Ashley shows you how to render lard

photo courtesy of Ashley Rodriguez, from NotWithoutSalt.com

These are interesting days.

For decades, it seems, we wanted our food in convenient fashion, packaged and ready to go. We didn’t want to think about where our food came from, or how it reached our table, or how to make it ourselves. Of course, vast numbers of people were the exception to this rule. Some people have been putting up preserves and making bread from scratch and grinding sausage by hand for many years, guided by the experience of their parents, and their parents before them.

But many of us had Fritos and cherry yogurt for school lunches, too disgusted by the grease on the measly piece of pizza handed to us by the lunch lady. We never would have thought of making butter from cream or marshmallows from scratch.

These days, however, more of us are doing things like rendering lard by hand.

You may remember that the first time we told you about our friend, Ashley Rodriguez, we shared her recipe for bacon caramels. (And every time I look at that photo, I sigh, wishing for more.) Ashley is a phenomenal pastry chef. So you might be surprised to find that she works with one of the best savory ingredients around: lard.

“Kitchen projects excite me. While many think I may be a bit “off my rocker” as they say, for driving an hour to a farm more than a little off the beaten path to pick up 10 pounds of pig fat, then coming home to render the fat - which in turn casts a pig farm-esque smell over everything we own. I don’t understand. What is obscure about that?”

Nothing, Ashley. Not in our world.

Besides, Ashley was rendering the lard to make flaky pie crust. Did you know? Lard makes the flakiest, loveliest pie crust. Just ask Kate McDermott, who makes some of the best pies around, and teaches classes on how to make them. (You can find her at Art of the Pie.) 60 years ago and before, most people made their pie crusts with lard.

If you are interested in using lard for your pies, take a look at Ashley’s brilliant tutorial (and amazing video). You could be making pie soon.