What is Lard used for?

BrandNewDay

I will try it the next time I make pastry.
I think, from now on, butter will only be used to eat on bread. Looks like Stork for cakes and lard for pastry is the way to go.

Ben84

I have found fats very confusing in the past, there is a lot of misunderstanding about them.

The first thing I believe is that when we talk about fats such as margarine, butter, cooking oil and lard, there is no such thing as more natural. All of these products are extracted and enriched sources of fat, something that is not found naturally in food. Normally fats are found in smaller amounts as part of other foods, animal and plant tissues that contain a lot of other materials.

That doesn't mean eating these enriched fats is inevitably bad for you, but it does make it easier to eat too much of them, and by extracting materials from foods and leaving others behind we may be adversely affecting their natural balance. Aside from eating too much of them, we may also end up not consuming enough of certain types. With the exception of trans fats, which have no useful purpose in the body, all fats are important and are used for various tasks in the body. All are vital for life and we cannot live without them, so it seems fair to say there are no unhealthy fats.

With the exception of foods that are nutritionally devoid (like trans fats), we cannot consider any single food item on its own and make fair statements about its usefulness and the advantages/disadvantages of eating it. We have to look at a person's entire diet. Butter has been criticised for containing lots of saturated fats, but for someone like me who doesn't eat much meat, butter can provide important saturated fats that are essential for forming and repairing body tissues.

Margarine is quite well disliked by others too, but it's not as simple as that. Margarine is a name given to many very different products. Some contain lots of hydrogenated oils, the process that also forms lots of trans fats. Others, are made with no hydrogenated oil and contain no trans fats. They're simply blended vegetable oils, or oils that have been cooled to remove the denser fractions to produce a solid. The fats in them are those that were found naturally in the plants that formed the oil. While butter is a potentially useful source of saturated fats, most the non-hydrogenated margarines are a potentially useful source of unsaturated fats.

I try to avoid trans fats and hydrogenated vegetable oils as they are not useful in the body and there is extensive evidence they're unhealthy. However, the other fats are very important for health and I eat a range of different types, mostly from non-hydrogenated margarines, butter and liquid oils, depending on what I'm cooking and what I like in the recipe. Avoiding margarine and using lots of butter instead would reduce my unsaturated fats and increase my saturated fats, while the opposite would result in the opposite exchange. Neither of these seem healthy, so I'm going to stick with moderate consumption of different types. As long as you can say that the foods you're eating contain only materials that are useful in your body, and that you're not over-consuming them, I don't see any problem.

APennySaved

Super wigginsmum & everyone else too! :beer:

Thanks for that info re using lard to roast potatoes - as that was exactly why I was checking the forum, to see if that is what it can be used for.

My mother always used to have lard in the fridge, & I know she used to make pastry with it - most weekends it seemed - but couldn't remember if that was what she used for roasties.

Since I started making roasties myself a few years ago, I tried using olive oil - ughh, it just tasted wrong! So I have been using goose or duck fat, but it is exorbitant in price!! & not that easy to get hold of at smaller stores. Hence the lard question!

I shall now safely try it out! :T

I shall also try lard with yorkshire pudd, as although I have successfully used veg oil for that I think the spitting heat of fat would do the trick far better than oil.

wigginsmum wrote: »

I do my roast potatoes in lard sometimes. And I put a block of lard in the hole when planting roses.

APennySaved

Great poster!

When I noticed the words ‘Lard Information Council’at the foot of the poster, I Googled for it, just in case such an organisation ever existed (I remember there used to be an org that went by the equally prosaic name of the 'Potato Marketing Board'!) . . .


Sadly, it turns out this poster was a ‘spoof’ by the magazine ‘Viz’ !! :

the ad is a spoof, from the British humourmagazine Viz. They produced it as a T-shirt design.

http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=108;t=000833;p=0

Here is the ‘Viz’ page :

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a97/Richard_W72/Viz Lard/Lard.jpg

& the edition it appeared in:

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a97/Richard_W72/Viz Lard/Cover.jpg

Oh well, we at this MSE forum thread can't have everything I suppose! I rather liked the idea . . . hey, let's set up such an org ourselves, maybe call it the 'Lard Appreciation Society' !

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LameWolf

Fwiw, I use butter in pastry, and do roasties in sunflower oil. Lard never has, and never will have a place in my fridge. *shudders*

kittendothroar

Lard does have a somewhat 'dirty' reputation but by far makes the best roast potatoes!

I don't use it very often (as in about 4 times a year!) but swear by it for pastry, and potatoes.

ljonski

Home made fat balls for wild birds ! Can' t believe how popular it is.

OrkneyStar

myrnahaz wrote: »

Am I missing out on something OS? I thought lard was a banned substance?

I heard a young guy call out to his wife in Asda 'do we need lard' and she shouted back 'no, we're ok for lard'. Why would they need lard - they only looked about 20 years old (though they had a definite look of the 'bad option' from 'honey we're killing the kids').

Making roast potatoes, making shortcrust (savoury) pastry, sometimes certain things taste different friend in Lard. As long as you are not using it every day, frying everything you eat in it etc. a little bit of it here and there is acceptable imho. Same with butter.

Penny-Pincher!!

Although rarely used, I do have a packet in the fridge which has been half used but has been in there for 3 years. Its used when we've run out of oil for eggs, roasts etc. OH actually suggested using it maybe half and half with oil for the fryer for HM chips as it would work cheaper?

~Chameleon~

kittiwoz wrote: »

So hydrogenated vegtable oils in margarine are really evil and I am in fact being healthier by using butter? Fantastic! Marge tastes gross.

Yes!!! Most definitely!!! REAL butter and lard are far healthier than any of the gross trans fats & hydrogenated oils available. It's a complete myth that saturated fats are bad for us and is something the government and food industry have brain washed us with for their own benefits.

Be aware though that if cooking with olive oil (a healthy mono-saturated product) not to let it reach smoking point otherwise the healthy fatty acids are denatured and converted into harmful trans fats. The same goes for repeatedly using the same oil to cook with. Use fresh oil and keep temps low and you won't go wrong

For the health conscious amongst you, you might want to try coconut oil (or coconoil) but make sure it's the virgin type.