Archive for the ‘Extras’ Category
Aug
9
I’ve been working on an article for the Charleston Daily Mail on various ways of preserving tomatoes, which brought me back to my issues with dehydrating tomatoes. I’ve had trouble in the past with stickage. (Is, too, a word!) The tomatoes stick to the dehydrator trays. I took my sticky issue to the Chickens in the Road forum to ask for tips. In the meantime, I tried placing the tomatoes on parchment paper in the dehydrator and that worked for me. No sticking! To see the other ideas offered up by forum members, check out the tips here and maybe you’ll find something that works for you!
Dehydrating is a great way to “get rid of” tomatoes when you don’t have time to can it all and your garden is throwing tomatoes at you with a vengeance. True sun-dried tomatoes in the sun aren’t feasible for most of us in our climates and conditions, but a dehydrator or an oven work as alternatives. For best results, use paste tomatoes, such as Roma. You can use other varieties, but they may take longer to dehydrate due to higher water content. The recommended method is to wash, dip in boiling water for 30 seconds, then dip in cold water to remove skins. Blanching and peeling are optional, though, as is removing the seeds. If you prefer not to do this, skip those steps. Core the tomatoes and slice thin. Dry at 145 degrees in a dehydrator or oven until done to your satisfaction, depending on your intended use. To store dried on the shelf, and to be dry enough to powder to make homemade tomato paste, they should be crisp. If you intend to soak them in olive oil or use them in baking (such as sun-dried tomato bread), you may only want to dry until they reach a leathery texture. Store tomatoes dried this way in the freezer.
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How to make “Sun-Dried” Tomatoes in Oil:
To make your own “sun-dried” tomatoes in oil, simply place pieces of dried tomatoes in a jar with olive oil, garlic, and a mix of herbs such as basil, thyme, and oregano.
Make small jars you intend to use within a week and keep the tomatoes in oil in the fridge.
I came up with this Grandmother Bread recipe using my “sun-dried” tomatoes.
How to make Sun-Dried Tomato Bread:
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 teaspoon yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes
1/3 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon mixed herbs such as basil, thyme, oregano
4 cups flour
Note: If using tomatoes in olive oil with herbs and garlic, use the flavored oil from the jar and reduce the garlic and herbs as you will have some of those mixed in with the oil.
In a large bowl, combine water, yeast, sugar, and salt. Let sit five minutes. Add the tomatoes, oil, garlic, and herbs. Stir in the first cup of flour with a heavy spoon. Add the next cup of flour a little at a time as needed, stirring until dough becomes too stiff to continue stirring easily. Add a little more flour and begin kneading. The amount of flour is approximate–your mileage may vary! Continue adding flour and kneading until the dough is smooth and elastic. Let dough rise in a greased, covered bowl until doubled. (Usually, about an hour.) Uncover bowl; sprinkle in a little more flour and knead again. With floured hands, shape dough into a free-form loaf and place on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise again. Bake 25-30 minutes at 350-degrees.
See these recipes at Farm Bell Recipes for the handy print page and to save them to your recipe box:
“Sun-Dried” Tomatoes in Oil
Sun-Dried Tomato Bread
And by the way, seriously, do people actually try recipes before writing them???? I’ve been hankering to try this Roasted Roma Tomatoes recipe I found in the Ball Blue Book. After roasting the tomatoes, the recipe instructs: “Place roasted tomatoes in a paper bag and close tightly.” I roasted the tomatoes outside on the grill.
When they were done, I started placing them in paper bags. When I picked the paper bags up off the counter to the side of the grill to carry them inside, THE BOTTOMS FELL OUT OF THE BAGS. Okay, maybe I should have thought of this issue. Maybe nobody would ever do this but me? But I was pretty upset about the loss of those Romas that fell splat on the porch floor (which was none too clean). I cried. And then I carried on, roasted some more, and completed the recipe. However. I have now made a note on the recipe at Farm Bell Recipes so anyone else who tries the recipe won’t have this happen to them!
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Jul
24
Summer squash and zucchini can seem like a plague of locusts–in the summer. When they’re plentiful. In the winter? They are like touching the sun. But how to get there? This summer, I realized something miraculous and obvious. So I post this for those of you who, like me, haven’t thought of this before. For those of you who have thought of this before, you may sit on your laurels in your abundant bounty and laugh.
