# Rendering Lard and Gelatin



## GranolaLight (Mar 24, 2016)

I have a few questions that I can't seem to find answers for. Probably because I don't know the proper way to word the questions, but either way, here we are.

We have recently started making our own soap, and a lady that we get our eggs from had told us to save the fat from a recently butchered pig to make soap from. Up until then, we only were planning on using vegetable based oils.

The other day, I rendered down the fat and got some of the whitest lard I've ever seen, so I was hooked. The only problem was that I didn't have any fat left, and the butcher sells his suet and the fat goes into moose and elk sausage. 

As I was mentioning it to a friend, I found out that their restaurant gets between 30 and 50 pounds of fat per week from trimming pork roasts. What a score! I rendered what I thought was 3 lbs of lard from it, but it turned out to be 24 ounces of lard and a huge pile of gelatinous broth. The lard was also not as white as the last batch.

My questions are:

1. Can the gelatin be used for anything to do with skin care or other non-edible ventures?

2. Is it there because I didn't trim the considerable bits of meat from the fat, or maybe because a Chinese food restaurant would be buying inferior pork?

3. What causes the lard to be whiter, and does the creamier colour transfer through to the finished soap?

I really don't want to let that much free soap making gold go to waste, so I figured I would start making laundry soap out of it and chucking the gelatin, but my wife said she thought there was some sort of beauty products that could be made with it. I don't know if she was mixing up gelatin and glycerin, or if we have another treasure from someone else's trash.


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## terri9630 (Mar 12, 2012)

The "leaf" fat is the best/whitest. I use all our fat and trim the meat off before rendering to keep it cleaner. I don't use any "beauty" products so I don't know about those.


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## GranolaLight (Mar 24, 2016)

Thanks, terri. I doubt very highly any of this stuff is leaf fat. I cut the meat off of this last batch, so we'll see if it gets any cleaner. I read through a bunch of posts on rendering, and I am going to try heating it up in water a few times to get the impurities out method. The soap we made took longer to trace, but it seems like pretty nice soap to cut, and if it cures a bit, I think it will be nice and hard. I think she was thinking about glycerin for lip balm, creams, etc... I just mixed a bunch of this stuff in with the dog's food and will monitor them in case they get the trots or something.


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## terri9630 (Mar 12, 2012)

If I remember right the "leaf" lard comes from around the kidneys. When I render lard I put an inch or so of water in the bottom of the pot and let it cook down on very low heat. I do this even when I use a crock pot since that lets all the "bits" fall to the bottom and stay out of the lard.


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