Lard: After Decades of Trying, Its Moment Is Finally Here
26th April 2013
Slate has the dirty.
Wait long enough and everything bad for you is good again. Sugar? Naturally better than high-fructose corn syrup. Chocolate? A bar a day keeps the doctor away. Caffeine? Bring it on.
Lard, however, has always been a ridiculously hard sell. Over at least the last 15 years, it’s repeatedly been given a clean bill of health, and good cooks regularly point out how superior this totally natural fat is for frying and pastries. But that hasn’t been enough to keep Americans from recoiling—lard’s negative connotations of flowing flesh and vats of grease and epithets like lardass and tub of lard have been absurd hurdles. But no longer. I’m convinced that the redemption of lard is finally at hand because we live in a world where trendiness is next to godliness. And lard hits all the right notes, especially if you euphemize it as rendered pork fat—bacon butter.
‘Bacon butter’. I like that.
(Peasant food has cachet only if you are not forced to live on it.)
Truth.