Finally, I am home for the day and can start the tomato sauce. We have tomatoes all over the place, and I gathered all the ripest Roma VF, leaving the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue, for now.
It was enough to fill a kitchen sink.
After going over numerous recipes for roasted tomato sauce, I decided on how I would make these.
I have 3 roasting pans and can fit them all in the oven together.
To start, the bottoms got a generous splash of olive oil. I then took advantage of this and used the smaller onions and garlic. I finished off an entire small braid of onions, which gave me the equivalent of maybe 2 large onions. 😁 I also smashed and peeled cloves from about a dozen small garlic bulbs. That gave me the equivalent of about 2 large bulbs.
I wasn’t too concerned about the proportions in each roasting pan. They will all go into one pot, later. That’s when I will be adding fresh herbs and seasonings.
The down side of using the smallest bulbs is that it took a really long time standing at the counter, prepping them.
My back is killing me, and I took painkillers before I started.
So I am taking a break now.
Next step is to trim and deseed the tomatoes. That’s going to be another long time, standing at the counter!
I plan on leaving the skins, though, as I will be using the immersion blender as a final step.
As for the black tomatoes, once the sauce is done in the oven, I think I will slice the ripest ones and dehydrate them. As much as I can fit on baking pans, at least. There are more Romas ripening, so there will likely be more sauce or paste to make, later.
I filled my large colander with the ripest of the Roma VF we have laying on a screen in the cat free zone, as well as the ripest Indigo Blue Chocolate and Black Beauties, filling the colander to almost overflowing.
After going through a number of recipes, I decided to not blanch them first. The Roma got topped, halved and seeded first, then went into my larger stock pot. I considered doing the other tomatoes separately, but didn’t want to mess with more pots and just mixed them all together.
When we processed tomatoes last year, we blanched and cooked them, before running them through a sieve, so any seeds were no longer viable by the time they went into the compost heap. This time, I seeded them first. I expect we’ll be having some volunteers in the compost pile, next year! 😄
For the seasoning, I kept things simple. I harvested some fresh yellow onions, picking ones the cats rolled on and broke the stems, since those were not going to be getting any bigger. They were a decent size, though, and I only used three of the bunch I picked. The rest got braided and are now hanging in the cat free zone (the living room) with the garlic to cure.
I grabbed a garlic bulb that turned out to have two huge cloves, as well as a bunch of fresh thyme from the pot in the living room. Along with that, I added some freshly ground salt; my husband picked up new salt and pepper grinders to replace our old and breaking ones, and got a container of Himalayan pink salt chunks for the salt grinder, too. I also added a bit of sugar and lemon juice.
Once the tomatoes had stewed long enough that the skins could be easily removed, I sautéed the onions and whole garlic cloves in some ghee until the onions were translucent. I was going to strain the tomatoes through a fine colander I have, but I couldn’t find it, so it went through a large sieve, instead. This sieve has a quite fine mesh on it. I don’t know how much difference it would have made if I’d used the colander, since there really wasn’t a lot of pulp in there, but the end result was more like tomato juice than tomato sauce!
Which is why it ended up taking much longer than expected to cook it down to a more sauce like consistency.
All those tomatoes had filled my larger stock pot. By the time I strained out the skins, it barely filled half of my smaller stock pot. I cooked it down until it seemed thick enough, then poured the sauce into sterilized 750ml canning jars. I was able to fill two, plus maybe a third of the last jar. That one got a twist off lid. In the photo, the whitish chunks are the broken up pieces of garlic cloves. Mmmmm….
They are now sitting out to cool over night, and then they’re going into the fridge. There isn’t enough there to bother actually canning the sauce.
I think with the next batch, though, I might take the time to make tomato paste again – this time on the hot plate on the dining table, to free up the kitchen, like we did last year. I don’t expect to be making as much as we did last year, and we only got a dozen 125ml jars of paste at the time. They went over so very well, though, they didn’t last long. That’s why my original intention had been to grow so many paste tomatoes this year, and it just didn’t happen. Hopefully, we’ll be more prepared, next year!
