Right, after my last post I feel a bit guilty about claiming I have nothing to blog about. All this contentedness has made me a teeny bit lazy (as well as put on 5lb but that's another story!). There was a time when I used blogging as my diary, and have frequently referred to it when trying to remember dates and happenings. Then I've realised that I've stopped doing that and, in doing so, lost a valuable part of my personal history.
So, I sat down and made myself write out all the things that have happened over the last couple of months, then went through the digital photos. It's surprising just how much I wrote down and, in turn, how much could have been consigned to the dusty recesses of my mind to fade away. One of the more memorable things that has happened has been lard rendering so I thought I'd kick off with that.
Our pigs were fat, massively so. A pig should have about 0.5-1.0cm of fat when slaughtered, and this figure is led by consumer demand for leaner cuts of meat. When paying for meat by weight, consumers don't want to pay for too much fat. Our pigs had 2cm of fat on them!! On a pork chop you could see the natural healthy fat attached to the outside of the meat and a whacking great additional 1.5cm laid over the top. There was a visible line between the two layers. I peeled this off all of the meat and ended up with kilos of the white stuff, which was earmarked for making soap, in particular hand soap.
We get through so much hand soap here due to having animals and needing to frequently wash after touching them but the shop stuff leaves our hands quite rough, necessitating a lot of hand cream. That's because manufacturers realised years ago that the natural moisturising glycerine in soap could be extracted and sold separately, leaving behind a product that is drying. Then they cottoned on the fact they could sell us a hand/face/body cream to add the moisture back in and if that didn't work, add 'luxury' moisturising ingredients, like shea butter or almond oil, and charge even more money. It's all one big giant rip-off so that's why I want to render down the pig fat into lard and make hand soap.
So, a few weeks ago I started rendering lard. It was a very stinky greasy week, made worse by the heat. It didn't go as well as I hoped to start with but got better as the week progressed.
My first attempt was rendering it in a slow cooker (see above picture). According to the many sources I found on the internet, it was a slow gentle process and should have provided a nice clean white lard. Unfortunately, it 'cooked' the lard a bit and left it slightly orange and with a bit of a porky whiff. I need nice snowy white non-smelly lard to make soap. I haven't shown a picture of this as my camera isn't accurately reflecting the orangeness. So net result was two pints of lard that could only be used for cooking, unless I find a way of getting it pure white and non-porky smelling.
My second attempt was much more successful - I rendered it on the stove top in a large ovenproof pan, pouring off the fat at regular intervals before it had a chance to cook.
My equipment was fairly rudimentary - I just strained the liquid fat through an coffee machine filter into a re-usable soup container.
This was much better - I could see straight away it was a light golden colour, no orange in sight, and it solidified to a snowy white. I reuse microwaveable soup containers for stocks and fat. I actively look for these in M&S when the soup is yellow-stickered to 50p because they are nice and strong.
Now I have something to make soap with, but I have to render down the other few kilos of fat first. Having suffered and sweated in the heat, I've learned my lesson and earmarked that job for a cool rainy day, if we ever get one in the UK!
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