Too much summer squash and zucchini? Blanch it and freeze it. Don’t give it away! No stuffing it in people’s back seats when they’re not lookin’, or dropping it off on people’s porches!
Before freezing, cut it up however you want it. You can slice it for frying later (like the way I slice, blanch, and freeze eggplant for frying) or julienne it for recipes. I mostly julienne mine (using the french fry blade in my food processor)–which makes it perfect for casseroles, breads, stews, stir-frys, and many other recipes.
I cut it in about two-inch chunks.
Julienne it in my food processor.
Blanch then drain.
And freeze! (I put about 2 cups per freezer baggie. I do squash and zucchini together, whatever I have that day, because I use them in similar ways.)
Summer, stashed away for the middle of winter when I will oh so need it.
I love it!
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May
23
I have rosemary.
And lots of it! I confess, I didn’t plant this rosemary from seed. I purchased healthy, lovely rosemary plants and planted them. With my own two hands. That’s almost as good, right?
Rosemary is what fairies use for Christmas trees, don’t you think?
If only rosemary survived the winter….. Which is why I bought rosemary plants.
Rosemary is one of my very favorite herbs. I just love how it smells, how it looks, how it tastes. I’m infatuated with rosemary, year after year. Vegetables–especially potatoes, meats, breads….. Next, I shall make a rosemary cake!
Don’t dare me!!
One of the easiest, prettiest things to do with rosemary is to put it in a bottle with olive oil. I love olive oil. I love rosemary. I also love cruets. It’s a natural combo! Plus the garlic. I love garlic, too. I keep my daily-use olive oil in a cruet all the time, year in, year out. I don’t like labels, so I tend to transfer everything I can to something non-labeled anyway, but I have a special love for cruets. For an infused oil, I use a smaller cruet because it needs to be used relatively quickly. Once you put fresh herbs and garlic in oil, you create a potential breeding ground for bacteria if allowed to sit too long. In other words, this isn’t for stashing away Christmas presents. Infused oils should be used within a week. Keep them refrigerated. Use for everything–dipping oil for breads and cheese, sauteeing vegetables, especially potatoes, drizzling on meats, in bread doughs, on pizzas, etc.
(You can also use your infused olive oil in soaps and other beauty products!)
To make rosemary and garlic infused oil, clip a sprig of rosemary, about six inches high or whatever suits your bottle. Wash and air-dry thoroughly. Prepare several garlic cloves. Slice cloves if needed to fit in your bottle. “Bruise” the rosemary (to release the flavor) by pressing gently with a rolling pin.
Add olive oil to the bottle, about two-thirds full. By the way, for cooking and dipping etc, I prefer the “extra light” olive oil. I only use the “heavy” (regular) olive oil for soap. (It’s too heavy for me, in taste.)
Add garlic cloves.
Rosemary.
(You can use other herbs, whatever you like. I’m just unnaturally attached to rosemary.)
Finish filling up the oil. Shake to distribute the flavor–if using a cruet, hold a paper towel over the top so you don’t strew oil everywhere. Shake daily before using. The oil will get stronger in flavor every day.
This is a fabulous way to celebrate fresh herbs from your garden, and makes a simple yet gourmet touch on your dinner table when you have guests–or just for yourself. When it’s gone, wash and dry the bottle thoroughly, and do it again!
P.S. Use it in a week. Keep it in the fridge. Behave.
If I can fit it in between all the milk and cream, so can you!
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Apr
22
Start with a cow.
Tie her up, tie her down, tie her sideways. (Shades of Clover.) Okay, a cow is not quite as much trouble to milk as a goat, but cows are quite strong. Get ‘er milked and take your booty home. I have a post specifically about handling milk here: Handling Milk. I’ll brush by some of that information here, but read that post for more details. I’ve had a number of questions about pasteurizing milk, so this post is going to focus on that process.
I bring my milk home in quart jars transferred from my milking bucket after I finish milking Beulah Petunia down in the meadow bottom. (We’re hoping to have her moved closer to the house soon.)
