Real Food Encyclopedia | Butter and lard

Butter and lard are both fats used and enjoyed in the kitchen. Butter, the solidified fat from milk and cream, is much more widely used in the U.S. right now, but both are historically important fats in baking.

Lard is rendered pig fat, and it can be made from different parts of the animal. Artisanal lard is produced from sustainably raised animals and rendered the old fashioned way, by heating the lard gently until any bits of flesh, skin and membrane can be skimmed off. Commercially produced lard is made from factory-farmed animals and is usually hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated (this makes it more shelf-stable), bleached and deodorized.

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What to look for when buying butter and lard

In “On Food and Cooking”, Harold McGee helps us decipher the different kinds of butter we most commonly see, as follows:

• Sweet Cream Butter: The most common butter we see in the U.S., sweet cream butter is fresh, unfermented cream. It must be at least 80 percent fat and may be salted or unsalted.
• Cultured Cream Butter: Cultured cream butter is made from cream that has been inoculated with beneficial bacteria and allowed to ripen. This produces delicious flavor and a tangy taste.
• European-Style Butter: Cultured butter that is higher in fat than the standard 80 percent (usually 82 percent to 85 percent).
• Whipped Butter: Commercially produced by injecting nitrogen gas into sweet cream butter to make it more spreadable.

The flavor of butter can also be influenced by what the cows eat. Cows that graze mostly pasture produce more flavorful butter. Grassfed butter also tends to be more yellow in color than butter from cows raised on commercial feed.

For high quality lard,  try asking a pork farmer at your local farmers market. They may have lard that’s already been rendered, or they may be able to sell you high quality pork fat that can be rendered into good lard. Leaf lard, produced from the fat around the kidneys, is the highest quality lard available, with the fewest impurities and off flavors. Commercially produced, hydrogenated (or partially hydrogenated) lard is not much different from Crisco or other vegetable shortenings. It’s pure white, solid at room temperature, and usually devoid of any pork-y goodness.

Sustainability of butter and lard

You can find lots of information on our site about the negative impacts of industrial milk and pork production, including problems with:

• Waste management: Raising thousands of animals in tightly confined quarters creates huge volumes of manure, which results in water pollution and diminished quality of life for those who live near factory farms.
• Animal welfare: Crowded, unhealthy conditions and cruel practices in the dairy and pork industries are rampant.
• Overuse of antibiotics: Antibiotics are used routinely in the industrial dairy and pork industries, not only to curb diseases that result from overcrowding but also (illegally, now) to increase animal growth.
• Climate change: conventional dairy cows eat a diet heavy in grain, and both the animals and their manure emit high amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

It’s increasingly easy to find organic, sustainably raised butter and lard from local, small farmers or farming collectives. As an added benefit: some find that the local, grassfed butter and local lard from humanely raised animals tastes much more flavorful than the industrial stuff. Both can be a bit pricey, but we should be eating butter and lard in moderation anyway.

Butter and lard seasonality

Butter is produced year-round, and butter’s flavor may change throughout the year as cow’s diets shift from fresh forage to dry feed in the winter.  Pigs are traditionally slaughtered  in the late autumn or early winter, but as a pure fat, rendered lard is created to store well and be available year-round.

Eating butter and lard

Storing butter and lard

Commercially produced butter will keep for several months in the refrigerator, but it may start to develop off-flavors if stored for too long. Butter can also be frozen successfully. If you make your own butter, it will keep no longer than one week in the refrigerator. This is because the washing process that you do at home is not as efficient as in commercial butter production; the washing step is an important part of the preservation process. Freeze homemade butter if you’d like to keep it for longer.

Commercial lard is generally shelf-stable (that’s why it is hydrogenated), but if you render your own, it’s best stored in the freezer or the refrigerator to preserve its flavor (but home-rendered lard is shelf stable for a few months). Both butter and lard go rancid easily when exposed to oxygen, but keeping them cold slows this process, as does keeping them tightly wrapped or sealed.

Cooking with butter and lard

Butter is an important fat in much of Europe and on the Indian subcontinent. In India, a type of clarified butter, called ghee, is used because it keeps for much longer in high heat environments. Clarified butter is the butterfat that remains when butter is cooked and the milk fat has been removed (here’s how you do it). Ghee is made using the same process but it is cooked longer and allowed to caramelize a bit, leaving the ghee with a nutty flavor. It is extremely shelf-stable — and you can easily make your own. It’s also ridiculously easy to make your own butter, and as an added bonus, the buttermilk you’ll produce in the process is delicious in biscuits and other pastries. All you need is heavy cream and a way to agitate the mixture, even just shaking it up in a jar (this is particularly fun for kids and a good way to burn off excess energy when you’re cooped up in the winter). You can also make your own cultured butter.

Of course, butter is used in all sorts of desserts, from cakes to cookies. It is also an important ingredient in many classic French sauces, like béarnaise, béchamel, hollandaise and beurre blanc, among many others. There’s also brown butter (beurre noisette), basically butter that has been cooked until the milk solids are brown, deliciously nutty and caramelized. You can even make brown butter ice cream.

If you find a good source of sustainably raised pork, you can ask your pork farmer to supply you with leaf lard or back fat. You’ll have to render the lard yourself, but it’s easy — you can do it in the oven, in a crock-pot or on the stove. This article shows you how to render lard on the stove and also explains why pork fat needs to be rendered in the first place.

Butter and lard make exceptional pastry crusts. Lard tends to make flakier crusts than butter, as this article in Serious Eats explains, because butter contains more water than lard, which makes the dough particles stick together rather than form flakes. You can also combine butter and lard for a truly superior pastry in both flavor and texture. Be aware that when using lard, especially non-commercial lard, you may be able to discern a bit of a pork-y flavor in your crust.

In Italy and other areas where lard is a common fat, it is made into a kind of spread or salume for eating as an appetizer. In Italy, this is called lardo, and it’s usually seasoned with rosemary or other spices.  Poles make a similar lard appetizer, called smalec, for spreading on bread.

Butter and lard nutrition

Both butter and lard are high in saturated fat, which most experts agree should be consumed in moderation alongside a range of unsaturated, plant-based fats.  A tablespoon of butter is about 100 calories, and represents about 36 percent of the current recommended guidelines for saturated fat intake. Butter, especially grassfed, is high in Vitamins A and E. A tablespoon of lard, in comparison, is about 115 calories, but is only about 25 percent of your daily saturated fat intake. Lard is also lower in cholesterol than butter, but doesn’t contain Vitamins A and E.

Top photo by Art of Success/Adobe Stock.