How to Render Lard (猪油) | Chinese Cooking Demystified

Rendering lard's really quite easy. It's used in a lot of Cantonese dishes and is an awesome frying oil for vegetable and tofu.

As promised, here's the recipe for the lard:

Ingredients for the lard:
- 1 kg fatback or belly fat (猪板油)
- 1 cup of water
- Optional: 1/2 tbsp salt (will help the lard keep at room temperature, we didn't use it)

Process for rendering lard:
- Make sure there's no meat attached, and cut fat into 1 inch pieces, a little bigger or smaller's fine.
- Add into a claypot or cast iron pot together with the water (and salt, if using).
- Bring the water to a boil. Let it bubble away, just make sure it's not going *too* crazy.
- Right as it's almost totally evaporated away, turn the heat to the lowest it'll go. Move around your fat pieces, stirring to make sure they don't stick to the bottom. This should likely be ~5 minutes.
- Once the fat's started to release its oil, you're basically in the clear and you can step away.
- Still over low flame, let that bubble away and render out for 30-60 minutes. Just check on it every once in a while to make sure nothing's sticking or going crazy.
- Strain and save.

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ABOUT US
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Learn how to cook real deal, authentic Chinese food! We post recipes every Tuesday (unless we happen to be travelling) :)

We're Steph and Chris - a food-obsessed couple that lives in Shenzhen, China. Steph is from Guangzhou and loves cooking food from throughout China - you'll usually be watching her behind the wok. Chris is a long-term expat from America that's been living in China and loving it for the last nine years - you'll be listening to his explanations and recipe details, and doing some cooking at times as well.

This channel is all about learning how to cook the same taste that you'd get in China. Our goal for each video is to give you a recipe that would at least get you close to what's made by some of our favorite restaurants here. Because of that, our recipes are no-holds-barred Chinese when it comes to style and ingredients - but feel free to ask for tips about adaptations and sourcing too!
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