Conference turris::cooks

    Curt --
    
    The dictionary definition is "rendered fat of hogs".  Sounds yummy,
    huh?
    
    Lard as an ingredient can be interpreted in a couple of ways:
    
    1) Solid shortening, like Crisco OR
    2) Solid animal-fat, like solidified bacon or beef grease.
    
    Crisco is made from vegetable sources, not animal, so it breaks
    down differently that animal fats.  True lard is from pigs, so if
    you want to use the real McCoy, use solidified bacon grease.  (Every
    time I brown bacon or pork sausage, I pour the grease in a dishwashered
    dog food can (because you can buy plastic lids to fit these) and
    let it cool down before I keep it in the back of the fridge.  It
    makes a wonderful flavored addition to "mush" (warm corn meal) or
    for greasing the grill for French Toast or to stir fry leftover
    veggies.)           

    Lard is pork fat.  It was a pretty common ingredient in old-time-y
    recipes for things like pie crust.  I don't imagine lard is very
    good for you' probably worse than butter.  But then, I don't think
    you would be eating all that much of it at one time anyhow.
    
    You can buy packaged lard in the grocery store - look next to the
    (real) butter - it may be labelled as "manteca".  I wouldn't use
    rendered bacon grease in something like a pie crust; too much
    extraneous flavor that might overwhelm your dish.
    
    Normally I would substitute Crisco for lard.  I think that lard
    is authentic in some of the Mexican dishes you are talking about,
    so you may get a slightly different flavor if you use vegatble
    shortening instead (or butter instead, for that matter).  When you
    heat up lard, it has a definitely "meaty" flavor (although nothing
    like bacon grease!).   Lard is fairly solid stuff; you won't get
    the same effect if you try to use beef fat (which is sort of tough)
    or chicken fat (too soft) or oil instead, unless you are going to
    melt it anyhow.

    In some of our local supermarkets I've seen lard sold near the sandwich
    meats rather than next to the butter. It does come in butter-sized
    boxes, though, which threw me - I was looking for something in cans,
    like Crisco. 
    
    Re bacon grease: I fondly recall the container of "dripping" in the
    fridge of my childhood, and the fun of pouring the hot grease onto the
    congealed stuff and watching it set. But recently I read that bacon
    grease contains a concentrated amount of the carcinogens in bacon (the
    sodium-whatever-it-is used as preservatives, mostly). The
    recommendation was *not* to use bacon grease.
    
    Now, I don't know how bacon grease compares on the cancer-causing
    scale with, say, tap water, or lawnmower exhaust, or shower-curtain
    mildew, but if you're the better-safe-than-sorry type, buy lard.
    
    -b

If it makes you feel any better, lard is (or at least was) the primary 
ingredient in margarine. Lard, some flavoring chemicals and a little 
yellow food coloring.  In some places, the dairy farmers got laws passed 
that required the food coloring to be packaged separately, and you had 
to mix it in by hand.

Some margarines are now made from vegetable fat, in which case it's 
essentially Crisco, flavoring chemicals and food coloring, but the 
principal applies.

My grandmother was a stickler for using butter, and would always ask if 
something were made with butter or LARD (loud voice here,) refusing to 
acknowlege the existance of margarine. (Until someone replied, "Well, if 
you can't tell by the taste, it doesn't matter, does it?")

					>>>==>PStJTT

Lard is the most important ingredient in a good pie crust - use 1/2 lard and
1/2 margarine or butter and your crust will be a nice one....use all lard
and your pie crust will be a perfect, flakey wonder!

As previously mentioned, lard IS rendered pig fat....not the best thing for
a low cholesterol diet...sigh

    Until a few years ago, we used to raise a pair of pigs each summer
    and do our own slaughtering and butchering in November.  Betty would
    render the lard for later baking.  That was when she made 16 loaves
    of bread each week.  Because we also had a family cow for milk,
    we had more than an abundance of butter as well.  (For a while each
    summer the cow would produce five to six gallons each day of high
    butterfat milk.  Betty would skim the milk, preserve the butter,
    and feed the skim milk to the pigs.)
    
    At least in this house lard was *THE* preferred fat for baking.
    Even today, I will sometimes buy lard for baking bread.

	 Diana Kennedy  goes  on  at  length about lard in _The Cuisines of
    Mexico_.  She sez that the 'lard' you get in the stores is processed to
    the  point  of  being  nearly  indistinguishable from hydrogenated fats
    (Crisco)  and  has  little  flavor  left.  Surely enough, Julia Child's
    recipe  for  _pate_  (pie crust) calls for shortening rather than lard,
    suggesting that they have become interchangeable.

	 I suspect  bacon  fat  would  have  too  much  of the bacon flavor
    residue  for use in pastry.  I think nitrites are highly water soluble,
    so  they  would  tend to stay in the aqueous fraction of the bacon (the
    part we eat) so it's probably safe to eat the fat (but not the bacon!)

	 BTW, when  I  worked  in  a nutrition lab (c.  1973), the word was
    that nitrites were truly dangerous.  Sodium and potassium nitrates (the
    precursors)  are  used in most processed meats to make them pink rather
    than grey.  Hot dogs would look like bratwurst without them.  They also
    kill  botulinus,  so  buying  products  that  don't contain them is not
    neccessarily  the  answer  (there are, thankfully, many chemicals which
    will  do  the  same  thing,  including  citric  and ascorbic acids.) My
    solution  is  to  buy  as few processed meats as possible, particularly
    lunchmeats (excepting turkey and roast beef.)

	 JJRitz

    I don't allow myself lard too often because it is pork fat but
    the best french fries in the world are those cooked in lard!
    

    re  Note 1253.7   "... bacon  fat ...... for use in pastry ..."
    
    Home-made lard had no added chemicals, neither the tasty curing 
    materials added to bacon nor the anti-oxidation agents often 
    added to fatty commercial products.
    
    p.s.  Betty recommends poultry fat for pie crust.