Lard

[Binky Profile]

There was a two page article on the delights of lard in this week's FT Weekend Magazine. Apparently, head chefs in Michelin starred restaurants are serving bread, not with butter, but with creamed lard. In New York, you can get lard on focaccia bread. A kilo of Lardo di Colonnata costs between £60 and £70. Who knew lard would be the next darling of the gourmand world?

[Renee Profile]

Oh no!!! Lard doesn't have any flavour, but hopefully it is the fat that you can buy in jars. I bought a jar of Ibérico pork fat before Christmas.

[Renee Profile]

I've just been reading about Lardo Colonnata and can see why it is so expensive. It is sold very thinly sliced.


https://www.vallebona.co.uk/lardo-di-colonnata/

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I would say that Italian Lardo - which is what the Colonnata is - is a bit different to Anglo- American lard or French saindoux

I haven’t encountered the Colonnata but Lardo of less noble type has been around in Londondon restaurants for a while

Lardo is sliced but otherwise intact back fat that is cured so that it’s essentially like very soft ham fat, and the examples I’ve had have been quite pleasant

Whereas lard and saindoux are made by melting down (rendering) pork fat to give a white fat used in cooking. It’s not quite tasteless or odourless to me, and I don’t like the smell, though I’ll happily use it in cooking, especially pastry and confit pork belly.

I come from Hampshire where they make sweet lardy cakes using lots lard, and it somehow intensifies the odour which put me off them as a child. The Hampshire version is finger shaped, plain (no dried fruit) and topped with sticky icing. I find it repulsive.

[karadekoolaid Profile]

Sunday lunchtimes, when I was young(er), we´d go down to the local pub for a pint. There was always "bread n dripping" on plates around the bar!

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

I was horrified at my dad's funeral, the pub caterers put bread n dripping out. It made my teeth hurt looking at it.
Guests couldn't eat enough of it.

It just kept coming out again and again. What do I know!

We have a beef restaurant here called OX. The bread with fat was delicious, Binky.

[Suffs Profile]

Sunday lunchtimes, when I was young(er), we´d go down to the local pub for a pint. There was always "bread n dripping" on plates around the bar!

Heaven on a plate ... with just a sprinkling of salt ... cholesterol levels and BP sabotaged in one fell swoop

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Isn’t dripping beef, but lard is pork? Very different odour and texture I quite like dripping

Never come across it in a pub though, must be a regional thing. That’s a trick my (Black Country) grandpa missed in the Red Lion

[karadekoolaid Profile]

Hahaha, Suffs - then we´d go back home and fill our faces with a Sunday Roast!!
Cholesterol? Whassat??

[dennispc Profile]

Dan Lepard's tea cake recipe contains lard. Always block in our fridge.

[Pampy Profile]

When I was young, I used to love dripping on a crust of bread sprinkled with salt.

[Joanbunting Profile]

I still adore bread and dripping especially if the roast is beef - a rare thing these days.
I did a slow roast belly pork at the weekend and when I put the joint back in the hot oven to finish off the crackling I added a bit if crusty bread for me to have as cook's perks
I use lard, saindoux for pastry too. I used to use Trex or white flora but when I discovered that they are mostly palm oil which i try to avoid as much as possible I went back to Gran's methods.

[Lusciouslush Profile]

I like lard & have always used it in pastry - gives a better result. I sometimes use it to fry in too - such as sauteed potatoes, I didn't have beef dripping with bread when I was growing up, but The Lushly did - plus bread fried in Beef dripping - actually I could eat some of that now in a proper gut-buster!

[Pampy Profile]

I've always used it for pastry too.

[kavey Profile Website]

Lardo is sliced but otherwise intact back fat that is cured so that it’s essentially like very soft ham fat, and the examples I’ve had have been quite pleasant

Yes this is commonly what I've come across in restaurants, and it's lovely.

[cherrytree Profile]

Turkey dripping is one of the culinary highlights of our family Christmas.
In Lozere, in the Massif Central where our house is ,you can buy lard sale. It is sold on the deli counter in slices and is lovely placed on a roasting chicken. I don’t know how far north you can buy it but I suspect not very far.

[Joanbunting Profile]

Our butcher sells it too Cherrytree and very good it is. You can also buy pork skin which is rather odd because they always remove the crsckling for a pork joint - unless you have trianed your butcher - which takes a lot of discussion, lots of pictures and the involvement of the entire shop.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

One of our local butchers used to sell their game birds prepared with a little sheet of what was effectively lard salé over the breast

Perfect, but this season we got bacon, nice but not the same

Maité one of the two French fat ladies Maíté and Madeleine, was from Les Landes on the Atlantic coast and started many recipes with a local product called ventreche, which seems to be a lard salé from the belly. Madeleine had to explain it to Parisians,

[jeral Profile]

Just a question: Could there be a lard revival due to the increasing move back to natural rather than highly processed oils?

As a kid, we were allowed to make fried bread with dripping (and boy did the tasty jelly bits spatter) like a production line, i.e. cook, eat whilst next one was cooking. Mum would break the cycle saying No more! Dunno if pork or beef though.

[karadekoolaid Profile]

Slices of white bread, fried in lard, were obligatory for breakfast when I was a kid.
I haven´t seen any lard for ages over here. Love using it for cooking.