The campaign event that Donald Trump held at McDonald’s, at which he implausibly worked the fry station, has provoked widespread memories. Many people have recollected their own fast-food working experiences, and they are always delightful and interesting. But it has also recalled a time when McDonald’s fried their potatoes in beef fat called tallow.
Apparently, that was the main practice for decades and only came to a stop in the 1990s. That’s very interesting to me because I recall absolutely loving their fries and, at some point, not being as excited about them. I thought perhaps I had experienced a change of taste. Not so: The methods changed. The oil changed, maybe for reasons of cost but also because people in the past said animal fats were bad for you.
Even though I was raised in Texas, surrounded by cow ranches everywhere, I do not ever recall hearing the word tallow. That’s because I came of age in the time of Crisco, which is a vegetable oil that became common after World War II. During the war, animal meats and fats were strictly rationed.
There needed to be alternatives, so varieties of corn oil came to be. The solid form looked like lard, could be kept outside refrigeration, and generally behaved like lard. Over time, Crisco was in every biscuit, pancake, and pie crust and was used for every manner of frying. Everyone used it. I never knew what it was made of or why it mattered. The only thing I knew for sure, because everyone said so, is that lard was unhealthy whereas vegetable oil was healthy.
All these years later, the conventional wisdom has started to undergo a dramatic shift, with ever more warnings against seed oils and more interest in animal fats. Realizing that this was changing some years ago, I began a grand experiment in using lard, which, despite the name that sounds vaguely disreputable, is nothing other than fat rendered from pigs.
There are so many uses for it, which I will discuss below.
But first a word about tallow. I tried it for the first time in my adult life only last month, having picked up the fanciest brand at a health-food store. It was extremely expensive! There are cheaper brands out there. That said, it is wonderful. I fried some Pakistani paratha in it and the result was just spectacular.
It has a high smoke point just like other animal fats, which means that you can use it until the thing you are frying becomes crisp and brown without smoking up the kitchen. It has a darker and richer flavor than any seed oil of course. Generally, I’ve learned to avoid seed oils as much as possible even though they are cheap and ubiquitous at the grocery store.
That said, lard has always been my go-to fat, while tallow is new for me. Looking at prices, I see a wide variety depending on how fancy you want to get. The fussier you are about grass-fed, pasture-raised, organic, and so on, the more you will pay. The lowest-priced tallow, however, is still higher than lard. That you can still get within an affordable range.
To be sure, with lard, there are reputation issues to overcome. The modern American language is filled with derogatory phrases somehow related to lard, each of which is somehow related to being fat. The association is so simple: Lard is pig fat, and if you eat it, you will be fat like a pig. Get it? Yes, very simple ... and very wrong. This is one reason that this has been so hard to change.
What can you do with lard? Everything. Fry your potatoes. Cook your vegetables. Finish off your boiled beans in a frying pan. You can make pie crusts. But aren’t those made with butter, you say? Yes, but I’ve tried both and I can absolutely promise you that lard crust is flakier and more delicious than even the best butter crust.
This whole thing is rather strange because people even now save bacon grease all the time and reuse it for various things, most especially for making eggs of any type. Lard is exactly the same thing without the salt, sugar, smoke flavor, and so on. Bacon grease has a luxurious reputation, whereas lard has a bad reputation. This is entirely propaganda. Lard and bacon grease are exactly the same stuff with different flavors.
These days, I see people trying more home cooking than in the past. They buy boxes at the store of pancake mix and biscuit mix. To be honest, this always pains me because these boxes usually contain corn oil of some form. Maybe you can find one that does not but most do. Plus, anyone can make these mixes at home in any size you want.
My favorite for a family comes from the old Betty Crocker cookbook that (of course) is no longer in print. You might be able to find it, but it is approximately 2 cups of flour, a tablespoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of salt, and half a cup of lard. You cut the lard in with two knives, and there is your mix. You can store it in the cupboard ready for use.
You use this mix for pancakes, biscuits, and muffins, adding milk, eggs, and sugar as demanded by the final product you need. You can even use it for fruit breads (a muffin is a “quickbread”), but remember to always add baking soda to those: the heavier the ingredients, the more leaven you need.
You never need to buy those crazy store mixes again, and you will be serving a healthy and delicious dish at the end. The beauty of this approach is that it is always at hand. Once you start this way, you will find yourself doing it more and more, eventually doubling and tripling the recipe for dry ingredients.
Have a spontaneous gathering for brunch and astound people by making biscuits or pancakes right there on the spot!
To be sure, my own view is that waffles are a different matter entirely. Those deserve making everything scratch, and it must include the separation of the eggs and whipping the whites. But that’s just a personal view. Once again, lard is your choice of oil in this case. Butter does not hold up under the heat, and corn oil is just too greasy and not flakey.
The deprecation of lard was one of modernity’s greatest food errors, born entirely of wartime rationing and price controls, later institutionalized by opportunistic grain dealers who fooled many generations into thinking there was no difference between a pig and a corncob. That’s rubbish. Americans eat far, far too much corn in everything. We even use it in our sodas and gas tanks. It’s nuts.
Animal fats are for cooking. To be sure, there are many kinds including goose and duck fat, beef and lamb tallow, rendered butter (Ghee), and probably more. To me, the king of them all is lard. Probably it needs a new name. Or maybe we all just work to restore its reputation as healthy food. It once was and should be again.
