Rendering Tallow or Lard

The process for rendering fat.

I needed more pork lard and while the wood stove is going, is a very good time to render fat. I usually do it outside on my portable hotplate, which is good, because it can sometimes smell a little strong in the house. I didn’t notice that this time though.

I thought it would be a good opportunity to do a little video, but that didn’t work out as well as I’d like, so I thought instead that I would do a step by step tutorial as I can explain more.

I have previously talked about tallow and lard, which you can read here, but this post will be just about the process.

I have always rendered it on the stove top, but I know that some people do it in the oven or in a slow cooker.

Place the fat into a large enough saucepan and pour in some water. You need quite a bit of water as the picture below shows. You can cut the fat up into smaller pieces if you like, however I just took this from the freezer and straight into the pot so didn’t bother to cut it up (I usually don’t!) This fat is pork belly…