It’s somewhat risky to make the case for lard for a publication whose cookery columnist is the author of a book on butter. But so be it. Because lard has generally been at best overlooked and at worst openly maligned, and that is madness.
The cost of cooking oils has rocketed in the past couple of years – sunflower oil has trebled in price, olive oil doubled. Butter is much dearer too. Yet inexplicably no one has suggested lard might step in to save the day. The cheapest pack of butter at Tesco will currently cost you £1.99. A block of lard is 50p.
It has long been a slight object of ridicule. A ‘tub of lard’ is somehow crueller an insult than the Shakespearean ‘fat as butter’. (Poor Roy Hattersley once found that out the hard way after his 11th-hour no-show on Have I Got News For You).
Butter in contrast is having something of a moment. Thomas Straker – helped by the bad boy looks of a young Marco Pierre White – has shot to fame using vast quantities of it (he’s since launched his own range available in supermarkets. Fair hustle). But my bet is on lard. We can’t get enough of Le Creuset, Agas and rustic farmhouse charm. Lard greases the whole homespun operation.
Many of the condemnations made against lard on health grounds have turned out to be porkies. It has less saturated fat than butter. It’s high in monounsaturated fats (the good type), important to lower cholesterol for a healthy heart (and much better than the trans fats in the likes of synthetic shortening). It’s rich in all sorts of nutrients – especially choline and Vitamin D (particularly important in the sun-starved winter months). Everything in moderation of course, but the BBC reported that researchers analysing 1,000 raw foods put lard in their top ten for nutritional balance. Auntie, tell us more!
Speaking of Auntie, the Two Fat Ladies (about whom I wrote last year) were great fans. On Desert Island Discs, Clarissa Dickson Wright noted: ‘The only thing that stimulates the serotonin in the body is animal fat. And I’m quite certain that the increase in antidepressants is directly relatable to the decrease in eating fat.’ She was ahead of her time. The health credentials of animal fats – long vilified – are now being re-evaluated.
Lard is easy to use. Its higher melting and smoking temperature than butter mean less chance of burning, so excellent for roasts or searing meat. I use it for roast potatoes (goose or duck fat is fine at Christmas but a bit much the rest of the year). Above all it is vital in pastry. At the Holborn Dining Rooms, chef Calum Franklin uses exclusively lard for his pork pies. Of course it should also be used to make your mince pies, Eccles cakes and Cornish pasties. Then there is lardy cake, for which our own Olivia Potts has a recipe (I was especially gratified by this butter-backer’s acknowledgement that, owing to lard’s lower water content than butter, the things you bake with it are ‘flakier, more tender, finer and more delicate’).
It looks a bit like car grease or Pritt Stick. But all it needs is good branding and perhaps a new name – ‘grass-fed rendered pork fat’ is harder to resist
I’m not suggesting butter is redundant. In pastry, a combination of both will often yield the best result: lard for flakiness, butter for richness and flavour. And I’m not going to suggest making a lard hollandaise or mashed potato (though I suspect both will shortly appear on London restaurant menus at north of a tenner).
If I had a criticism it’s that it looks a bit like car grease or Pritt Stick, lacking the sunny yellow optimism of butter. But that is nothing good branding won’t fix. All it needs is a celebrity backer, and perhaps a new name – ‘grass-fed rendered pork fat’ is harder to resist. There’s space for an entrepreneurial type to come up with an insufferably upmarket version wrapped in wax paper: sea salt-flecked fat from outdoor-reared native-breed Swaledale pigs nourished on Yorkshire puds and IPA.
It is popular in Italy, where with names like Lardo di Colonnata and Lardo d’Arnad it is regarded by tourists as the height of sophistication. Why are we, like the Italians, not curing our own pigs’ fat in salt and herbs? In the Aosta Valley in the Western Alps, Lardo d’Arnad is typically smeared with honey over toasted wholemeal bread. Someone fetch me a crumpet, pronto.
And I finish again with price. A quarter of the price of butter. If there was any other product with such a cheap alternative we wouldn’t think twice. We should be oinking in delight at this cheap and comforting ingredient. Lard has a place in every larder. Let’s pig out.
And then we can move on to talking about the delights of tallow.
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