rendering tallow and lard

[Guest guest]

Or is that beef suet and pork fat??? Anyway, I've been doing both

the last two days, in the crock pot with no added water or

anything. It seems to be working out just fine, I was just

wondering if anyone has done this because there sure is a lot of

disgusting junk left over after the fat is strained out. Half the

crockpot is full of in the case of pork it looks like ground pork

(which might have been interesting to try if I hadn't left the pork

fat in the frig for a week thinking it would keep until I got around

to it). As far as the beef fat goes it seemed like mostly fat when

I put it in there and there is a ton of gelatin looking stuff left

over. I expected there to be much less " junk " left, especially with

the beef.

I think I'm doing it right, the lard looks great, it still has a

slight odor probably because it was getting old when I did it. I

don't know what I was thinking leaving it in the frig for a week!!

Hopefully when we butcher our pig next week he'll have enough fat to

give me some lard and I can find out how it turns out when rendered

fresh.

The beef tallow turned very yellow when it heated, I wondered if

that was normal. It may be that this is from a dairy cow, I'm not

really sure, but I know some of it is from an older cow and some is

from a mini-hereford that was raised strictly for meat and butchered

at the prime age.

Any information will be appreciated, I've searched the internet, but

there's not much mention of the amount of " cracklins " and

leftovers. Our cracklins were less than appetizing! LOL

Michele in NW WA