I open all the jars and get ready to filter and measure the milk.
You can buy milk filters made specifically for this purpose at feed or farm supply stores. No doubt back in the day, they used a couple layers of cheesecloth. Or an old shirt. (I’M JUST KIDDING. Maybe.)
This is what the filters look like.
I use a strainer and a two-quart bowl so I’m measuring as I’m filtering. (You don’t have to measure, of course. I just like to keep track.)
Place a filter in the strainer.
Pour the milk through the filtered strainer into the bowl.
Pour the fresh, clean milk into a big pot.
Stick a thermometer in there.
Put the lid on, as you can around the thermometer.
Turn the heat on medium to medium-low. You can pasteurize by different temperatures. You can pasteurize at 145-degrees and hold the milk at that temperature for 30 minutes. Or you can pasteurize at 165-degrees and hold the milk at that temperature for just 15 seconds.
Pasteurization itself is a hot topic. For many people, there is no milk like raw milk. It can be anything from a taste and nutritional decision to a philosophical and nigh on political position. For others, safety is a weighty concern.
Here are a few of the facts.
Pasteurization was developed as a public health measure to save lives. Heating milk to pasteurize destroys pathogenic bacteria. On the other hand, heating milk to pasteurize also makes proteins, vitamins, and milk sugars less available and destroys enzymes. Pasteurization changes the flavor of milk and denatures the whey proteins, resulting in a weaker curd for cheesemaking. (This is why bacterial starters are commonly used in making cheese.) Ultra-pasteurization involves heating the milk to 191-degrees and is a growing practice that allows a longer shelf life. (Avoid buying ultra-pasteurized milk or cream for any of your cheesemaking endeavors.)
The decision to pasteurize or not pasteurize is a personal one, and I’m barely touching the surface here. Only you can decide what is right for you and your family. Consult expert sources for more information. I didn’t pasteurize my goat milk when I was milking Clover. I knew Clover, knew her history, knew where she came from. I just met Beulah Petunia. I don’t know very much about her, her health history, or the people we got her from. At this time, I’m pasteurizing her milk.
While I’m pasteurizing, I attend to other tasks, such as filling the dishwasher from the mess I just made.
All the jars and bowls, the strainer, my milking pot and other things go straight in the dishwasher to get ready for tomorrow. I’ve got cheese ready to come out the press.
I take it out of the press and set it on a plate inside a cabinet to safely (away from cats!) air dry for a few days before being waxed and aged. It’s a stirred-curd white cheddar, a hard cheese, and will have to age for at least two months.
I take out bowls of milk from the fridge from yesterday’s milking and pasteurizing. Time to take the cream off.
I remove the heavy cream, then the light cream, transferring them to separate containers for later use. Then I pour the milk that remains into pitchers to store for drinking, baking, and cheesemaking.
I take out the milk from two days before and think about what I’m going to make with it.
By then, the milk is finished pasteurizing. I plug the sink then run cold water in it and add ice cubes.
Add the pot to the sink to cool the milk down fast.
Transfer to bowls after about 20 minutes and place the milk in the refrigerator to continue chilling.
Now go make some cheese or something and go on with your life.
That’s just another morning with Beulah Petunia!
Check out all my cheesemaking posts.
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Apr
20
Butter is one of my very favorite things in the whole wide world, so I’ve been really looking forward to making my own homemade butter ever since I found out I was getting a cow. As soon as I had a quart of heavy cream stashed away, I did it! And it was so easy.
I thought it would be more difficult. I studied in advance. Prepared. Planned. Discussed it with Beulah Petunia.
She didn’t really have much to say about it, though she’s generally opposed to margarine as it is in conflict with her livelihood.
Making butter is the process of releasing butterfat from the cream. Like cheesemaking, it’s an age-old and delicious way of preserving milk. I set out to try two methods–one, shaking the cream up in a quart jar, and two, mixing it in a blender. I got the blender out and everything. But I never got that far. I tried the jar method first and it was so quick and so simple, the mere notion of having to clean up the blender after that method sounded like far too much trouble. No blender method for me.
I’m a quart jar girl all the way!
Here’s how you do it.
