You read my post about the why I'm making lard, here is the how. I (mostly) followed the directions in Karen Soloman's book Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It.
To start off, I called up a great butcher and ordered 10 pounds of pork fatback; ten pounds translates to a big old bag of fat.
Chop all that fat up into small pieces and get it into a very large pot over very low heat.
Turns out that for ten pounds of fat, you need two very large pots.
Now settle in, because this is a very long process, here it is after the first hour.
And after it's cooked three hours.
And here it's rendered for seven hours- looks about done.
A tasty byproduct I didn't except (as a first timer) was the pork cracklin's; crispy, super fresh pork rinds. Sprinkled with salt and cayenne pepper they make a great snack, just take it from me, don't snack on a handful followed by three martini's and call it dinner. I learned that one the hard way.
Day 2 I woke up with a little hangover and got back to business, melt and filter the lard and then, sort of like magic it turns into this luxurious creamy solid that looks just like- well, just like lard.
