# How to Render Lard and Tallow at Home · Larder & Well > Source: https://larderandwell.cc/old-ways/how-to-render-lard Old ways ## Rendering Lard and Tallow at Home Pork fat becomes lard and beef suet becomes tallow by the same slow melt. Here is how to do it wet or dry, which fat is worth saving, and how long the jars keep. By Ruth Calloway, November 15, 2026 To render lard, chop or grind cold pork fat small, melt it over very low heat for several hours until the bits left in the pot turn light golden and the bubbling stops, then strain the clear fat through cloth into clean jars. Tallow is the same job done with beef suet, and both keep for months because rendering drives out the water that spoils raw fat. It is one of the cheapest stores a household can put up. Butchers often have pork fat and suet for little or nothing, and a single hog's worth of fat fills a shelf of jars with a cooking fat that needs no factory, no oil press and no electricity to make. The skill is in the heat: too much of it and you get brown, strong lard that tastes of the pig. ### Lard, tallow and suet: what you are making Lard is the fat rendered from a pig, and tallow, in American use, is rendered beef fat, and more broadly the rendered fat of any ruminant, so mutton, goat, venison and bison fat make tallow too. Suet is the raw material for it: the hard, crumbly lobe of fat around a steer's kidneys. Rendered chicken fat has its own name, schmaltz. Raw fat is not a storage food. It holds water, blood and connective tissue, and it spoils like meat, so it lives in the refrigerator or freezer until you render it. Rendering melts the fat out of that tissue, boils off the water, and leaves the solids behind as cracklings. What remains in the jar is close to pure fat, and the [Ask Extension food-safety answer on lard](https://ask.extension.org/kb/faq.php?id=924327) puts the principle plainly: properly rendered lard has its moisture and impurities removed, and without moisture the fat keeps at room temperature for a long time. ### Leaf lard vs back fat: which fat to save Not all pork fat renders into the same lard. The difference matters most if you bake. * **Leaf fat** sits around the kidneys and inside the loin. It renders into the mildest, whitest lard, the one pastry cooks want for pie crust and biscuits. * **Back fat**, or fatback, is the layer under the skin along the back, shoulder and rump. It makes a lard with more pork flavor, good for frying, sautéing and general cooking. * **Belly fat** runs with streaks of meat, and [Homesteading Family](https://homesteadingfamily.com/rendering-lard-or-tallow/) advises saving the belly for bacon because that meat keeps it from rendering clean. The catch with leaf lard is quantity. When the Prairie Homestead's writer went looking for buckets of kidney fat after butchering three hogs and found almost none, the butchering instructor she asked replied that an average hog carries only 2 to 4 pounds of leaf fat, and that to get a decent amount of lard "you would have to render ALL the fat possible." His figure was 20 to 30 pounds of lard from a 250-pound hog on foot, from back fat, kidney fat and every trimming together ([The Prairie Homestead](https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2013/01/the-mystery-of-the-missing-pig-fat-and-how-to-render-lard.html)). Modern bacon breeds carry less fat than the old lard breeds did, so a lean feeder pig may give less than that. If you buy fat instead of raising it, ask the butcher for leaf fat by name and expect it to be the scarce, pricier cut. Back fat is the bulk of what you will render. ### Getting the fat ready Start cold. Chilled or partly frozen fat is firm enough to cut cleanly, while warm fat smears and slides off the knife. Fat that sat around warm before rendering, or that was already going off, makes lard that will not keep, so chill it promptly after butchering and render it within a few days, or freeze it until you have time. Trim off every bit of meat, blood and gland. Anything that is not white or off-white ends up flavoring the whole batch. Ashley Adamant at [Practical Self Reliance](https://practicalselfreliance.com/rendering-tallow/) lost about 20 percent of the weight of her suet to careful trimming, which is a fair figure to expect for beef. Then cut it small. Grinding the fat through a meat grinder is fastest, a food processor works if you pulse it before it warms into a ball, and with a knife aim for pieces under half an inch. Smaller pieces melt sooner, need less time on the heat, and give a whiter lard. For the pot, use something heavy: a cast iron Dutch oven, a thick stockpot or an electric slow cooker. Allow about a quart of pot for each pound of chopped fat. If you are rendering on a [wood cookstove](/old-ways/cooking-on-a-wood-stove), set the pot at the cool end of the cooktop, well away from the firebox. ### The dry method, step by step Dry rendering uses heat alone, with no water added. Homesteading Family argues for it on the ground that moisture and impurities are the two things that shorten the shelf life of lard, so there is no point adding water you then have to remove. 1. Put a small handful of fat in the cold, dry pot and turn the heat to low. Stir until the bottom is coated with a thin layer of melted fat. 2. Add the rest of the fat and stir so every piece is coated. 