Take one pint of heavy cream. Heavy cream. Not too fresh. It’s best to work with cream that’s been sitting in the fridge for a couple of days.
Some of Beulah Petunia’s cream is so thick, you can spoon it up.
I’ve refined my cream-skimming and am doing much better now–thanks for all the tips! What I’ve found works for me is setting the fresh milk to chill in a large bowl after I’ve finished handling it when I bring it in. The next day, I use a large stainless steel spoon to carefully skim across the surface. I take the thick, heavy cream off and that goes into one jar, then I skim off the light cream underneath to another jar. I’m getting much more cream since I started skimming from a big bowl!
Back to butter– Set your heavy cream out for several hours to come to room temperature. When you’re ready to start, pour your pint of cream into a quart jar.
Cover tightly with a lid and start shaking! At first, the cream will seem to expand and fill up the jar to where it almost looks as if you can’t shake it anymore.
(I had 52 doing the shaking here.) Keep shaking–next thing you know, a big yellow blob of butter will appear inside the jar. It’s like magic!
How exciting is that?
This took THREE MINUTES. From cream to butter–in three minutes. (Now you know why I said, forget it, to the blender. The jar is very easy to wash and who needs to take apart a blender for no good reason.)
Using a spoon to hold the butter in place, pour off the buttermilk, transferring it to another jar.
I see buttermilk pancakes, buttermilk biscuits, buttermilk cornbread…..!!!!
After removing the buttermilk, dump the butter in a bowl. (The most straight-sided bowl you have is best.) Using the back of a big spoon, press the butter, pushing out any remaining liquid. This is still buttermilk, so add it to your buttermilk jar.
Run cold water over the butter then press again, releasing as much liquid as possible. Dump this liquid–from this point on, it’s watered down and you don’t want to save it. Repeat this process of washing the butter several times until the water is pressing out clear.
After you’ve washed it for the last time, add salt to taste. (Salt also helps preserve the butter.) Refrigerate and eat with much happiness because you made it yourself!
This was unbelievably easy. And delicious. One quart of heavy cream should yield around a pint of butter, more or less.
There are numerous variations on making butter. You can make it with a stand mixer, a blender, or a food processor, too. (Or even the old-fashioned way with a hand-cranked churn!) Read the pearls of experienced butter-making wisdom here in the Chickens in the Road forum topic devoted to the love of making butter, Making Butter at Home, for more tips and instructions about other methods of making butter. (I learned a lot there!)
I love the jar method. For me, this works in three minutes flat, so I lost all interest in trying out other methods. If you’ve tried the jar method in the past and it took forever (I’ve heard people talk about shaking the jar for 30 minutes and having to pass it around to multiple hands because it took so long), or if you get a low yield on your butter, double-check a few things:
*Be sure to use really good, rich heavy cream.
*Don’t use cream that’s too fresh. Let the cream for butter sit in the fridge a couple days before using.
*Don’t use ultra-pasteurized cream.
*Let the cream come to room temperature before starting to make butter.
If you must use ultra-pasteurized cream, add a packet of direct-set mesophilic starter per quart of cream. Let the cream set for 12 hours, at room temperature, after stirring in the starter before making butter. (Starters can be purchased from cheesemaking supply companies.)
Beulah Petunia, heading for the milking station with dairy supervisor, Jack, and trusty sidekick for all endeavors, Boomer.
Make some butter!
Or you might upset Beulah Petunia! (And we can’t have that.)
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Apr
8
How did we go from winter to summer overnight? It’s been in the 80s here. The 80s! (The temps are supposed to drop off starting today, though. Hello, spring???) Cook-out weather makes me hungry for potato salad right away. Cold, creamy, cook-out-style potato salad with lots of celery and pickle relish. I can’t stand store-bought potato salad.
Take your potato salad a step further for bonus homemade points by making your own mayonnaise and mustard! You can find all sorts of homemade condiment recipes here. It’s much easier than you might think to whip up your own mayonnaise and mustard, and the great thing about making your own is you can flavor it to your specific tastes, creating gourmet-style condiments. My honey-dijon is based on the dijon recipe here, with some variations to suit my taste. (That link includes a whole bunch of different mustard recipes and even instructions for grinding your own mustard seeds to make the mustard all the way from scratch.)
