Praise the lard and pass the biscuits

It’s not too early to start thinking about the Thanksgiving turkey, and here is what I’d like to suggest: lard.

Yes, lard. I know, it sounds gross and it looks gross, too, but I’ve learned a lot about lard this week and I’m here to tell you two things. First, it’s surprisingly healthier than many other cooking fats.

Second, I roasted an inexpensive store-brand chicken breast with a coating of lard (mixed with fresh sage and chopped garlic) under the skin and the result was the single best chicken breast I’ve ever made. And I didn’t have to do any contortions such as air drying the uncooked meat in my refrigerator for 24 hours.

Healthy and unhealthy fat

Let’s start with my claim that lard isn’t unhealthy, because I’m sure you don’t believe me (I wouldn’t have believed it myself).

I won’t try and explain the science of fat and health in detail; if you want to really get a good lesson, go to Harvard Health’s website (www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-truth-about-fats-bad-and-good). I’m about to quote from it, but it’s worth reading the entire article.

Briefly, your body does need some fat but what it really wants is polyunsaturated fat. This is the kind you find in fatty fish such as salmon; in walnuts; in canola oil and in unhydrogenated soybean oil.

Harvard Health explains that, “Polyunsaturated fats are essential fats. That means they’re required for normal body functions but your body can’t make them. So you must get them from food. 

“Polyunsaturated fats are used to build cell membranes and the covering of nerves. They are needed for blood clotting, muscle movement, and inflammation.”

Lard is not a polyunsaturated fat. And by the way, yes, lard is made from pig fat. 

But it’s also not high in saturated fat, which is kind of the worst fat but not nearly as bad a fat as we used to think. Scientists used to say that saturated fat was pretty much a highway to heart disease, but there’s some doubt about that now.

You get saturated fat in whole-milk dairy products (which would include butter and most cheeses) and in animal fats such as the kind you find in red meat, and in coconut oil. These foods are not horrible for you but you should limit how much of them you eat.

When we talk about the evils of saturated fat, we often counter it by talking about the relative merits of monounsaturated fats, which are at the heart of what we sometimes refer to as the Mediterranean diet, in part because it has a lot of olive oil in it and olive oil is both Mediterranean and a monounsaturated fat. Other good sources are avocados and nuts and cooking oils such as canola and peanut.

To recap: the poly fats are the best for you; mono is second best; saturated fat is the worst but not as bad as we used to think.

Trans fats are very bad

Worst of all are the trans fats, which are a byproduct of processing oils and making them solid and shelf stable. 

Harvard Health says, “Trans fats have no known health benefits and there is no safe level of consumption. Therefore, they have been officially banned in the United States.” That’s pretty unequivocal. 

The sneaky bit in there is that the U.S. government has outlawed trans fats — but they left a loophole in the law so that manufacturers can say they have zero grams of trans fats even if they have a small amount of hydrogenated oils (which create trans fats). Crisco says it has zero grams of trans fats; critics claim that there is still some trans fat in there.

So we now know that the main, solid cooking fats tend to either have trans fats (Crisco, although it doesn’t have a lot) or saturated fats (butter, coconut oil). 

Why lard is not so bad

Lard, weirdly, has a lot of monounsaturated fats, the kind that are not only not too unhealthy but which also help lower your bad LDL cholesterol. In that sense, it’s better for you than butter or Crisco, which are respectively a saturated fat and a partially hydrogenated fat. 

There is a caveat here: Some lard sold at some stores is partially hydrogenated and, thus, has trans fats. Don’t buy those brands. You can get Armour brand lard at most grocery stores, and it at least claims to be fully hydrogenated (yes, it’s hard to be this cynical).

Another caveat: Although lard has a lot of relatively healthy monounsaturated fat, it also is almost half made of saturated fat.

Pies, cakes and tamales

So, you’re not going to want to eat lard every day. But as with most foods, eating some in moderation can be fine. And in addition to the fats, lard is also supposed to have a lot of vitamins D and E, and it’s supposed to have some of the healthy omega 3 fatty acids that you normally find only in foods with polyunsaturated fat (salmon, walnuts, see above).

All summer, I’ve been making a really delicious pie crust with just almond flour, coconut oil and an egg (for the recipe, pick up a free copy of our Farm to Table special section, or find the electronic version of that issue online at www.tricornernews.com). Yesterday I tried baking it with lard and it came out of the oven beautiful and delicious; and the uncooked dough was much smoother and easier to work with than the coconut oil version. 

If you’re a serious baker, you’ve probably thought about making a traditional pie crust with a mix of lard and butter. In recent years, most people have used Crisco instead of lard, because it seemed healthier. 

Now that I know that lard is possibly a little healthier than Crisco or even coconut oil, I’m ready to use it in a crust, and to try it in one of my favorite spend-the-day-in-the-kitchen foods: homemade tamales (although really, you can get excellent fresh tamales at the Breezy Hill Orchard table at the Saturday Millerton farmers market — they are made with olive oil). 

Actually, the reason I got on this lard kick was that my daughter and I were watching a series of YouTube cooking videos called Binging with Babish. While making tamales, chef/documentary filmmaker Andrew Rea threw some lard in with some corn masa and said something along the lines of, “Really, lard isn’t that unhealthy and it’s not like you’re going to cook with it everyday. Just use it.” 

At first I assumed I would have trouble finding ways to use lard even once or twice a year. Now that I’ve cooked with it, I’m tempted to use it to roast potatoes with, to make perfect roasted chicken and to turn out fluffy light pastries. 

Oh, and the reason why lard makes such exquisite cakes, cookies and biscuits? There are a couple of science things going on, but one is that butter melts at a lower temperature than lard; and it kind of spreads after it melts, meaning your baked goods flatten out a little. Butter also separates into liquids and solids when it melts, and that tends to make your pastries harden up a little. 

Best roasted poultry ever

There are some other things too, but let’s get back to where we began this article, which is with Thanksgiving turkey. 

I still have to try this on a turkey, and I promise that I will before Thanksgiving. But this week I took some fresh sage from the garden and chopped it up.  I mushed it up in a bowl with some chopped garlic and some Armour lard (you can buy fancier leaf lard online and possibly from one of our local hog/pig farmers). 

I spread the mixture under the skin of two not-very-exciting store-brand bone-in skin-on chicken breasts. I roasted them at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes, until my digital thermometer said it was 160 degrees (Lavatools PT12 Javelin Digital Instant Read Meat Thermometer, $25, best kitchen tool I’ve ever bought).

The meat was dripping moist and tender as butter; the skin was crisp and crackly. And the sage and garlic added wonderful flavor. 

The idea with adding lard to poultry is that the skin is very thin and the birds don’t have a lot of fat on them (which is why we like poultry). But chicken and turkey can come out kind of dry and tough. The lard solves this problem. 

As soon as turkeys begin to appear in the meat department at the grocery store, I will try this technique and give you a report. The biggest challenge I foresee for this Thanksgiving will be to not overuse lard; it will be tempting to use it on the turkey and in the pie crusts and on the roasted potatoes. Heck, I bet it’s great on Brussels sprouts too. But as we always say in this column: Moderation is the key to healthy eating. 

Also on the subject of getting ready for Thanksgiving: I have taken a package of Armour lard; cut fresh sage leaves; and chopped fresh garlic. I mixed them all together and put them in a large jar. The theoretical outcome: When Thanksgiving comes, I will have a jar of lard flavored with garlic and fresh herbs; and the lard will preserve the sage and keep it soft.