Mmmmm ... Lard
Posted by Danielle Bean in Health on Thursday, June 11, 2009 10:30 AM
Do you cook with LARD? Or do you feel like you gained a few pounds just by reading that word in print?
Either way, you might find these thoughts about lard by food writer Regina Schrambling an eye-opening bit of reading.
Over at least the last 15 years, lard’s repeatedly been given a clean bill of health, and good cooks regularly point out how superior this totally natural fat is for frying and pastries. But that hasn’t been enough to keep Americans from recoiling ...
Dan’s grandmother, good ole’ Grammy Bean who lived to the ripe old age of 97, used to tout the benefits of lard whenever we talked cooking.
“You will never make a pie crust or biscuits like mine, ” she used to taunt me, “using that shortening stuff!”
And yet I never tried cooking with lard. It just seemed ... so ... very ... unhealthy. Besides, my favorite pie crust recipe calls for shortening and it comes out pretty okay, even if I do say so myself.
But now we all know the evils of trans fats found in shortening.
Perhaps I’ve grown up enough to branch out a bit. After all, The Fannie Farmer Baking Book, from whence my pie crust recipe comes, does offer some old-time recipes that use lard instead of shortening.
But I’m not sure I can find “good” lard anywhere around here. From what I’ve read, the kind of lard you find in the supermarket has been processed so much it’s the equivalent of shortening anyway. You need to get “good” unprocessed lard at a butcher, the experts say, or render it yourself. Doing it myself might be fun to try sometime, but it sounds a little too “Ma Ingalls” for even me to seriously consider doing on a regular basis.
Are you afraid of lard? Or do you cook with it? And of so, where you buy yours?
Print Blog
Email a FriendPost a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Faith And Family Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