In the condiments index, there are several mayonnaise recipes. I use a variation based on this recipe to make a garlic mayonnaise.
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How to make Homemade Honey-Dijon Mustard:
2 cups dry white wine
1 large onion, chopped
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/4 cup dry mustard
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup honey
Combine wine, onion, and garlic in a small pot. Heat to boiling and simmer 5 minutes. Cool; strain solids. Place the dry mustard and cornstarch in the small pot and add a small amount of the strained liquid, stirring until smooth, gradually adding the rest. Stir in oil, and salt. Heat slowly until it starts thickening and bubbling, stirring constantly for 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in honey. Turn off heat and cool. Store in a glass jar. Keep refrigerated. Chill completely before using. The mustard will continue to thicken to a spreadable consistency as it chills. Double or triple recipe as needed. (Keeps well for about a month.)
This is a very mild, sweet dijon that I like. Check out all the mustard recipes here and find one that’s just right for you!
Homemade mayonnaise and other sauces, such as hollandaise, use raw egg yolks. Eating foods containing raw eggs isn’t recommended. Please use pasteurized eggs. You can buy pasteurized eggs, or pasteurize eggs at home.
From the USDA website: “To make a recipe safe that specifies using eggs that aren’t cooked, heat the eggs in a liquid from the recipe over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture reaches 160 °F. Then combine it with the other ingredients and complete the recipe.”
In this mayonnaise recipe, add the egg yolks to the vinegar and lemon juice to heat to pasteurization level.
How to make Homemade Garlic Mayonnaise:
2 pasteurized egg yolks
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 tablespoon garlic powder*
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon prepared mustard
1 cup canola oil
1/2 cup extra light olive oil
*Leave out the garlic if you don’t want a garlic mayonnaise.
Place everything but the oil in a blender. Blend adding 1/4 cup of the oil at a time. (Use the lightest oils for the mildest taste–canola and extra light olive oil are best.) As you add the oil and blend, the mixture will thicken. You may need to stick a knife down into the blender (with the blender turned off!) and push down the oil as you add it in increments then continue to blend. Transfer to a glass jar for storage. Double or triple the recipe depending on how fast your family goes through mayo. Keep refrigerated. (Keeps well for about two weeks.)
This is amazing. It turns right into mayonnaise. If you’ve never made mayonnaise before, it’s a bit of a stunner to realize there’s no dairy in there. Mayonnaise is mostly whipped oil. Which you might not really want to think about too often, but it’s great on sandwiches!
Or in potato salad! (The above mayo recipe makes just about the right amount for this potato salad recipe.)
How to make Creamy Potato Salad:
6 medium potatoes (2 pounds), diced and cooked
6 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 cup sweet pickle relish
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1 1/4 cups mayonnaise
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1 tablespoon sugar
salt and pepper to taste*
*Start with about a teaspoon of salt and a half-teaspoon of pepper, adding more to suit yourself. Me, I use two teaspoons of salt.
I have a terrible time judging what medium anything is, so I weigh the potatoes for this recipe. The secret to fabulous potato salad is having the right balance of ingredients, so getting the potato measure correct is important. This is a recipe I started making from a cookbook many moons ago then gradually revised over the years into my own version of perfect creamy potato goodness. I have another potato salad recipe here–New Red Potato Salad with Sour Cream and Dill for when I have a hankering for red potatoes. I pretty much have a thing for potato salad.
Back to this recipe–I peel and dice the potatoes before boiling. They cook faster that way and it’s easier to dice them while they’re hard. Drain and cool the potatoes. Combine everything in a big bowl to stir up and taste-test for your salt and pepper. I use a big bowl to mix everything up then transfer to a medium-size bowl for storing and serving. Chill the potato salad thoroughly before serving. It’s best to make potato salad a day ahead to give time for the flavors to meld and for it to get really, really cold. Ice-cold creamy potato salad is the bomb!
Make some! With homemade mayo and mustard, of course! It is so much fun to experiment with your own condiments. Nothing from the store can beat a condiment you make yourself tailored to your own tastes. Experiment with flavor. Have fun with condiments this spring and summer for all your cook-outs.