Altogether, this took about 5 or 6 hours to finish. If we’d been working with more tomatoes, I would have broken out our giant stock pot – the one that’s big enough to brine a turkey, with room to spare – to cook down the tomatoes. That’s what I used to make the paste last year.
We still have plenty of tomatoes resting on the screen in the living room and, of course, lots more on the vines, so we will be doing this again, probably a couple more times.
I did get a bit of a nap in before I started, but I am still so very tired. I’ll expect I’ll be sleeping on the couch again tonight, too. The family did keep checking on my room, and my husband even had Snarly Marlee in the living room to give her a break from the kittens for a while, and there were no new messes. Hopefully, things will stay that way, but my mattress is still damp from the previous ones.
I so look forward to getting cats and kittens adopted out!
Speaking of which, still no sign of The Phantom. The Cat Lady and I have been discussing alternatives if she doesn’t show up, and tomorrow she plans to drop off a trap for us.
Still no interest in the kittens she shared photos of.
Since they are friendlier and easier to catch, she’s going to see about booking us to get a bunch of males fixed, next.
As much as I’d like to get the outside cats fixed and adopted out, we really need to adopt out more inside cats. Some of them are inside only because they were going to get taken and adopted out, and it just didn’t end up happening.
One of the odd things about our garden plans not panning out this year is that, while we are harvesting more of some things faster than we can conveniently eat, it’s not enough to make it worth canning or freezing.
Today, I decided to take most of what’s been slowly building up to make a large soup. We roasted a couple of chickens yesterday, so that was my main protein.
Since I was using whatever was on hand, I measured nothing. I just chopped everything so that they would finish cooking at about the same time.
So here’s my not-a-recipe.
First, a couple of shallots and a small onion that got accidentally harvested while weeding, were sautéed in butter along with some Uzbek golden carrots and a few Gold Ball turnips, and the one tiny Honeyboat Delicata squash that got accidentally harvested when the stem broke off while in was checking on it. All of those needed the longest time to cook. A small handful of Spoon tomatoes went in, then green and yellow beans, and finally some green and yellow patty pan squash. A whole bulb of garlic went in, too – all 2 cloves that were so big, I was able to dice them. After those sautéed for a while, I took the pan juices from the chicken roasting pan and ran them through a sieve into the pot, along with just enough water to barely cover all the vegetables, bringing it to a boil, adding a big spoon full of chicken stock powder as well. I didn’t need to add any other seasoning. Last of all went some Irish Cobbler potatoes. These were the small ones I’d brought in, leaving the larger ones to continue curing, that had gotten a thorough scrubbing last night. I picked out the smallest ones, most of which didn’t need any chopping at all. More water was added until it seemed like enough, and it was brought to a boil.
At that point, my daughter too over for me so I could make a quick run to get more kibble. With the running around I have to do over the next while, I wanted to get more while I had the time.
My daughter simmered the soup until the potatoes were soft, then added some diced roasted chicken. For the final creamy touch, she also added an 8oz block of cream cheese and took the immersion blender to the whole thing!
It definitely went over well. By the time I got home, there was just over a bowl of soup left for me to try!
It was delicious.
Even the parsley I sprinkled on top was dehydrated from our own parsley we grew a few years ago. We dehydrated so much, we still have some!
I had it with a couple of slices of bread. The girls have been making at least a loaf every day, then sometimes starting another one during the night. I’m really glad we picked up that bread machine!
