/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>13804888
I think purchased lard as pictured is pretty neutral in taste. I'll tell you why it fell out of fashion, the food police.
Somewhere in the 70s, 80s, 90s, the media started to get healthy minded and vegetarian, and started calling out very common items as unhealthy. OMGPOPCORN butter is partially hydrogenated coconut oil, and that means you will have the arteries and obesity of a Samoan if you eat pork fat or coconut oil. There were literal pictures of arteries filled with solid-a-room-temperature pictures of that white fat adhering to walls of arteries of porkfat lard or coconut oil eaters. This is before we knew about triglyceride medication, or understood that your body makes cholesterol even if you dine on zero cholesterol in your food, before we knew the balance of omega fatty acids in ratio was most important and so forth.
If anything right now, fat free is more understood to lead to obesity, and that fats can be good fats, lead to satiety, and so froth.
The cost of all this evolution in nutrition and medically sound diets? Lard, buh bye. But, chemically and for culinary reasons, it's a great item, and when not hydrogenated in a factory, it's utterly safe to consume and pretty ideal, such as the softness and tenderness, and crisp nature it imparts to a corn tortilla freshly made.
When you include pork fat like salt pork in a bean dish, it adds flavor and a richness in mouthfeel, and not much is needed.

If you are from an old school German family, grandpa remembers this during the great depression in the US, or during war rationing, or if you dine in a traditional Czech/Bohemian restaurant on vacation for example, you'd know it is as delicious as any pate, when homemade rendered pork fat is scooped from a jar, spread on sour rye bread with thinly shaved onions, cracklins,aka "pork greaves" and maybe some sliced apple or maybe some thyme or dill or green onion herbs to lay on top.