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06-22-2009, 09:58 PM
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#1
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Senior Member
Trailer: Casita
Posts: 451
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I was born and raised in East Los Angeles.
We were sorta poor.
We ate cheap.
But we ate with gusto.
Lard was there for every meal. Not even Crisco. I mean REX Lard from the rendering plant in Vernon.
Mochaca Beef
Pork Carnitas
Even lard fried chitlins and potatoes
Does anyone ever cook with rendered lard anymore?
I dont 'cause I hafta keep the number under 200 but you cant beat it for taste. There is no substitute.
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06-22-2009, 10:09 PM
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#2
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Senior Member
Trailer: 1970 Campster
Posts: 253
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No way, Jose!!! I learned a long time ago that you can flavor your food in a much more healthful fashion with spices. IMHO, there's really no need to use lard or much salt when we have so many wonderful spices at our disposal.
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06-22-2009, 10:30 PM
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#3
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Senior Member
Trailer: Casita
Posts: 451
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Quote:
No way, Jose!!! I learned a long time ago that you can flavor your food in a much more healthful fashion with spices. IMHO, there's really no need to use lard or much salt when we have so many wonderful spices at our disposal.
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I really understand what you mean and I almost (actually never) cook with lard. But it has an unjustified bad name IMO even though Bacon-fat does not have as bad a name... in fact there is really no difference.
Lard is used in almost every cooking school as a flavorful pork fat.. that is all.
Anyway it is very important to Mexican (Sonoran) cuisine and I can remember it when I close my eyes and vision the Los Angels River with the aroma wafting down from the rendering plants at Soto and Vernon... ELA
LARD
Now back to your local Lipitor post
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06-22-2009, 11:03 PM
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#4
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Moderator
Trailer: Fiber Stream 1978 / Honda Odyssey LX 2003
Posts: 8,222
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Quote:
LARD
Now back to your local Lipitor post
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My Mother was a transplanted Southern Okie in Upstate New York. Total body count in our household was 10, and she fed us comfort food cooked mostly in Lard. We used to recycle it, in a special metal jar with an inner strainer lid kept in the refrigerator. Everyone called her "Mom", even unrelated adults, who often lobbied for a place at our dinner table. She was a star at the church potluck.
<sigh> I am having flashbacks to those flavors. I gotta take my pills.
__________________
Frederick - The Scaleman
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06-22-2009, 11:18 PM
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#5
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Senior Member
Trailer: 2008 Oliver Legacy Elite
Posts: 904
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As a kid on the farm, we rendered our own lard. (No one's favorite job, by the way.) Nothing like it for pie crusts... and flavor in fried potatoes in a cast iron skillet.
No, I don't use it anymore. (Well, once a few years back in a baking recipe.)
Thanks for the memories, though.
Sigh.
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06-23-2009, 05:28 AM
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#6
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Senior Member
Trailer: 2000 16 ft Casita Spirit Deluxe
Posts: 170
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I recall as a kid the lard rendering process and really looking forward to it. Back then, after the hog was slaughtered, the fat was added to a huge cast iron kettle, slowly cooking and 'rendering' the fat into a liquid, done in the back yard over an open fire. The chunks of fat were large, and still had the outer skin of the pig on it. One task of the rendering process was to separate the fat from the skin as the fat became liquefied and, once the fat was boiled off it, huge, crisp, crunchy, pork rinds would then float lazily to the top of the boiling lard where it was scooped up immediately by the anxiously waiting kids and eaten on the spot. I still love pork rinds today. But, alas, can't eat them anymore as I once did, because of my rising cholesterol number which I am struggling to keep at bay. I suspect I am now being paid back for all those cholesterol laden pork rinds I anxiously gobbled up.
On an historical note, it was using lard as cooking grease that contributed to the famous taste of McDonald's french fries and helped that company expand. They still fry in a substance that looks identical to the old, solid, white lard, but now it comes from vegetables. It doesn't quite have the same taste, though!
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06-23-2009, 07:13 AM
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#7
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Senior Member
Trailer: 1972 Boler American and 1979 Trillium 4500 (plus 2 Rhodesian Ridgebacks)
Posts: 404
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Quote:
I was born and raised in East Los Angeles.
We were sorta poor.
We ate cheap.
But we ate with gusto.
Lard was there for every meal. Not even Crisco. I mean REX Lard from the rendering plant in Vernon.
Mochaca Beef
Pork Carnitas
Even lard fried chitlins and potatoes
Does anyone ever cook with rendered lard anymore?
I dont 'cause I hafta keep the number under 200 but you cant beat it for taste. There is no substitute.
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I don't think we were even sorta poor. (But dad was in a couple of long strikes.) We ate well though and we ate cheap. And we ate lard. It just tasted good.I'm guessing that it still does.
I don't cook with it anymore but it is the ONLY way that this pastry-making challenged person can make pies.
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06-23-2009, 07:37 AM
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#8
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Senior Member
Trailer: 2000 24 ft Shasta Ultra Flite
Posts: 251
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I stayed a week at a trappers cabin during a hunting trip, he had a cast iron frying pan full of grease and everything from eggs to steaks went into that pan, when it got too full he opened the cabin door and poured some out. He lived to be 84 years old, but he worked hard trapping and cutting wood for a living.
If you go on fly in fishing trips up North the guides use 1/2 butter and lard to deep fry the fish it really tastes great, but I don't think I would make it part of a steady diet!
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06-23-2009, 05:42 PM
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#9
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Junior Member
Trailer: Casita 17 ft Spirit Deluxe
Posts: 29
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Try to find a can of Crisco in Europe!
