sale at our farm stand during full service hours.
As a cooking oil, lard continues to be a rock star!
Lard, especially that raised from outdoor pigs, is high in vitamin D. It is has higher mono-unsaturated fat (ie “good fat”) than butter, coconut oil, and soybean oil. Lard has a high smoke point and so is especially good for frying. For pastries and pies, the lard crystal melts in a way that leaves air pockets for that revered flakiness.
The internet thinks so too! Here are some articles on the benefits of lard:
Huff Post, In praise of lard and how to render your own
Iron Chef Alton Brown, The virtues of pork fat
Supermarket Guru Phil Lempert, 5 reasons to choose lard as you cooking oil
Prevention, Should you be eating lard? [yes!]
Dr. Andrew Weil, Is lard healthy? [yes!]
I use lard for almost all my frying and am experimenting more and more in baking. I usually take a recipe and substitute the listed amount of butter with lard and get tasty results. My good friend eats both dairy-free and gluten-free and I have found that using lard in these such recipes works just fine. To prove it, here is a lard chocolate cake recipe, easily converted from a vegan recipe passed down by my grandmother. The recipe is dairy-free and egg-free and works well with either regular or 1:1 gluten-free flour:
Wowie Chocolate Cake using luscious local lard
Ingredients:
1.5 cups flour (or 1:1 gluten-free flour)
1 cup sugar (or honey)
1 tsp baking soda
3 TBS cocoa or cacao powder
1 TBS vanilla extract
1 TBS vinegar
1 cup warm water
5-6 TBS melted lard (less for a fluffier cake, more for a fudgier cake)
1. Preheat oven to 350 deg F.
2. Mix dry ingredients.
3. Make a well and add wet ingredients.
4. Mix well. If batter is too thick, add more water 1 TBS at a time.
[Optional: top cake with shredded coconut or chopped nuts before baking]
5. Pour into 8″ or 9″ cake pan.
6. Bake 25-30 minutes.
[Optional: Dust top with more cocoa]
I don’t usually throw around the “S” word [sustainable], but I am thrilled to be using more of the whole of the animals that we raise. Maybe you and your family will be willing to give our lard a try too.
How we render lard:
While the fatback is semi-frozen, grate or cube it into smaller pieces, as small as you can.
Put in a slow cooler on the “Keep warm” setting with the lid slightly cracked to let the water evaporate off.
Check every 30 minutes or so to stir and keep cracklings from sticking to the bottom.
As soon as the fat has melted (this should only take about 2-4 hours), carefully ladle it off and pour through a cheese cloth into a mason jar.
You can continue to cook the cracklings down, salt them and add them to salads or just have them as a snack