Meanwhile, on a less cheerful note…
I got an email from my sister letting me know she wasn’t going to be able to visit my mother tomorrow as planned, asking me to go over instead, as her car is in the shop. Turns out that knocking noise in the back was a loose wheel! TTT is getting her staples out tomorrow, but not until 3, so I would be able to go, but earlier than I normally do. I called my mother and the first thing I asked was if she’d talked to the pharmacist about the T3s she’s refusing to take. She said no; my sister was coming over tomorrow, and she was going to get her to drive her to the pharmacy so she could talk to the pharmacist in person. Not just any pharmacist, though, but the new store manager. I told her about my sister’s email about her car, and said I could come in to drive her around, but since I had an appointment, it had to be earlier. I suggested 11. In reality, 10 would have been better, but I didn’t think my mother would accept that. Well, she didn’t like 11, either, and asked if we could make it 12. I said no, I wouldn’t have time for that. Oh, so I’m always in a hurry…
???
Long story short…
I’m always in a rush and never spend time with her. My sister’s car troubles were just an excuse she made up, and now my mother’s entire day’s plans have to change (as if ours didn’t change as well!) Also, my brother is dropping the responsibility of taking care of her on me and my sister. None of us call her or spend enough time with her, we’re all terrible people who don’t go to church and don’t know right from wrong, my brother should practically be her slave because she “gave” the farm to him, and she paid for “everything”, so we should all be doing whatever she wants us to do, no matter how badly she treats us, because she needs our help. Oh, and I don’t allow her on the farm anymore, but when I do, I don’t serve her tea.
When I finally said, if I’m so bad, maybe I should stop coming over to help her completely. Did she still want me to come over tomorrow? Of course, she twisted that around and said that, if I didn’t want to come over, she would just find a way to walk over.
To the bank, the pharmacy and the grocery store?
I called her on the manipulation and guilt tripping, then simply told her I’d be there for 11, while she kept insisting she would walk. Her knees are so bad, she is starting to have trouble navigating her tiny apartment, never mind the half block to the grocery store. The pharmacy is something like 6 blocks away.
Of course, she’d have an easier time of it if she would take the T3s, but she sure as heck wouldn’t want that!
Do I sound a bit frustrated?
Yes. I’m frustrated.
I’m especially ticked off over how she is about my brother. No one has bent over backwards for her more than he has. Now he has the burden of this property on his shoulders – we are helping him by being here, but the place has problems well beyond either of our abilities or finances to fix, plus he still has the headache of dealing with property taxes and insurance for a place companies don’t even want to insure! She has no understanding that she didn’t do him a massive favour in signing the property over to home now, rather than in her will, but saddled him with a white elephant. Then she turned around and stabbed him in the back, and still can’t understand how badly she hurt him. He has pulled her butt out of the fire so many times over the decades, with zero gratitude or appreciation, it’s mind boggling he hasn’t cut her off completely.
He’s a much better man than I am, that’s for sure!
Well, we’ll see how it goes. She may act as if nothing happened at all. Or she may decide to be vindictive. Either way, she’s going to be ticked off that I will have to leave early enough to drive back home, pick up TTT and take her to the vet in time for her appointment to get her staples removed. I certainly didn’t tell my mother is was an appointment for a cat. She would have completely lost it, if I did. She’s always hated having pets in the house (my father loved them), and cats in particular. Dogs were accepted only because they helped with the cattle. They never took a dog to a vet. Not even when one of them got kicked in the heat by a horse and lost its eye. That dog lived to a grand old age, with a very messy, untreated eye. As a child, I had no understanding that this was not a good thing. Heck, I didn’t even understand that there was such a thing as a vet when it happened. So you can probably imagine that she would not be happy that we took a cat to a vet at all, even if it meant the cat living outdoors with a dangling broken leg. For us to be taking a cat to a vet on a day when she wanted me to devote my time entirely and slavishly to her would be just that much worse.
*sigh*
We’ll see how it turns out.
I’ll go back to thinking about how good that soup turned out!
Okay, so I made this video a while ago, but had all sorts of problems exporting the finished video into a file format that I could upload to YouTube that worked. After trying for days and having it fail, suddenly it worked. Nothing had changed on my computer, and there was no software update. Just, one day no-worky, another day, yes-worky.
Frustrating!
No matter!
Normally, I would have done a long, photo heavy post on making this, but I don’t have the media storage space, so I’m trying to make more videos. I’d found a video on how to make a Tuscan beef stew that looked really good, but I didn’t have the exact ingredients.
So I made it with what I had on hand.
Here is not-quite Tuscan style beef stew, made with mead.
Let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions to improve things!
Last night, I finally got around to making some butter, using whipping cream. It’s been ages since I’ve made butter! I decided to try it again when I was picking up butter at the local grocery store, and the cheap, house brand butter had gone up in price so much, it was actually more expensive than whipping cream.
Making butter is easy and relatively fast when using an electric mixer. It can also be made by putting the cream in a well sealed jar and shaking it. Hopefully, with someone that can take turns shaking it with you!
To make butter with an electric mixer, a fairly large bowl is needed, since it will be in the fluffy, whipped cream stage for quite a while. It feels like it’s taking so long, whipping and scraping the sides and whipping and scraping and whipping and scraping some more, when then suddenly it “breaks” and you’ve got butter!
Also, even with a deep bowl, you’ll get cream splattering all over! You are forewarned! 😄
One thing about using a mixer is that the churned butter’s initial texture is very different. You don’t get a lump of butter. Instead, you get this.
The beaters keep the butter from forming larger pieces, so you get lots of very little pieces, instead. This photo was taken after the butter had been drained of buttermilk, then rinsed with cold running water. The smaller pieces made it easier to gently turn it while it drained, being very careful not to push the butter through the sieve.
Once drained through the sieve, there’s still water in the butter than needs to be removed as much as possible. That’s actually the part I find most difficult. It might be easier if we had one of those old style butter presses, but I just had my flat wooden spatula to squeeze and mash the butter in a bowl. I’d press it, drain the liquid, press it again, drain the liquid, and when I thought I was done, I’d press it a bit more and get even more liquid out! Finally, I got to the point where I could mix in a bit of salt to taste. Then, I pressed the butter into a small bowl with a lid, and put it in the fridge to sit until we use it today.
In the end, I estimate I got about 1 3/4 cups of butter, and about the same volume of buttermilk. A pound of butter is 2 cups, so there’s less butter from 1L of whipping cream, but we also got two products out of it. That buttermilk will be very nice in baking!
Whether or not it’s worth making butter with whipping cream is debateable. At least if price is your measurement. Whether it’s the cream or the butter that’s more expensive seems to change rather quickly. About a year ago, I remember whipping cream selling for over $8 for 1L, while butter was still under $4 a pound. The next time I went shopping, the price of whipping cream had gone down again, though still higher than butter was at the time. If you consider being able to control the amount of salt, the flavour, and getting buttermilk as well, the benefits do add up.
If the price of butter keeps going up, while the price of whipping cream remains more stable, it may well become the most cost effective way to get butter!
While putting the jars of rendered lard into boxes, I remembered to take a picture of jars from each batch, together.
The batches are in order, with the first batch on the left, and the third batch on the right. My younger daughter ended up doing most of the work for the third batch, as I was not feeling well enough. I just got to jar it up the next day.
The third batch turned out smaller than I expected, with only 5 full jars – and I filled them only to the top of the “shoulders” of the regular mouth jars – and a 6th that was not quite fill. The fat was so thoroughly rendered that when I did the cracklings, there was only an extra couple of tablespoons out of them, so that didn’t even make it into a jar.
Also, I much, much prefer the wide mouth jars.
You can see the second batch is noticeably lighter than the other two. The second batch had less time in the slow cooker, and also got the most fat rendered off the cracklings.
Altogether, we got 22 500ml jars of lard, including the crackling lard and partial jars, out of 3 batches.
I was going to start the third and (hopefully!) last batch tonight, but it’s coming up on 5pm, and I just finished jarring up the second batch a little while ago. It can wait until tomorrow!
