How to Render Lard, the Simple Way

Learning to render lard can sound very intimidating when your first start out. But once you do it, you will realize it is incredibly simple.

What is lard?

Lard is the product of slowly heating and melting pork fat.

What is rendering?

Rendering lard is the process of heating pork (or bear) fat to a liquid state to remove impurities and connective tissue.

What can you use rendered lard for?

Lard is an extremely versatile cooking fat for your kitchen. It can be used in frying, baking, roasting and grilling.

But it can also be used in making candles and skin care products.

What fat do you need render lard?

Any pork fat is suitable render lard with. That includes back fat, belly fat and leaf fat (the fat around the kidneys).

Step One: Prepping to Render Lard

Remove your pork fat and/or leaf lard from your freezer and put into fridge. We want the fat to be partially thawed to make it easier to chop up.

Select a dutch oven or stock pot (heavy bottomed pot) for rendering your lard. If you don’t have a heavy bottom pot, you will just have to watch your cooking pot a bit more closely.

Step Two: Cutting Up Your Pork Fat to Render Lard

Chop up your pork fat into smaller pieces, approximately 1″ These smaller pieces allow the heat to penetrate more surface area. This will allow the fat/lard to heat and melt faster.

When you are chopping up their pieces, try to trim out as much meat and non-fat pieces as you can. Do not stress if you can remove every thing. Leaving in these pieces won’t affect your final product.

Step Three: Starting to Cook

Add all the lard pieces to your pot. Turn your burner onto a low/medium (3 out of 10). We are aiming for 250F if you have a thermometer handy. Or if you want to render your lard in your oven.

Step Four: Starting to Render Lard

How do I know my lard is starting to render down?

Begin to stir your pieces in the pot. As you are stirring these pieces, you will notice that they will change from a opaque white to a translucent grey/brown. That means that your rendering process has begun.

Continue to stir periodically the pieces on low/medium heat.

The rendering process may take a couple hours. As you stir it, you will notice melted lard in the bottom of your pot.

How come the rendered lard is cloudy?

As the fat melts and begins to render, the melted fat/lard in the bottom of your pot will become cloudy. This is completely normal. These are some of impurities we are removing during the rendering process. Continue to stir and cook over low/medium heat. The rendered lard will soon become clear.

Step Five: Am I Done Rendering My Lard?

As the fat melts, you will notice all of the pieces you chopped up are shrinking significantly. Your rendered lard will even begin to turn yellow/gold. As you can see in the picture below, some of the fat pieces are still white. Continue you render until almost all the pieces become translucent.

Are you cooking too hot to render lard?

Turn your heat down to low. You do not want your lard to be simmering too much. If your lard is bubbling a lot, you will begin to fry the small meat and tissue pieces that are in your fat. This frying can make your lard smell like bacon. If you have a thermometer handy, you should aim to have your lard at 250F.

If your lard is too hot (bubbling significantly) and begins to smell like bacon. Don’t be discouraged. It will still be great for cooking savory foods.

This picture has a good amount of bubbling. Not too hot.

**If you aren’t sure if your lard is too hot (and you don’t have a thermometer-mine broke recently), then your lard is probably perfect. Lard that is too hot will look like you are deep frying something. Very bubbly and splattering.

A good simmering lard will be bubbling still, but not to the point of splattering. Calm bubbles, not chaotic bubbles.

Step Six: Fat Pieces Have Turned Brown

Once your most of your pork fat pieces have become translucent and shrunken down, you are getting close to your final product.

Continue you to gently still your rendered lard. The pieces will start to turn brown in color. At this point, you can remove the pieces of fat from the point with a slotted spoon. Place these pieces into a bowl or another pot.

Step Seven: Filtering Your Rendered Lard

Once those pieces have been removed, you can begin to filter your lard.

You can use a fine metal strainer, cheese/muslin cloth, or coffee filter. You should only need to filter the rendered lard one time.

Step 8: Cooling and Storing Your Rendered Lard

Once your lard has been filtered and poured into a jar, leave it on your kitchen counter and allow to cool. Your lard will be a golden/yellow color while it is hot. As it cools, you will notice it turning white. Once it is fully white and solidified, place a lid on the jars and set in fridge.

Your lard is shelf stable, so placing it in the fridge is not necessary. Storing in the fridge or freezer will keep your lard lasting a long time.

If you are storing your lard in the freezer, make sure you give your lard at least 1 inch of head space in it’s container or jar.

How to Store Your Lard

I personally like to store my lard into glass canning jars. Once your lard cools after filtering, you can scoop it into a plastic container if that is what you have.

Kunekune pigs are a fantastic breed to grow on your homestead or small farm to produce your own lard. Here is another blog post on how to raise them! And here is a guide to help you decide if you and your homestead are ready for pigs.