gotbeer
Wed, Feb-11-04, 16:46
The secret to good taste
Lard is nowhere near as popular as it once was, but it still makes fried foods and baked goods delicious
BY JOE STUMPE, Posted on Wed, Feb. 11, 2004
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/living/7921981.htm
It's a restaurant famous for its fried chicken, a place that draws people from hundreds of miles around to its little corner of Kansas. I have the manager on the phone, and I have just one question: Do they fry their chicken in lard?
There's a pause on the other end.
"We do," she admits. "Uh, that's not for publication."
Call it the fat that dares not speak its name. Lauded for its ability to make fried foods sizzle and homemade biscuits flaky, lard (rendered pork fat) has nevertheless been shunted to the culinary sidelines over the past several decades as a result of concern over its saturated fat content.
Lard consumption dropped from a high of 14.4 pounds per person per year in 1940 to 1.9 pounds in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A food product that has been used since the domestication of
the pig, the very dawning of civilization, was reduced to a punch line: tub of lard; get the lard out.
But recent dietary research and trends may cause people to take another look at the white stuff.
For instance, did you know that lard contains less saturated fat -- the type of fat blamed for raising cholesterol and clogging arteries -- than butter? And compared with partially hydrogenated fats such as vegetable shortening, it has little of the trans fats that some researchers think are more dangerous to your heart than saturated fat.
High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets put few restrictions on the intake of animal fats such as lard and butter.
But I'm not here to try to sell the health benefits of lard. Like any fat, its consumption should be sharply limited. I'm suggesting that, when you want to splurge, you should give lard a try because of the way it makes food taste.
I spent a weekend cooking with the stuff recently and found it performs as advertised: Deep-fried chicken, fish and potatoes were crispy and savory; biscuits and pie crusts were fine-textured and flaky.
Yes, it has a slightly stronger odor when fried than vegetable oil, and eating too much can leave a person with a too-full feeling (but that's true of foods prepared with other fats, too).
Lard's chemical composition makes it ideal for deep-frying foods and acting as the shortening in certain baked foods.
Collette Baptista of the Wichita Vocational Technical College's food program notes that lard's smoking point is 361 to 401 degrees, compared with 350 for butter and 356 to 370 for vegetable shortening.
That means it's less likely to sputter and burn when frying foods at high heat, which is required to make them crispy and absorb less fat. True, vegetable oil has an even higher smoking point, but it doesn't impart the same flavor to food.
"It's just good," Baptista said of food fried in lard. "From a culinary point of view, it has a nice texture and mouth feel that goes along with good fat."
When used in baking, lard does a better job than any other shortening of keeping the protein strands in flour from hooking up and toughening the dough.
"It makes your products extremely tender," Baptista said.
And yet, with the exception for a lesson in traditional Mexican cooking -- lard is used in making tortillas, tamales and many other dishes -- Baptista doesn't use lard in her classes.
"It's that animal fat," she said. "It's like anything else, you wouldn't want to have it every day."
Still, lard seems to be making something of a comeback. According to one marketing research firm, lard sales rose 16 percent over the past two years. The rise is attributed to the growth of the Hispanic population and the popularity of the Atkins diet and its imitators.
Chefs on the Food Network use lard in a variety of ways. Emeril Lagasse features 52 recipes with lard on the network's Web site (www.foodtv.com), and chefs such as Mario Batali, Bobby Flay and Sara Moulton have presented others on air.
If you're interested in trying it, it costs about $1 a pound and is often located in the Hispanic foods aisle or your supermarket instead of with other cooking fats. Pure lard should be refrigerated after opening. Lard that's been partially hydrogenated does not need to be, but contains more trans fats.
Leaf lard (made from fat around the kidney) is said to be the highest-quality lard, but I couldn't find it in Wichita stores. You can also make your own lard by melting pork fat, available at some meat markets. However, this lard, which has not been refined, should not be used in baking.
As Baptista said, lard is not something you want to eat every day. But if you're going to break your diet on a piece of fried chicken or apple pie, you might as well do it right.