At times like this, I really appreciate the uninsulated old kitchen. This time of year, it’s basically a walk in freezer or refrigerator, depending on how cold things are outside. The remaining leaf lard is the thickest chunk we got and was still really frozen when I worked on the rest, yesterday, but as it sits in the old kitchen, it will soften more, yet still be frozen. That makes is a lot easier to chop, but also gives me a bit of flexibility in time for getting it processed. Yesterday evening, I had to get the girls to take over some stuff because my hips suddenly decided to go crunchy on me (they were fine by morning!), while my shoulders have started to really hurt from all the chopping. I’m doing it while sitting at the dining table, since there’s no way I can stand at a counter long enough to do it all, but the height while sitting isn’t very good, resulting in a lot of pain and stiffness right in the muscles where the neck and shoulder join. Which still hurts now, so I’m going to take an evening off from chopping.
I didn’t render the second batch in the slow cooker quite as long as the first batch; I’m curious to see if there is a noticeable difference in the colour of the lard. I might have had a touch less chopped fat in the second batch, but since I only have the depth in the slow cooker to go by, I can’t say for sure. Taking the solids out earlier did mean less liquid fat to jar up, and more volume to turn into cracklings later.
After removing the cracklings, I was able to fill six 500ml jars, with such a small amount left in the slow cooker, I just dumped the rest into the pan with the solids. After taking a break so the girls could use the kitchen, I started rendering the last of the fat out of the cracklings. While that was slowly heating up, I decided to take some leftover mashed potatoes and make them into potato patties. I just kneaded flour to the mashed potatoes until I got an dough somewhat thicker than bread dough, but not as dense as pasta dough. After breaking of sections and making them into rolls, I cut them into rounds, then pan fried them in some of the first batch cracklings lard. Enough to cover the bottom of the pan by about half an inch.
Lard has a high smoke point, so I could do these at almost deep fryer temperature. The higher the temperature, the less fat gets absorbed by the food. After cooking, they got laid out on a paper towel lined dish. They came out nice and crispy on the outside, with a smooth texture on the inside, and not at all greasy.
The lines that you see are because I set the cut rounds on a cooling rack until the pan was ready. If I’d laid them out on a plate, I would have had to flour the outsides to keep them from sticking, and I didn’t want to have burnt flour in the hot oil.
Here is the second batch of lard.
The first 6 jars were almost solid by the time the cracklings lard was done! I got another 1 1/2 pint size (500ml) jars out of the cracklings, making for a total of about 7 1/2 jars. The first batch was just under 8 jars total, so it came out very close.
The cracklings are once again laid out between paper towels, sandwiched between 9×13 baking trays and weighted down, so that cats can’t get at it!
One thing about handling all this fat for the past several days; even with constantly having to wash my hands with lots of soap, they haven’t been this soft in years!
Before I headed out to do my rounds this morning, I checked on the sun room kitties though the bathroom window.
I saw this, looking back at me.
That’s Sad Face, aka Shop Towel, on the bottom.
His face is looking rough and even more beat up than usual!
I want to feel sympathy for him, but yesterday I had to chase him off from attacking Junk Pile, repeatedly. Even when I managed to come in between them enough that Junk Pile ran off towards the house, he actually ran past me to try and get at her, and attacked her again, near the kibble house!
He doesn’t seem to have a problem with the kittens. Does he recognise that many of them (there are more, outside the photo) are clearly his progeny?
I really want to love on this cat, but he can be so aggressive towards some of the other cats! He’s one of the reasons I was worried about Potato Beetle being outside after he got fixed. He’d be more of a target and less prone to defend himself.
I can’t say how Potato Beetle is doing inside right now. Once we let him out of the carrier, he explored the house… and then disappeared. He found some hidey hole to sleep in, and I’ve yet to see him. I’ll have to ask the girls if he came out when they did the evening feeding in the basement.
While I was doing my rounds and coming back from switching out the memory card in the driveway trail cam, Pointy Baby came running up the driveway towards me, as if he hasn’t seen me in ages and was excited by my return from beyond. 😂
Then he gave me nose kisses when I picked him up!
Such a sweet little baby he is!
Once back inside, I started putting the solidified lard into the jar box for storage, remembering to get a picture, first.
