Alright guy's I can't help it...
This is the article that I have been waiting for to expound upon the benefits of using lard in your cooking over "Vegetable Shortening." The exception being a brand of shortening made by Spectrum Organics which makes it with Palm Oil. The reason that lard is superior (especially grass fed/organically raised lard) is that it not only is better for cooking with it is healthier for you!! :D
Here's the article:
Lard
After decades of trying, its moment is finally here.
By Regina Schrambling
Posted Tuesday, June 2, 2009, at 11:39 AM ET
Read more from Slate's Food issue.
Wait long enough and everything bad for you is good again. Sugar? Naturally better than high-fructose corn syrup. Chocolate? A bar a day keeps the doctor away. Caffeine? Bring it on.
Lard, however, has always been a ridiculously hard sell. Over at least the last 15 years, it's repeatedly been given a clean bill of health, and good cooks regularly point out how superior this totally natural fat is for frying and pastries. But that hasn't been enough to keep Americans from recoiling—lard's negative connotations of flowing flesh and vats of grease and epithets like larda** and tub of lard have been absurd hurdles. But no longer. I'm convinced that the redemption of lard is finally at hand because we live in a world where trendiness is next to godliness. And lard hits all the right notes, especially if you euphemize it as rendered pork fat—bacon butter.
Lard has clearly won the health debate. Shortening, the synthetic substitute foisted on this country over the last century, has proven to be a much bigger health hazard because it contains trans fats, the bugaboo du jour. Corporate food scientists figured out long ago that you can fool most of the people most of the time, and shortening (and its butter-aping cousin, margarine) had a pretty good ride after Crisco was introduced in 1911 as a substitute for the poor man's fat. But shortening really vanquished lard in the 1950s when researchers first connected animal fat in the diet to coronary heart disease. By the '90s, Americans had been indoctrinated to mainline olive oil, but shortening was still the go-to solid fat over lard or even butter in far too many cookbooks.
4 comments:
this is pretty interesting to know.. I grew up with my mum and grandmum using lard.
Hey I was brought up on Lard, and look at me now!
Uh oh, maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all.....
Very interesting! In England when I was growing up, it was always lard, or suet, which actually looks like real animal fat. I still use both of those. However, I like a sunflower white lard and use that when in England. I think like in all things, moderation is the key. I think people over here eat too much and that's the problem, not so much what they eat but the quantity of it. It amazes me how big the portions are. Lard makes wonderful chips (that's French fries to you Americans) and it makes great pastry. I always use suet for puddings. Thanks for your post. It made me happy, knowing that I am not the only one in the world who prefers lard.
Blessings, Star
Occupying note !
:-)
Joollliiieeeesss!!!!!!!!!!1
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