Re: Cooking with Lard
I do...
It and tallow (beef fat) are both awesome to cook with once you get used to them. You can get textures, flavors and savory characteristics that you simply can't get any other way.
Stir fry, pan fry, baking, all great with lard as it's a bit more neutral than tallow. Deep frying can be tricky as lard's smoke point and the temperature needed for a good deep fry are very close, so there is little margin for over-temp errors.
Where the fat comes from on the animal can affect the flavor of the lard and what you can do with it. The lard you rendered, being that it came from the shoulders, will be good for cooking and some baking purposes, but might or might not be suitable for delicate pastries or cookies due to it possibly having a flavor of it's own. This is something you will have to determine yourself.
Despite this, what you have is far better than the blocks of crap you see in the stores as they are hydrogenated and who knows what else.
Now, home made flour tortillas or a pizza crust (my apologies to Moe) made with lard, oh yeah...
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