I find it interesting that the darker coloured cracklings lard became so much lighter as it solidified, while the pale yellow fat became darker. I think if I’d taken the fat off earlier, it would have been more white than yellow. The solidified fat on the spoon rest I used when stirring the crock pot was certainly much lighter in colour. It should still be pretty neutral in flavour, though, compared to the cracklings’ lard.
Or, as my daughters call it, the pure, sweet fat of the hog.
Which is apparently something that became quite the viral meme on reddit and Tumblr. You can even get T-shirts with it.
I don’t recommend looking it up, though. Some of the people who ran with it went a bit… creepy on the theme. One of the t-shirt designs is funny, though.
Anyhow…
While putting the jars with canning lids on them away, I took the rings off and tested the lids. All of them are sealed tightly. I’m still keeping the one with the plastic lid, and the not-quite-full one aside to use right away.
I made a cast iron skillet corn bread with breakfast this morning. I added some of the cracklings to the dry ingredients. They want to clump together, of course, but I broke up the clumps while stirring them into the dry ingredients. They tasted really good in the corn bread!
Later today, I’ll start cutting up more of the leaf lard so I can run the slow cooker overnight. It should be interesting to see what the final tally is, when all the fat has been rendered.
Here is what the slow cooker looked like this morning.
I stirred it, breaking up the clumps of fat, several times, adding a bit of time to make up for the heat lost while the lid was off, each time. In total, this picture was taken after about 10 or 11 hours.
I added more time.
By the time I was ready for the next step, it was at about 13 hours on low, plus whatever length of time it ended up being on warm, because I couldn’t get back to it right away, and needed time to sanitize the canning supplies.
It’s hard to tell in the photos, but those extra hours did render out and clarify the liquid fat more.
The next step was to scoop out the solids.
Those went straight into a wok-style frying pan.
Not all of the solid bits can be scooped out, with some being small enough to go through the holes. Various sites I’d looked up suggested straining the fat through a coffee filter while pouring it into the jars.
Tip: if you use a coffee filter over your canning funnel, make sure there is a small sieve under it, or the weight of the fat will pull it right into the jar.
Ask me how I know that? Go ahead! 😂
Seriously, though, don’t use a coffee filter. It takes forever for the fat to drain through. Things would start cooling down too much, and the fat needs to still be hot or it’ll all clog up.
Use a small sieve with a very fine mesh. That will work much better!
I had sanitized a full dozen 500ml/pint jars, just in case. Once all the solids were filtered out, though, I filled almost 7 jars.
While these will not be processed in a canner, I still did all the things I normally would if I were going to process them, including wiping the edges with vinegar, and finger tightening the rings.
Once those were done and set aside to cool, it was time to work on the cracklings. These were cooked at medium low heat for several hours.
As more fat was rendered out, it would start to foam up like this.
This picture was taken about about half way through the cooking process. I set up a chair in the kitchen while doing this, since it needed to be watched over and stirred so often.
I cooked it down until it looked like this. Deciding when to stop was pretty much based on scent. Once things started to smell like things were starting to char a bit (the tiniest pieces could potentially start burning), I figured it was good enough!
The cracklings were then scooped out, as much as possible, onto a baking tray lined with paper towels. Then the last of it was strained into another 500ml jar.
Look at that difference in colour!
The last jar was filled more than I normally would, but I didn’t want to leave such a small amount in the pan. It didn’t need as much of a head space, as it got a twist lid, instead of a canning lid and ring. While it’s cooling down, the lid is simply resting on top, to keep the dust (and cat hair!) out. As the other jars cooled, I even heard some of them pinging, but I didn’t want that with the plastic twist off lid.
The jar from the cracklings will be used first, and then the one that has the least in it – which you can see in the photo is cooling down quite a bit faster than the others! Lard is a neutral flavoured fat, but that last jar will likely have more of a flavour to it. It should be interesting to try it out and compare.