3. Keep the heat low and stir every so often. The fat bubbles gently as its own water cooks out. A rolling boil means the heat is too high. 4. Carry on until the bubbling slows to almost nothing and the leftover pieces are light golden brown. A batch of a few pounds takes four to six hours. 5. Lift out the cracklings with a slotted spoon, then strain the fat as described below. The risk of the dry method is the start. Until there is enough melted fat in the pot, the first pieces sit on bare metal and can scorch, and scorched bits flavor everything after them. That is what the small first handful is for. ### The wet method, step by step Wet rendering adds water at the start so nothing can scorch while the fat is still solid. Practical Self Reliance prefers it for tallow and calls it easier and more dependable, with a cleaner, more neutral result. The water does not stay. It has to be cooked out completely before the fat is jarred, or the jar will spoil. 1. Put the chopped fat in the pot with about half a cup of water per pound of fat. (The Prairie Homestead uses just a quarter cup in a crock of pork fat.) 2. Cover the pot and set it on low until the fat has melted into a soupy mix with small pieces floating in it. 3. Take the lid off and keep the heat low. The pot now bubbles steadily as the water steams away. Stir from time to time. 4. When the pieces have given up their fat and turned brown, strain out the cracklings through a double layer of cheesecloth. 5. Return the strained fat to a clean pot and bring it to about 225 to 250°F on a thermometer. Hold it there until it stops bubbling. When the fat is above the boiling point of water and no longer bubbles, the last of the water is gone. That last step is the one people skip, and it is the one that decides how long the jars keep. Some cooks also boil fat in a large amount of salted water and lift the set fat off the top once it cools. That gives a very clean, mild fat, but the cake that comes off the water is wet underneath. Melt it again and cook it until it stops bubbling before you put it up. ### Rendering tallow at home Tallow follows the same steps as lard, with three differences worth knowing before you start. Suet takes more trimming, because the lobe often carries blood and gland. It sets much harder: Practical Self Reliance describes finished tallow as almost like beeswax, solid below about 85 to 95°F, while Homesteading Family puts lard's melting range at roughly 93 to 113°F depending on the fat. And it tastes beefier, which suits frying potatoes and searing meat but makes it a poor choice for pie crust. Keep leaf lard for pastry. Expect about half the starting weight back. Practical Self Reliance gets around 2 to 3 pounds of tallow, or 4 to 6 cups, from 5 pounds of suet as bought. Because tallow sets so hard, you can pour it into a pan, let it set and cut it into blocks to wrap in butcher paper, which takes less shelf space than jars. A jar of cold tallow can be hard to dig out in winter, so warm it in a basin of hot water first. ### Knowing when it is done, and straining Three signs together tell you the fat is rendered: the bubbling has slowed or stopped, the liquid fat is clear, and the solids are a light golden or chestnut brown. Dark brown cracklings mean the fat has been held too hot or too long, and the lard will be darker and stronger. Turn off the heat before you strain. Set a funnel in a clean, warm jar, put a small metal strainer in the funnel and line it with cheesecloth, muslin or a coffee filter. Ladle the hot fat through slowly. Warm jars matter, because hot fat poured into a cold jar can crack the glass. Fill the jars, put the lids on and let them cool undisturbed. The hot lard runs golden and sets to creamy white as it cools, and tallow to a firm off-white. Homesteading Family's guide to the color: lard that sets tan or brown was cooked too hot or not filtered well enough, and lard that smells strongly of pork came from overheating or from fat with too much meat left on it. Neither is spoiled. Use it for frying and keep the next, gentler batch for baking. ### Cracklings: what is left in the strainer Cracklings, or cracklins, are the browned bits of connective tissue and skin left after the fat has melted out. They are good eating. Drain them on a clean cloth or paper towel, salt them while they are still warm, and eat them as a snack, crumble them over greens, or stir them into cornbread batter for crackling cornbread. Beef cracklings from tallow taste like a beefy pork rind. They do not keep the way lard does, because they still hold protein and some moisture. Let them cool, pack them loosely in a bag and freeze what you will not eat within a few days, as Homesteading Family does. ### Hot fat safety A pot of rendering fat is a pot of hot oil for hours, and the [National Fire Protection Association](https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/home-fire-safety/cooking) counts cooking among the leading causes of home fires, with unattended equipment a factor in a quarter of them. Rendering is slow, which tempts people to leave it. Stay in the kitchen, or use an electric crock whose low setting cannot run away to frying heat. If the fat starts to smoke, it is too hot: NFPA says to turn off the burner or move the pan off the heat at once. Keep a lid beside the pot. If the fat catches fire, slide the lid over it, turn off the heat and leave it covered until it has cooled completely, and never throw water on it. Water in hot fat flashes to