heavy tallow and lard users....

[tanyalynn]

I'm trying to figure out how much tallow and/or lard I should plan on us using over time--say each week.

I'd like to plan better than I did this year--summers here are so hot and humid that rendering during the warmer half of the year is just miserable and I've got an upright freezer that I can use to store rendered fat.

How much rendered fat do you use each week? And if you could include your family size and anything else you think would be helpful (do you consume a lot of dairy fat?), I would really appreciate it.

Thanks!

[cristeen]

It really depends. What are you using it for? In our house, lard is reserved for the occasional biscuits or pie crust, and deep frying so i might use 5#/yr. But we dont eat a ton of grains, so its use is occassional. And i have 5 gallons of CO to use everywhere else, and i save bacon grease for savory uses.

[redvlagrl]

I also use EVOO, but I use about 1lb of lard every 2 months. Rendering is really easy, so it's no biggie to do it every 6 months or so.

[Arduinna]

I would just figure out how much you need by the recipes you cook, say over a 3 month period on average and then add a little for the holiday season. I probably still have 3 pounds left of the 4 pounds I bought a couple months ago, but I also cook with bacon grease that I save up. I really don't cook a ton of pie crusts or biscuits. I use lard daily when cleaning my cast iron pans, dh uses it when he makes carnitas. I'd use it for deep frying but I rarely deep fry. I mostly use butter for baking, except for pie crusts, biscuits and coconut oil for cakes that call for oil like carrot cake. If you will be using lard instead of butter for some of that I'd add that amount to the tally.

[deditus]

Hi Tanya dear. As you know, we are dairy free so lard is our primary cooking fat. We use (for our family of 2 adults and 1 preschooler) about a half a pound/week of lard. Our other main fat is coconut oil and we go through about 1 gallon/quarter of that. I use lard for sauteing, frying, and baking, every day for at least one dish, usually a tuber, whether it is fried parsnip rounds or oven fries. Also, for stuff like a quick veggie saute I will fry some garlic and onion in lard and add shredded beets, carrots, diced bell pepper, greens, mushrooms, etc. I started using lard more for 2 reasons, the vitamin d and that higher smoke point. I didn't want to waste my ev co on high oven temps when I am making like fries or something and I didn't want to have to buy 2 types of co. I mainly use the co for orange stuff like sweet potatoes, squash, and carrots where I appreciate the flavor, for raw treats like Larabar type stuff, and for baking. Just to give you an idea of what kinds of things we cook with them. It's so hard to guesstimate what someone else will use when you never can exactly tell what another person's cooking style is!

ETA: Oh yeah, I do save bacon grease, too and mainly use that where I like the smokey flavor like sauteing steamed brussels sprouts or peas are really good with bacon grease.

[Koalamom]

Thanks for the thread tanya!
Subbing!

[tanyalynn]

Arduinna--forgot to quote--I don't feel like I have a good routine yet, I'm striving and yearning for some organization--this summer/fall I've had to change up our cooking quite a bit to accommodate the dietary needs of DH (who's doing great low carb) and DD who seems to need lower protein. I'm and just barely getting my feet back under me in terms of doing any sort of meal planning.

Originally Posted by cristeen

It really depends. What are you using it for? In our house, lard is reserved for the occasional biscuits or pie crust, and deep frying so i might use 5#/yr. But we dont eat a ton of grains, so its use is occassional. And i have 5 gallons of CO to use everywhere else, and i save bacon grease for savory uses.

I'm tending to use the lard and/or tallow as our most common cooking fat, only using coconut for things that really benefit from the coconut flavor--some sweets like brownies, and some savory stuff like roasted sweet potatoes and Thai-inspired curries.

So... we eat a fair amount of potatoes (the kids anyway) and whether I'm cooking them on the stovetop or roasting them, I'd use tallow or lard, I'd use it as the cooking fat for soups or stews or chili, or as the fat to saute some veggies before making a rice pilaf-type dish.

I tend to be fairly generous when adding cooking fat, and I'm not using at lot of bacon anymore so I don't have that to draw from.

Originally Posted by deditus

Hi Tanya dear. As you know, we are dairy free so lard is our primary cooking fat. We use (for our family of 2 adults and 1 preschooler) about a half a pound/week of lard.

Our other main fat is coconut oil and we go through about 1 gallon/quarter of that. I use lard for sauteing, frying, and baking, every day for at least one dish, usually a tuber, whether it is fried parsnip rounds or oven fries. Also, for stuff like a quick veggie saute I will fry some garlic and onion in lard and add shredded beets, carrots, diced bell pepper, greens, mushrooms, etc. I started using lard more for 2 reasons, the vitamin d and that higher smoke point. I didn't want to waste my ev co on high oven temps when I am making like fries or something and I didn't want to have to buy 2 types of co. I mainly use the co for orange stuff like sweet potatoes, squash, and carrots where I appreciate the flavor, for raw treats like Larabar type stuff, and for baking. Just to give you an idea of what kinds of things we cook with them. It's so hard to guesstimate what someone else will use when you never can exactly tell what another person's cooking style is!

ETA: Oh yeah, I do save bacon grease, too and mainly use that where I like the smokey flavor like sauteing steamed brussels sprouts or peas are really good with bacon grease.

Thank you for the details, that helps! That's pretty similar to how I'm using our fats, though since our new batch of tallow is pretty tasty, I'm using it where in the past I would've used lard.

So... in terms of converting volume to weight for fat... I don't have a kitchen scale anymore, but for water, 1 pint = 1 pound, and fat's lighter... you're saying maybe a pint of lard per week? Plus 1 gallon = 16 cups, so about 1.5 cups of coconut oil per week (rounded).

[deditus]

Originally Posted by tanyalynn

So... in terms of converting volume to weight for fat... I don't have a kitchen scale anymore, but for water, 1 pint = 1 pound, and fat's lighter... you're saying maybe a pint of lard per week? Plus 1 gallon = 16 cups, so about 1.5 cups of coconut oil per week (rounded).

I have a 3 lbs in a 1/2 gallon pail right now, so like 2/3 pint/week? If my math is right and I'm not very good a math. I guess that would be about the same as co oil then, 1 gallon/quarter.