Not sure if this belongs in G.Q. or C.S. but anyway…
I yesterday started an apprenticeship with the only working traditional Dutch-style windmill in Africa. I’ve always loved baking and it’s pretty cool to be involved in the crazy machine that makes the major ingredient in bread.
The mill has a moving top, to enable it to be directed towards the prevailing wind. This top section rests on a circular arrangement of beams of wood, and the whole arrangement is lubricated with lard.
Which brings me to my question. I have a few kg of pig fat. I want to render it into lard. That’s quite easy. But the lard I used today to rub on the beams was a very solid block, more solid than lard I’ve seen before. It was more like soap.
How do I render the fat down to a very solid form?
The mill also does not have a refrigerator, and the lard will be stored there. Is there anything I can add to it to stop it from becoming rancid when stored at room temperature?
I don’t know the answer to this and am looking forward to learning when the answer arrives. That said, I have mutton tallow* in a tin, purchased, not rendered by me, and it keeps well at room temps.
*Mutton tallow is useful as a lubricant and rust preventative for metal woodworking tools. It’s a bit soft, not sure how it would work as a wood on wood lubricant, but conceptually it sounds similar to what you are looking for.
Boiling or heating the soap/simmering it in a closed kettle or pot and then keeping it in a sealed container, might prevent the rancidity, or enough that it is still usable. Just a thought. Never had experience with using tallow or animal fat as a lubricant, I always keep a little container of marksman oil handy, seems to work for everything. I’m curious to see more responses too…
The soap-like substance you used today may in fact be (lard) soap. Lard was the fat base for soap back in the day.
There is no special rendering technique that yields a hard, soap-like consistency. Rendering simply cleans up the pig fat by separating the unwanted bits of tissue (meat, hair, skin) from the desired fat. In the end, it’s still just pig fat, only “clean”.
Commercially, lard is sometimes hydrogenated, resulting in a firmer texture. BHT and other compounds are added to increase shelf life and delay rancidity, but plain old (unadulterated) lard will go bad in short order. YMMV.
I recall enough high school chemistry to know how to convert the lard to a soap (esterisation) - and a soap has the advantage of being a lubricant and having a very long room temperature shelf life. I could go that route.
But… The block of “lard” I used was softer than most soap. It is hard to describe softness in words on the internet, but I’d you are familiar with old-school laundery soap (I’m familiar with large green bars, used for hand washing) - the lard was slightly softer than that, malleable by hand without too much effort, but it did keep its rectangular form.
However the mill is run (as much as possible) in a traditional way, so while soap is a possibility I want to investigate the possibilities with lard first.
For use as a lubricant, why do you care if it’s rancid or not? Rancidity is an informal term for partial oxidation. IANA expert, but I doubt oxidation affects the lard’s lubricity very much.
The lard that is being used is probably very like the commercial blocks of lard that have been hydrogenated that are for sale here in the US. I find them on the shelf, at room, temperature, not refrigerated. Your home rendered lard could probably be kept for quite a while during the winter months. Bacon grease keeps for several months for me at room temperature.
Can oxidation of the fat be prevented or slowed by canning - for example, pouring the lard boiling hot into mason jars, to the brim, then sealing while still hot?
You’d almost certainly retard spoilage within the mason jar. OTOH, commercial deep fryers go to pretty amazing lengths to develop oils that will remain palatable despite extended boiling time. Many fats fall apart chemically under extended heating. Which also greatly *increases *the rate of oxidation while it’s going on.
I have no clue which effect would predominate in trying to can lard. You might inject 2 months’-worth of room temperature oxidation into the fat in 20 minutes getting it hot & packaged, then only suffer another month’s worth over the next year stored in the jars.
Another question for the OP: How many pounds/kilos, etc. do you use in a week? Homebrew prep techniques that work fine for a single kilo would be difficult if you need 100 kilos.
I have no idea how much is needed, but I am still a noob there. The mill is also only open for milling once a month, it is a museum/historical curiosity rather than a fully operational mill. That means the lard is used reasonably sparingly ( For example, I used up about 75 cubic centimetres of a block of lard measuring approx 15 x 5 x 5 cm), but it will be stored for long periods.
I have about 3kg of fat. When it was delivered, the Miller thought it was already lard, and before unwrapping it said that he’d need double that - so 6kg/year.
I can render smaller batches but I have heard that this process can be very smelly. I’d prefer to do larger, less frequent batches so as to stay on good terms with my wife!
I guess I will render what I have, see how much it makes and maybe settle for doing it 3 or 4 times a year.
IANA expert either: However, the first reason I would not want to use anything rancid is because it would stink (think rotten meat). Rancidity is a vague concept, and while it involves oxidation, it is not necessarily the only aspect involved… Bacterial activity can be present also, making the whole mess putrid.
I think oxidation of any lubricant tends to degrade it’s ability to function at maximum efficiency, similar to motor oil “wearing out” by breaking the original molecular structure due to oxidation from heat, shear, time, etc.
To the OP if still interested, I completely overlooked (forgot about) this… Based upon an old black powder lube recipe… Infusing around 50% bees wax or paraffin into molten tallow (similar to lard, only from a cow or sheep) results in a relatively firm product. There’s no reason the same wouldn’t hold true with lard, perhaps with some modification in percentage.
Your Mileage May Vary in storage. Sometimes, it will keep (without artificial preservatives) for a couple of months, sometimes for a year or longer. Ask Granny and she’ll tell you the same. There’s a lot of variables here.
The process of rendering, by my nose, has never been overtly smelly, so don’t worry.
If you’re rendering fresh pig fat to make lard, the process shouldn’t be especially more smelly than roasting pork. Unpleasant for vegetarians, I imagine.
Thanks. I rendered about a kilogram yesterday as a test, I’ve put it in the fridge and will see what the texture is like this evening.
I can probably get hold of beeswax from the mill as they use it for lubricating the 90° gearing which transmits the horizontal force of the sails down the vertical shaft, and I imagine it is sufficiently traditional.
It did not smell bad at all, by the way. Just got a little smoky towards the end, after I had ladled most of the lard out.
Just so you know, lard and tallow are historically made from body cavity fat, not muscle fat, which has very different characteristics. Muscle fat will almost never harden up at room temperature, even after rendering, while body cavity fat will.
Here’s a video showing what I mean - he’s talking about beef suet, but the same applies to lard. Jump to 1:00 in for an example - the rendered abdominal fat is hard enough to ring against a dish, rendered muscle fat stays mushy.