Odd Ingredient du Jour: Lard

So, for someone who likes food a whole lot, I'm not really into the Cult of Pig that's hit the food world in the last few years. I like my jamón, I like proscuitto di San Daniele, I madly love these people. But I maybe cook bacon once a year. It's ok, but I could take it or leave it. Especially since lamb bacon is way tastier.

In any case, Jon decided to cook traditional Hungarian goulash last night. The recipe called for the meat to be browned in a few tablespoons of lard or shortening, and we had neither. The sensible thing would've been to buy that scary shelf-stabilized lard, or to buy a can of Crisco, or just use butter or oil. Or maybe even to head to the Dupont Farmers' Market and hope Red Apron Butcher had some posh lard on hand. Me being me, however, this went in a different direction.

That's two or three pounds of fat, skin, and god-knows-what the local Whole Foods nicely scraped up for me from their butchering remnants.

I knew my kindred spirit Chichi Wang over at Serious Eats had done a tutorial on rendering lard a few years back, so I figured it was manageable enough. Of course, I wasn't starting with a nice, pretty chunk of leaf lard, so I just loosely followed her procedure and hoped for the best.

First, I chopped that pile of pig into approximately 1" chunks. Next time, I'd dice them to get a faster render and maybe even some useful cracklins. The fat was still pretty cold from the butcher's cooler, but if I were dicing, I'd probably pop them in the freezer for awhile to make the process easier and less messy.

Then I tossed them in my large (4 quart?) dutch oven, and added 1/4 cup of water. The water's just there to help the fat evenly heat, and to prevent scorching at the beginning.

The tutorial says to start it over very low heat, covered, for the first ten minutes. Presumably this is to help it heat up quickly and evenly, but mine was over such low heat (stupid new apartment burners) that nothing really happened. I removed the lid and kept heating, stirring regularly.

10 minutes.

15 minutes.

20 minutes.

75 minutes.

105 minutes.

The whole process seemed to take forever. Especially between the 20 and 75 minute photos, change was very incremental and slow, to the degree I wondered if it was working at all. The important thing to remember is very low heat, at least until it has mostly melted. This yields a nice golden fat, without browning or developing off-flavors.

I quit at about two hours, though I could've gone longer and maybe yielded some cracklins. At that point, I (precariously) tipped everything through a mesh strainer into a measuring cup, then into jars for storage.

It's unfortunately a messy business.

It cooled to a nice creamy white, and made Jon's goulash extra-delicious. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the rest of it...

Bosnian in Bevo Mill

For dinner, I had goulash, chicken livers with polenta, Slovenian beer, a bite of cheesecake, and a cappuccino.

Sorry for bad photo quality, but it was dark. I don't usually even like taking photos of my food in public, but, well, there was something else I wanted to photograph for the blog so it was ok. More on that in a minute...


We went to Laganini, my favorite local Bosnian restaurant. St. Louis is the home of 30,000+ Bosnian refugees, so there is a great neighborhood here called Bevo Mills, that is full of Bosnian deliciousness. Laganini supposedly also has some of the best pizza in our (pizza parlor-saturated) town, but the rest of their menu is so interesting I haven't managed to try any of it yet. When I do, their intriguing-sounding tuna fish pizza is first on my list.

In any case, their goulash is simple but tasty. The chicken livers were kind of ill-conceived on my part- as I get older, things I used to eat without thinking about I now think about, and get grossed out by. I'll still try anything, but certain odd meat products are less and less appetizing. Maybe I could've managed it without the goulash, but it was just too rich and I gave up. The polenta, which I generally don't like, was really nice, with a little more texture than I'm used to and some underlying complex flavors (perhaps onion and schmaltz?). The beer was Lasko, which actually has a caron (thank you, Wikipedia) over the "s", and is thus pronounced "lahshko", was pretty good. A friend described it as Heineken with more hops, which is apt. I had a bite of someone else's cheesecake, which was delicious (and homemade). The cappuccino was nice, too, but could've used a little more foam.

Beyond the really good food, the good prices, the pretty decor, the great (and yes, dudes in my group, very pretty) waitress, there is the best thing of all. Something worth taking photos of.



Singing! On Saturday nights, the owner and a friend break out a guitar, a keyboard, and various computer synthesizer thingies and go to town. It is awesome. We had a great time drinking our coffee and listening to Balkan synth-folk.