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Strain and Jar the Lard, Collect Cracklings

14:01
18:57
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At 14:01 in

How to make Lard..simple, easy and fun!

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What happens here

After several hours of cooking (around 6 hours for 30 lbs of fat), the fat should be fully rendered into liquid lard, and the solid cracklings will be golden brown and crispy. Carefully ladle the hot liquid lard through a fine-mesh strainer and a canning funnel into clean canning jars. The presenter cautions against overfilling the jars and pouring too quickly to prevent the glass from breaking due to thermal shock. He demonstrates squeezing the cracklings in the strainer with the ladle to extract more lard. Once filled, immediately place the lids on the jars and tighten them, using a rag or glove to protect your hands from the hot glass. The jars will self-seal as they cool. The remaining cracklings are transferred to a separate pot and later stored in a freezer bag.

Goal: Separate the rendered lard from the cracklings and safely jar the lard for storage.

Tools and materials

  • Canning Funnel — Guiding hot liquid into jars
  • Clean Canning Jars Mason — Storing the finished lard
  • Fine-Mesh Strainer — Separating cracklings from lard
  • Freezer Bag — Storing cooled cracklings in the freezer
  • Jar Lids and Rings — Sealing the canning jars
  • Ladle — Scooping the hot lard and cracklings
  • Large Heavy-Bottomed Pot — Containing the rendered lard and cracklings
  • Rag or Heat-Resistant Gloves — Protecting hands when handling hot jars
  • Separate Pot — Collecting the separated cracklings
  • Cracklings N/A — Being collected for consumption or storage
  • Rendered Lard N/A — Being jarred for storage

What they say

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all right we started this probably about 3 30. it's now 9 15 at night and we're finally getting to the point where we can start jarring this stuff up so i want to show you i poured some this stuff is absolutely beautiful i've poured some in some jars let's get the big one and this is what it looks like well it almost looks like some of that stuff that you make down in the holler it looks like moonshine almost but uh what we've got here uh the pot is up to about right here and we've cooked down all of the fat and my advice to you is to cut it into two inch squares before and cut it a little bit smaller than two inch squares okay so cut it into about uh one inch squares okay this these are the cracklins and this is uh southern gold right here okay this is the fat so those chunks were like this big and now they're down to little bitty chunks and those are cracklings and what we use those for around these parts is to put in cornbread okay so you make your cornbread and you put some cracklins in it guys post me a comment if you've ever had cracklins they are absolutely delicious now this is about as close as you'll ever get to boiling gasoline in your in your house so do it outside do it in a safe area that's why we're in the shop there's a little bit of smoke in the shop i'm actually going to turn the heat down all the way down on this thing right now i'll just reach down unplug it and i'm going to show you dipping some out so we got a jar here and we've got a canning funnel we'll stick that canning funnel right there this is an option so i use a little strainer right here and you can see the strainer still has a little bit of the oil in there and i use a ladle the larger the ladle the easier the job so we just ladle out gently right there into the jar okay you don't want to do this too awful fast because if you do it real real fast you'll put too much heat in the jar all at once and it could cause the jar to break so if you're doing it out in your garage or your shop make sure it's about 60 or 55 degrees so if you go too awful crazy with really cold jars this stuff is hot hot hot and it will break a jar so we're probably running somewhere in the neighborhood of 325 degrees we'll fill this up while you guys are here probably takes this is a quart jar these are old quart jars i've got tons of them this is probably going to be somewhere in a neighborhood of 12 quarts 12 to 14 quarts i've got some pints to give away to neighbors and friends and quarts to give…

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