Lard is nowhere near as popular as it once was, but it still makes fried foods and baked goods delicious
BY JOE STUMPE, Posted on Wed, Feb. 11, 2004
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/living/7921981.htm
It's a restaurant famous for its fried chicken, a place that draws people from hundreds of miles around to its little corner of Kansas. I have the manager on the phone, and I have just one question: Do they fry their chicken in lard?
There's a pause on the other end.
"We do," she admits. "Uh, that's not for publication."
Call it the fat that dares not speak its name. Lauded for its ability to make fried foods sizzle and homemade biscuits flaky, lard (rendered pork fat) has nevertheless been shunted to the culinary sidelines over the past several decades as a result of concern over its saturated fat content.
Lard consumption dropped from a high of 14.4 pounds per person per year in 1940 to 1.9 pounds in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A food product that has been used since the domestication of
the pig, the very dawning of civilization, was reduced to a punch line: tub of lard; get the lard out.
But recent dietary research and trends may cause people to take another look at the white stuff.
For instance, did you know that lard contains less saturated fat -- the type of fat blamed for raising cholesterol and clogging arteries -- than butter? And compared with partially hydrogenated fats such as vegetable shortening, it has little of the trans fats that some researchers think are more dangerous to your heart than saturated fat.
High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets put few restrictions on the intake of animal fats such as lard and butter.
But I'm not here to try to sell the health benefits of lard. Like any fat, its consumption should be sharply limited. I'm suggesting that, when you want to splurge, you should give lard a try because of the way it makes food taste.
I spent a weekend cooking with the stuff recently and found it performs as advertised: Deep-fried chicken, fish and potatoes were crispy and savory; biscuits and pie crusts were fine-textured and flaky.
Yes, it has a slightly stronger odor when fried than vegetable oil, and eating too much can leave a person with a too-full feeling (but that's true of foods prepared with other fats, too).
Lard's chemical composition makes it ideal for deep-frying foods and acting as the shortening in certain baked foods.
Collette Baptista of the Wichita Vocational Technical College's food program notes that lard's smoking point is 361 to 401 degrees, compared with 350 for butter and 356 to 370 for vegetable shortening.
That means it's less likely to sputter and burn when frying foods at high heat, which is required to make them crispy and absorb less fat. True, vegetable oil has an even higher smoking point, but it doesn't impart the same flavor to food.
"It's just good," Baptista said of food fried in lard. "From a culinary point of view, it has a nice texture and mouth feel that goes along with good fat."
When used in baking, lard does a better job than any other shortening of keeping the protein strands in flour from hooking up and toughening the dough.
"It makes your products extremely tender," Baptista said.
And yet, with the exception for a lesson in traditional Mexican cooking -- lard is used in making tortillas, tamales and many other dishes -- Baptista doesn't use lard in her classes.
"It's that animal fat," she said. "It's like anything else, you wouldn't want to have it every day."
Still, lard seems to be making something of a comeback. According to one marketing research firm, lard sales rose 16 percent over the past two years. The rise is attributed to the growth of the Hispanic population and the popularity of the Atkins diet and its imitators.
Chefs on the Food Network use lard in a variety of ways. Emeril Lagasse features 52 recipes with lard on the network's Web site (www.foodtv.com), and chefs such as Mario Batali, Bobby Flay and Sara Moulton have presented others on air.
If you're interested in trying it, it costs about $1 a pound and is often located in the Hispanic foods aisle or your supermarket instead of with other cooking fats. Pure lard should be refrigerated after opening. Lard that's been partially hydrogenated does not need to be, but contains more trans fats.
Leaf lard (made from fat around the kidney) is said to be the highest-quality lard, but I couldn't find it in Wichita stores. You can also make your own lard by melting pork fat, available at some meat markets. However, this lard, which has not been refined, should not be used in baking.
As Baptista said, lard is not something you want to eat every day. But if you're going to break your diet on a piece of fried chicken or apple pie, you might as well do it right.