Here are the cracklings – after being flipped. It was too messy to try and take photos of the process. I have several of these 9×13 baking trays, so to flip it, I covered the top of the cracklings with more paper towel, put another baking tray on top, upside down, then carefully flipped the whole thing. Once flipped, the grease soaked paper towel was removed, scraping off as much of the stuck cracklings as I could, and thrown away.
More paper towel was added over the top.
Then, because we have cats, I added another layer of paper towel, set a clean baking tray on top, then weighted that down with the slow cooker (cleaned and washed, of course, ready for the next batch!).
Tomorrow, I’ll salt the cracklings and put it in a jar, to be added to as the other batches are finished.
I will stick to doing just one slow cooker batch at a time. It’ll just be easier that way, even though it’ll take longer. Each batch is a 2 day process! I’m pretty sure I can do the rest of the fat in two more batches. We might start running out of pint jars that aren’t still sealed in their packages. I want to save those for when we’re actually processing things in a canner. We can move up to the 750ml jars if we have to, though.
This one batch, which started with enough cubed fat to fill the slow cooker, gave us 7 pint jars of white lard, plus one pint of golden crackling lard. If the other two batches end up similar in size, we could have the equivalent of 21 pints of white lard, and 3 of the crackling lard.
We don’t normally buy lard. It really came down to the budget. Now that we’ve got it, it should be interesting to see how much we actually use it. That will help us decide if it’s worth doing this again, in the future!
I started working on the pork fat well before it was thawed out, as it’s much easier to cut it while it’s partially frozen. I have two large slow cookers, and I was planning to use both of them to render the fat out. It should be done over low heat for a long time, and I wasn’t about to monitor a pot on the stove all night.
Thinking back, my mother never rendered lard on low heat. She didn’t have the time for that. I remember it being quite hot by the time she scooped the crispy cracklings out. I’m pretty sure I’m remembering burned bits, too! 😄
Having a large slow cooker or two would have made the job much easier for her!
Part way through cutting the fat up, I changed my mind.
I wasn’t going to do two slow cooker’s worth!
To fill this bowl, I finished off all the smaller pieces I could find. All three of them. 😄 I started cutting into the larger pieces, but they were still too frozen. Plus, I didn’t want to push my hands too far. They’ve been relatively pain free of late, and I would rather they stayed that way!
The small bowl on the side is the janky bits, with blood vessels or meat and the sliver skin. That was saved as a treat for the outside cats, which they were very happy to get!
There was enough pork fat left in the giant bowl that the lid still didn’t quite fit all the way closed, and I had to use the foil to cover it completely again. It’s now sitting on top of the freezer in the old kitchen. It’s going to be a very slow thaw in there! Which is okay. While I was cutting, the outside of the fat would be getting too soft to cut easily, while the inside of the bigger pieces were still too hard. A slow thaw won’t have the two extremes, and it should be easier to continue cutting up tomorrow.
They kinda look like cheese curds in there! 😄🧀
For a moment, while filling the slow cooker, I thought I’d have to dig out the second one, after all! I squished it just flat enough to make sure nothing would touch the underside of the lid. As it renders, it’ll get lower.
The slow cooker is now set on low for 8 hours, and then it’ll automatically switch to warm. It might need more time, so I’ll be checking it off an on throughout the night. I did add a small amount of water to get it going, and make sure it the bits don’t start burning before the fat starts rendering out.
Once it’s getting close to done, we’ll sterilize some jars – probably in 500ml sizes (pints) – to store the lard in. If we do decide to go with a larger size, I’d go with the 750ml jars, rather than the 1L/quart jars. I don’t see us using it fast enough to warrant that large of a jar.
Based on how much is left that needs to be cut up, we might actually be doing two more batches! It’s a shame the meat grinder I found while cleaning out the old kitchen has parts missing. A grinder would make the job much easier, and more fat would render out of the smaller pieces, too.
No matter! The job is getting done, and we’ll have a good supply of shelf stable, high smoke point, flavour neutral fat for our pantry.
The Re-Farmer 