what to do with roasts with little fat?

[kmamma]

I usually slow-cook my roasts in the crockpot to make life easier, but with the low-fat movement farmers instruct their butchers to trim most fat, if not all, off the meat, which does not make certain cuts good candidates for slow, moist heat (chuck, brisket, ham roast etc).
I try to only get arm, rump roast, pork shoulder but often my farmer is out of those cuts, so I get the chuck/ham roast intstead which has hardly any marbling. I tried adding lard to the pot but it doesn't help the meat from drying out.
So what do you all do with those fat-free roasts (in the meantime that is, until consumers have become enlightened about animal fats)? There's a techinque described in Joy of Cooking called 'larding'--anyone's tried it? I'd need some larding needles, where to get them?

Thanks.

[cristeen]

Try Sur La Table for the larding needle.

As for what I do... I shop at a butcher that doesn't trim all the fat. A good butcher knows better.

Barring that, low slow cooking. I have not had any luck doing this in the crockpot though. It always turns out dry. I take my soup pot, put the roast in there, add liquid (a beer, a can of soda, wine, stock, whatever I feel like, but about a cup and a half to 2 cups), cover the pot with foil and then put the lid on it. You want to make extra sure that none of the moisture escapes. If it's super lean, adding some fat to the pot wouldn't hurt. Then bake at 300-325 for about 4-6 hours. At no point should you check on it. Never open the pan until it's done. Then you can take the foil and lid off and let it get a little color under the broiler if you like.

And searing it, which has long been the recommended practice, just makes the meat drier. Alton Brown did an episode on that, and showed that it makes things worse, not better.

Another trick is to wrap the item in fat. Fat netting, pork skin (with the fat attached), or even bacon wrapped around your item will help baste it with the fat it needs to keep from drying out.