Remembering Lard

Here’s a piece I wrote sometime in July, 2008. I have a special reason for posting it now, but more about that in a subsequent post.

Remembering Lard

Right out of the chute, let’s recognize the negative connotations of the word “lard.” These connotations can be summed up by citing the epithet “Lardass.”  It’s associated with ugly fat on human bodies.

But my memory of lard is quite different: a pleasant, nostalgic yearning for something I can’t have now. Lard came in a shiny tin can, creamy white and malleable. It was not hydrogenated and had to be stored in a cool place to deter rancidity.

Grandma Holden, standing at the kitchen cabinet with its roll-up door and 25-pound flour bin, would open the flour door and sift more flour into a big bowl that always sat below the sifter. She set the bowl on the enamel counter and made a cavity in the center of the flour using the back of her hand and fingers to push the flour aside. Here’s where the lard comes in: she opened the lard can and dug out a blob with her fingers. She dropped the blob into the flour cavity, added some baking soda and salt and began to break up the lard with her fingers, gradually incorporating flour until a ball of crumbled lard and flour formed. A lot of unused flour remained in the bottom and up the sides of the bowl. Finally she poured in some buttermilk, which she gradually folded into the lard ball, drawing in additional flour as needed. When the mixture reached a consistency that suited her (the standard was never clear to me), she began to pinch off pieces of the biscuit dough, shaping them into biscuits with her fingers, and setting them into the waiting pan. Finally, she put the pan in the oven, and returned the flour bowl to its place below the sifter. Not a crumb of dough remained in the flour, which was perfectly clean and ready for the next batch.

These biscuits were “shorter” than today’s biscuits; that is, they had a higher proportion of shortening to flour than biscuits made by careful measurement following a recipe. They were not as tall, but crisper and more golden. Slathered with butter and sorghum molasses, they were heaven.

With her lovely lard and the flour bowl Grandma also produced tender, flaky piecrusts, using a very similar method of hand-mixing in the flour bowl. No buttermilk, of course, or baking soda; just flour, salt, lard and a little water. When it was time to roll out the crust, she pulled open the flour bin to retrieve the rolling pin, and dusted the enamel counter with flour. She pinched off half the pie dough, quickly formed it into a circle, laid it on the floured counter, turned it over once so the rolling surface would be floury, and rolled a nearly perfect circle of dough.

After the pie was assembled, Grandma trimmed the crust edges with a table knife and fluted the edge with the fingers of her right hand, while her left hand kept the pie pan turning until the fluting was finished. Pie in the oven, Grandma gathered the dough trimmings into a loose ball, rolled it thinly, put it in a baking pan, and sprinkled it with sugar and cinnamon. This confection, warm from the oven, was fair game for anyone who wandered through the kitchen and cared to break off a piece for immediate gratification.

Finally, lovely lard was the medium for fried chicken. When fried chicken was on the dinner menu, Grandma went to the back yard, caught a chicken, whirled it over her head until its head came off in her hand and its body flew through the air, landing somewhere nearby. Often the body would rise up and run about frantically before dropping in a heap. Grandma would have ready a kettle of boiling water, which she fetched from the kitchen. Holding the chicken by its legs, she poured the boiling water over the carcass to loosen the feathers. Then she began plucking the feathers by great handfuls until only goosebumpy skin remained.

Grandma tossed the carcass into a big enamel pan and proceeded to the kitchen to wash and gut the bird, pluck any remaining pinfeathers, and cut it into pieces with a butcher knife. Cutting produced two drumsticks, two thighs, two wings, two back sections, one neck, a wishbone and one breast.

As for the frying, Grandma melted lard in a big cast iron skillet to a depth of an inch. She rolled each chicken piece in flour seasoned with salt and pepper and dropped it into the hot lard. A few minutes later the aroma of frying chicken filled the house, luring children into the kitchen. Stealing a piece of chicken would not have been tolerated, but nibbling the crispy bits of coating that fell off when the chicken was transferred to a platter was overlooked.

After a lifetime of preparing meals, I have yet to make anything as tasty as Grandma’s biscuits, pies, or fried chicken. If only I could get my hands on some creamy white, non-hydrogenated lard!

*A wishbone is a piece cut from the breast nearest the neck, and it was my favorite piece, principally because of the after-dinner ritual of pulling the wishbone apart. The ritual required two people, each holding one side of the wishbone, making a silent wish, and pulling. When the bone broke, the person left holding the  piece with the top of the bone still attached would have her wish come true.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer