^Yeah, that. I just made a bunch of homemade sausage patties out of ground pork and spices, and the remaining lard is unbelievably good.

Ooooo. Sage. That's a good one. Sage, dried onion and black pepper sounds like it would work beautifully.

I'm thinking of this similar to herb-infused butter. But you have to be careful because the cooking, even at the low temperature of rendering, will change the nature of some herbs and spices.

I'm thinking lots of experimentation. (I wish, but my wife is barely tolerant when I do this a couple of times a year. Making it an ongoing set of experiments just won't fly, I'm afraid)

What about lemon grass, ginger and sea salt? That sounds almost like a soap. Use some for cooking, and make soap out of the rest.

Smoked Spanish paprika, sour salt and worchestershire sauce. (or Vietnamese fish sauce)

The possibilities are endless.

I looove sage. I used to eat gobs of stuffing because it had sage and onion and butter and black pepper. Makes me kind of sad I don't eat it anymore...boo hoo

I think sage would work better with schmaltz than lard.

lard is pretty neutral tasting to me, so I use it with everthing. I even put it in my chicken soup...

Lard is fine, but butter is better. Butter has vitamins a/e/d/k and CLA just for starters. Lard is just fat.

Lard can contain vitamin D, E, choline, selenium and other nutrients. It is a nice neutral flavored fat as well.

And some people have problems with dairy foods like butter. Doesn't all dairy invoke an insulin response?

Yeah, according to Dr. Davis, a big insulin response.


http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2...arb-doesnt.html
He goes on and on about exogenous AGE's but I'm not convinced it's really a concern.

Is it only Dr. Davis saying that? I don't find his anti-butter stance very convincing.

In the comment section to that post, people make rational arguments about AGEs not being absorbed into the bloodstream, endogenous AGEs being the real problem, they provide links to articles, and Dr. Davis just never answers the rebuttals. He says instead, "It's not my role to indulge anyone's low-carb fantasies. ... The data stand: Butter has some problems, despite fitting into most people's conception of low-carb."

Plane, what are you going to do with all those yummy flavored lards?

That's two separate issues, IMHO. Exogenous AGEs and the insulinotropic effect of dairy products (in this case butter). Dairy is insulinotropic according to Loren Cordain and others, at least in some forms. But is butter? Not really sure... other than Dr. Davis's claims.

Hey! Googled on insulin response from butter and found an old Hyperlipid posting about another Dr. Davis posting:
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot....d-dr-davis.html (still reading)

Here's another take on it: http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/?p=7573

I think Dr. Davis is coming up with a diet and also a diet book, so he's got to figure out what foods are good and which are bad. He may be doing what a lot of diet doctors do, base his decisions on bad findings and just not addressing the critics when they confront him.

Dairy is problematic for me personally, but I can eat ghee on occasion without issue, as all the milk solids are removed. Plus, it won't burn as butter will.

Dairy is a Neolithic food, and the short time it's been around in the human diet may be why it is questionable, especially depending on your personal ancestry.

Lard OTOH is a wonderful fat to use for cooking. If you can render it yourself from the fat of pastured pigs, that's even better.

If my experience with the one I do have (not much left of it), I will cook with them, or melt over foods.

I just made a beef daube kind of dish this weekend and I used a couple of teaspoons of the flavored lard to gently carmelize some onions as the first layer of flavor. I tried one of the onions and it definitely had more flavor than an onion just cooked in unflavored oil or butter. And when making something like a daube then every bit of flavor just adds to the whole architecture of flavor you construct.

I've also used it to roast veggies and to melt over left-over veggies I had roasted in olive oil. I prefer to use lard/tallow to roast veggies as it has a much more stable structure and is less likely to break down under the high heat of roasting. (475-500 degrees is true roasting)

I have a cook book just called "Fat" and it has a recipe for a party spread made with pork fat. I could easily see this working for that as well.

I've thought of also using it for making my own pemmican. It might give some more flavor to the bars.

As someone else mentioned, you can also just add a dollop to a soup to up the fat. Great for winter months. (a dollop of schmaltz in a bowl of chicken soup is a wonderful thing)

After I had throat surgery when I couldn't eat anything solid, I made myself a very rich broth by slowly cooking a chuck roast, and some cut soup bones in beef broth with a few veggies like onions, carrots and celery. I then added to a bowl of the broth a couple of egg yolks I had whipped together with the marrow and a small dollop of the beef drippings. It was so rich, but the very next day I felt so much better and recovered faster for it. (it was my second throat surgery within six weeks, so I had another experience to compare it to)

Fat is a wonderful thing.

If you want a more neutral flavor, then use un-flavored lard. Personally, I make a mixture of pork, and the more strongly flavored beef and lamb fat. The pork is neutral while the beef and lamb give some flavor. I'll also save plain beef drippings, like if I'm browning ground meet, and use that as well.

Not to mention bacon fat.

So, the answer to your question about what I will do with the flavored lard, "I'll think of something."

I collect bacon fat and keep it in a jar. However, bacon has nitrates, so I'm not really sure I should be done that. Recently, I found organic, no-preservative, duck fat in the specialty items near the meat section. That stuff is great! I no longer use butter or veggie oils. Only the duck fat.

I have to jump on this line of lard talk to put my little bit in. I live in Sardinia, one of the noted places in the World for longevity. It is very rural, and most of traditional diet was based around pigs, sheep and fruit and vegetables.
Pigs, and all the things you do with them was the blessing of many, many households. they made mostly dried sausage, salted lard and also the rendered fat from the white fat( struto ). The meat was used, but every piece that could be preserved, was, feet, head(spec) lonza, salami made only from the leg and cubed fat and spices, culetto, you name it they did it. Butter was Never used because they were a difficult animal to raise here. Dairy sheep provided the milk for the children, ricotta for the family and pecorino cheese for cooking, selling and eating with bread. So, fat with fat on fat.... through with a lot of fresh fruit and seasonal vegetables which they like here, olive oil that they press themselves and a lot of wine.... and they live a long, working life...It's not unusual to have 85 year olds still going for a morning working in their vineyard or garden plot.The bread was always made at home with home milled wheat, but that was then and now, they all eat the commecial crap like all the rest of the world. Less people to go and collect the almonds and walnuts that were once a treat for all the family. Sun dried tomatoes, your own dried figs, its all still do-able but, there is no real hunger any more.... Work hard, eat well, that was the secret of this island.