Think outside the grocery store shelf!
P.S. I use home-canned sweet pickle relish. You can find the sweet pickle relish recipe here.
See the Creamy Potato Salad recipe at Farm Bell Recipes and save it to your recipe box.
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Feb
27
First, go downstairs to the freezer and get out a big bag of fat. If you don’t have a big bag of fat, you’ll have to go to a butcher shop. Trust me, it’s worth it. Making your own lard is easy! It’s fresh, natural, and not hydrogenated like store-bought lard, and if you grew your own pig, you know exactly what it was fed. I hear tell it makes the best pie crusts in the world and I can hardly wait to make some. I made my first homemade lard this week and was instantly hooked. No more lard from the store for me.
Lard has a bad rap, but don’t let the Crisco people fool you. You should see what’s in shortening! Lard, home-rendered, is actually good for you. Generations before us thrived on traditional fats, which are much healthier for you than man-made. Lard is a real, natural food–don’t be afraid of it!
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How to Make Your Own Lard:
pork fat
water
(Short ingredient list.)
To render lard for baking, the best pork fat is kidney, back, or belly fat. Freeze the fat first to make it easier to handle–cutting up the fat is a messy job. Chop it into about 1-inch pieces. (Some people even grind the frozen fat. The smaller the pieces of fat you start with, the quicker it will render.) How much fat you render at once doesn’t matter–however much you want to work with at a time.
Use a large cast iron kettle or dutch oven to cook it on the stovetop or cook it in a crock pot or the oven. Cook the fat any way you choose–the method is similar no matter which way you do it. I used a crock pot, and for my first batch, used a small quantity of fat, enough that about filled up my small 3 1/2-quart crock pot. This rendered down to a quart of regular, creamy-white baking lard plus a half-pint of what is called savory lard and the cracklins. (You actually get three products out of one job! The mild baking lard, the savory lard, and the guilty pleasure of the cracklins.)
First add water to cover the bottom of the pot or pan you’re using to cook the lard then add a layer of fat pieces. The water will eventually cook out–it’s just there at the start while you get the first pieces of fat melting so the fat doesn’t stick to the bottom.
Cook the lard slowly. I set my crock pot on low and kept the pot uncovered throughout the process. When you see the first pieces of fat floating and turning white, the rendering has begun.
Go ahead and put in the rest of the fat.
You can stir it occasionally, but it doesn’t need a whole lot of attention. It knows what it’s doing. It doesn’t need your help. The pieces will float as the amount of melted fat increases.
Eventually, the pieces of fat will sink to the bottom–those are your cracklins-to-be. Stick a spoon in there and you’ll see your nice, clear liquid fat. The cracklins will still have a puffy fatness to them. (Not crispy yet.)
You want to render your good, mild baking lard before you finish the cracklins. When you see the pieces sinking, it’s time to get the good stuff. In my crock pot on low, this took about 12 hours.
Line a colander with cheesecloth.
Strain the lard into the colander. I used a bowl underneath to catch it that has a pour spout, the easier to then pour my lard into a canning jar for storage.
Be careful, pour slowly–you’ll make a mess if you pour it out too quickly. This first rendering of clarified lard is perfect for pie crusts and other baking uses (and also for soapmaking). It will be mild and turn a gorgeous white once it sets. Chill it quickly for best texture. I put mine in the freezer for about an hour then once it started to set, transferred it to the fridge.
Here are the cracklins, left after the straining. See how you can still see a lot of puffy fat to them.
I dumped the cracklins back in the crock pot and returned the heat to low. I cooked the cracklins for about another hour and a half, until they were crispy and golden.
Cracklins are delicious sprinkled over salads or on top of casseroles. (Think Durkee fried onions and green bean casserole. Anything where you’d use fried onions, you could use cracklins.)
Again, I strained the lard into a cheesecloth-lined colander, clarifying this second rendering, then set aside the cracklins to cool. After the cracklins were cool, I put them in a labelled storage baggie and stuck them in the freezer for next time I’m making a casserole. I poured the strained second rendering into a half-pint jar. This is what is referred to as “savory” lard. Because it was made from cooking down the cracklins, it has a much stronger flavor. You can use it for various savory cooking purposes–it’s just probably not something you’d want for apple pie. It will set to a light amber color.