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06-24-2009, 05:59 AM
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#10
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Senior Member
Trailer: 2007 19 ft Escape 5.0 / 2002 GMC (1973 Boler project)
Posts: 4,148
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Hi: All... I'm the pastry chef in our household and I use a combo of LARD& BUTTER to make my anxiously awaited "rhubarb meringue pies". No one at the bake sale ever asked for an ingredients list!!! I don't do pies that are cholesterol free as they seem taste free too.
Alf S. North shore of Lake Erie
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06-24-2009, 06:28 AM
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#11
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Senior Member
Trailer: 19 ft Scamp (Egg Salad Annie)
Posts: 272
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Some things can not be improved on. I am the Tamale King in our house. I tryed other shortenings and have found nothing compares to Lard. OOOOOOOO Christmas Tamales!!!!
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06-24-2009, 08:03 AM
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#12
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Senior Member
Trailer: 2000 16 ft Casita Spirit Deluxe
Posts: 170
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Quote:
I stayed a week at a trappers cabin during a hunting trip, he had a cast iron frying pan full of grease and everything from eggs to steaks went into that pan, when it got too full he opened the cabin door and poured some out. He lived to be 84 years old, but he worked hard trapping and cutting wood for a living.
If you go on fly in fishing trips up North the guides use 1/2 butter and lard to deep fry the fish it really tastes great, but I don't think I would make it part of a steady diet!
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Speaking of the North you refer too, bannock is another treat that simply must be made with lard. And if you go really far up north, where it gets really cold, the Inuit have a wise 'ole saying: "Bannock and lard make Indian hard"! They need every calorie they can get!
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06-24-2009, 08:51 AM
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#13
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Member
Trailer: No Trailer Yet
Posts: 42
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Im 44. I can cook. I grew up in the South. I didnt know you could eat a vegitable that was not fried first! Squash, corn fritters, okra, eggplant, but it was always in wesson oil...
I was taught to make biscuits some time ago by my Great Aunt and Grandfather. They never used measures. You need a pile of flour, some buttermilk and now a-days a glob of Crisco (cause these are 'diet biscuits'). A coworker - who grew up on a farm - and I were discussing/longing for good cooking and he said that he learned to use Lard... As I thought about it, I thought, "Lard biscuits? They HAVE to be better than 'diet' Crisco biscuits!!".
So I bought some lard and made some biscuits. I did not do a side by side taste test, but the Crisco biscuits were pretty comparable, but much easier to work than the lard ones.
EIther way, though, I can not 'afford' to eat biscuits anymore. They are good and I enjoy them, but my body mass index moves in the wrong way when I start making biscuits!
Maybe my niece and nephew will show an interest.
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06-24-2009, 05:20 PM
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#14
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Senior Member
Trailer: 2000 24 ft Shasta Ultra Flite
Posts: 251
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Quote:
Speaking of the North you refer too, bannock is another treat that simply must be made with lard. And if you go really far up north, where it gets really cold, the Inuit have a wise 'ole saying: "Bannock and lard make Indian hard"! They need every calorie they can get!
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They were talking about their arteries! weren't they?
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06-24-2009, 09:14 PM
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#15
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Senior Member
Trailer: 2007 19 ft Escape 5.0 / 2002 GMC (1973 Boler project)
Posts: 4,148
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Hi: All... I tought my wife to make biscuits with bacon drippings saved in a covered bowl in the fridge. So... I have to drink extra raspberry/cranberry juice to flush out the arteries etc... But OH THE BISCUITS!!!
Alf S. North shore of Lake Erie
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06-26-2009, 09:30 AM
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#16
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Senior Member
Trailer: 1999 17 ft Casita Spirit Deluxe ('Inn EggsIsle')
Posts: 611
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nobody mentioned fried chicken, we were brought up in New England and moved to SW Virginia in 1977, bought 25 acres and raised every animal that Noah had on the arc. We rendered the lard from the 2 pigs we raised per year (sold one). my wife is known for her pies wherever we have lived (even here in Florida) but, they never tasted as well as when we had the home rendered lard. The hardest part of rendering came with keeping the right temperature. As I remember it would burn real easy and get a brownish color to it. It had to be pure white to taste right. Did I mention Fried Chicken
__________________
Love being Inneggsile
heading sloowly up the eastcoast to our next 2 month (Aug and Sept) camp hosting gig at Camden Hills State Park in Maine
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06-28-2009, 05:54 PM
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#17
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member
Trailer: Bigfoot Rear Queen 25 ft
Posts: 346
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Pork rinds floating on rendered oil....scooped up and dipped in dark soy, vinegar and chopped green chillies mmmmmm
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07-10-2009, 11:47 PM
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#18
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Senior Member
Trailer: 1982 Scamp 13 ft
Posts: 379
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My mother had a little aluminum container with GREASE in raised letters on the front & a lid with a little knob on top. She carefully drained all of the bacon grease into it, to use when she cooked green beans, cornbread and lots of other good things. There was nothing better than the flavor that bacon grease added to food!
Sandra
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07-11-2009, 05:44 AM
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#19
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Senior Member
Trailer: Casita Spirit Deluxe 2003 16 ft
Posts: 1,899
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Quote:
My mother had a little aluminum container with GREASE in raised letters on the front & a lid with a little knob on top. She carefully drained all of the bacon grease into it, to use when she cooked green beans, cornbread and lots of other good things. There was nothing better than the flavor that bacon grease added to food!
Sandra
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My mom did the same thing In fact, when she sent me a bunch of family recipes that I had asked for she thought it was important enough to include a recipe card! I may be a bachelor, but I could have figured out the recipe for saving bacon grease!
__________________
Without adult supervision...
Quando omni flunkus, moritati.
Also,
I'm a man, but I can change, if I have to, I guess.
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07-11-2009, 06:55 AM
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#20
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Senior Member
Trailer: 1983 13 ft Scamp
Posts: 3,082
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--------------> NEVER use it.
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