To store your home-rendered lard, choose whatever method you prefer. You can keep it in the fridge (or freezer, if you’ve made a large quantity at once). You can store it right on the pantry shelf–many people say they do that. You can even can it. I’m keeping mine in the fridge.
Beautiful, creamy homemade lard. The mild first rendering is a wonder to behold. I see biscuits.
Making your own lard is incredibly easy and takes you another step closer to your food and its origins (and even more natural homemade soap). Any recipe that calls for shortening–pie crust, cookies, biscuits, frying french fries, and so on–can be made with lard instead of shortening. The rendering process does take a good amount of time, so be sure to take that into account in making your plans. Now that I’ve familiarized myself with the process, next time I’ll cut the fat up the night before, stick it in the fridge to keep, then start it in the crock pot first thing in the morning. I think I’ll try it in my cast iron kettle next time, too. (Think of the seasoning that’ll be for my cast iron!) How long it takes for you will vary depending on the amount of fat and the starting size of your fat pieces. Remember, however, that the rendering needs little tending while it’s taking place. I made the mistake of starting mine in the evening and I actually turned it off when I went to bed then got up in the middle of the night and turned it back on. The first rendering was ready when I got up in the morning. I was sleeping during several hours of the cook-time after I turned it back on. (The 12 hours for my cook time is the total minus the time I had the pot turned off.)
I’ve got plenty more fat in the freezer and I’ll be making my own lard from now on.
I want to thank Cathy, who inspired me with her lard-making experience. You can read a whole discussion on the Chickens in the Road forum here about making lard. The discussion also includes links to other resources on methods of rendering and also on canning lard. You can render fat from any animal, by the way. It’s an amazingly simple process that is old-fashioned, natural, and traditional–and as good today as it was for the generations that came before us.
See this recipe at Farm Bell Recipes and save it to your recipe box.
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Feb
4
Step one, get a chicken.
Or forty. Be sure you have complete control of them.
Good luck with that.
You’ll need a big garden rake….
….to drag the eggs out from the very back-back-darkest-back of the dog house.
They’ll change to a new hiding place soon, so good luck with that, too.
Just be glad they’re laying.
To make the most of your own fresh eggs, freezing eggs is an alternative to eating omelets for breakfast, quiche for lunch, and custard for dinner every day of the week when they’re laying heavily. You can store them up to use when they’re not laying. It’s also a great way to stock up on eggs from the store even if you don’t have your own chickens. In either case, freezing eggs is easy!
By the way, that’s one big honkin’ egg there, isn’t it? I hope the chicken that laid that one is okay….
This is what it looked like inside–two yolks.
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How to Freeze Eggs:
Whole Eggs
Break eggs into a bowl then pour into a strainer and through to a second bowl.
This allows the whites and yolks to mix gently without adding air. This is the secret to freezing eggs. Use a colander with large holes. You can stir the eggs with a spoon very carefully–but not too much. No beating air into them! Scrape around on the bottom of the colander and gently on the inside to help the eggs strain out. (You do have to break the yolks–push down on them.) Pack in plastic freezer containers, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Usage: Three tablespoons of egg mixture equals one whole egg.
Yolks Only
Break yolks into a bowl. Add either 1 teaspoon sugar or 1/2 teaspoon salt per every six yolks (to prevent coagulation). Prepare and pack as for whole eggs. Usage: One tablespoon of mixture equals one egg yolk.
Whites Only
Break whites into a bowl. Prepare and pack as for whole eggs. Usage: Two tablespoons equals one egg white.
Easy! Eggs can be frozen up to 12 months. Take out what you need and thaw it slightly before using in a recipe and you’re good to go. This is particularly nice when you have a recipe calling for egg whites or egg yolks, or some uneven number like two whole eggs and one egg yolk. (What are you gonna do with that one leftover egg white?) Storing whites and yolks separately along with whole eggs in batches in the freezer means no wasting!
The chickens love that. Chickens are very frugal.
I mean, you know what tightwads they are with their eggs!!!
See this post at Farm Bell Recipes and save it to your recipe box.
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Posted by Suzanne McMinn |
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