steam and throws burning fat out of the pot. That is also why wet fat dropped into a pot of hot lard spatters, and why you lower jars, ladles and strainers in dry. Rendering also smells, strongly, for hours. Many people render on a porch or in an outbuilding, the crock plugged into an extension cord, to keep the smell out of the house. ### How long homemade lard lasts How long it lasts depends first on how well you rendered it, and only then on where you keep it. Water left in the fat lets mold grow, and bits of tissue left in it go off and take the fat with them. Fat that was strained clean and cooked dry keeps longest anywhere. The homestead guides that give figures broadly agree: * **Lard, opened, on the counter:** use it within a couple of weeks (Homesteading Family). * **Lard in the refrigerator:** up to a year (Homesteading Family). * **Tallow on a pantry shelf:** about a year, after which it starts to go rancid (Practical Self Reliance). * **Tallow in the refrigerator:** about 18 months. In the freezer, about 2 years (Practical Self Reliance). Those are quality limits, not safety cutoffs. Fat that has gone too long turns rancid, which you will smell before you taste it: a sharp, sour or stale odor where fresh lard smells faintly of pork or of nothing. Rancid fat makes food taste bad and is not worth cooking with. Mold, an odd color or a slimy surface means the fat held water, and that jar goes out. Rendered fat also picks up smells, so keep it sealed and away from onions and strong spices. ### Storing lard without refrigeration Households kept lard in crocks and tins in a cool cellar for generations, and dry, clean rendered fat still keeps well that way. What shortens its life is air, light, heat and water, so a no-fridge store is built to keep all four out. * **Render it bone dry.** The wet method's final heating to 225 to 250°F is the most useful habit you can bring to a pantry batch. * **Use small jars.** Pints and half-pints mean each jar is used up within a couple of weeks of opening, while the sealed ones stay untouched. * **Fill them full.** Less air in the jar means less oxidation. Do not whip or stir the lard as it cools, which works air into it. * **Keep them cool and dark.** A basement shelf, a root cellar or an inside closet beats a warm kitchen or a garage. Our [root cellar guide](/homestead/how-to-build-a-root-cellar) covers the cool, steady space most old pantries relied on. * **Prefer tallow for the warmest spot.** It stays solid at temperatures where lard goes soft. A hot jar with its lid on may pull down as it cools. That is not a canning seal, and it does not make lard last longer than the figures above. Rendered fat is not canned, and nothing about it needs a canner. One old use of lard does not belong on this list. Packing cooked meat into crocks under a layer of fat traps moisture in an airless, low-acid pocket, which is how botulism forms. The same Ask Extension answer that clears plain lard for the shelf warns against putting moist food into it. Our page on [preserving meat without refrigeration](/old-ways/preserving-meat-without-refrigeration) explains why and what to do instead. ### Uses for rendered lard and tallow In the kitchen, lard stands in for vegetable shortening in most recipes at about one to one, according to Homesteading Family. Leaf lard makes tender, flaky pie crust and biscuits, alone or mixed half and half with butter for flavor. Back-fat lard and tallow are frying fats: potatoes, eggs, greens, chicken and fritters. Tallow handles high heat well and can be strained and reused for frying several times. Rendered fat was also a household supply. It seasons and re-seasons cast iron, coats garden tools and hinges against rust, and conditions leather. Tallow is the traditional fat for soap, where it makes a hard bar, and for candles: it sets hard enough to burn on its own, which made it the everyday candle when beeswax was dear. A candle is a slow light, and tallow candles smoke and smell more than wax ones, so for indoor light in an outage start with our page on [using lamps safely indoors](/power/kerosene-lamp-indoor-safety). As food in a long emergency, fat is the densest source of calories a pantry can hold. Homesteading Family's nutrition figures put lard at about 116 calories a tablespoon. A shelf of lard covers the cooking fat and a share of the calories that a store of rice, beans and flour lacks, and our guide to [how much food to store for a family of four](/food-storage/how-much-food-to-store-for-a-family-of-four) shows how that store adds up. ### My take: where I would start I would start with five pounds of back fat from a butcher, ground, in a slow cooker on low with the lid off once it melts. That is the forgiving version: the slow cooker cannot scorch the batch, the mistake costs a few dollars, and the result teaches you what properly rendered fat looks, smells and sets like. Save leaf fat for the second batch, when you know how low the heat has to be. For storage, I would treat the refrigerator and freezer as the main store whenever there is power, keep a few pints on a cool pantry shelf in rotation, and lean on tallow for the warmest shelf. And I would finish every batch at 225 to 250°F, held there until the fat goes quiet, whichever method you start with. Of everything on this page, that step does the most for how long the jars keep. The rest of the pre-grid kitchen, from [salting meat by weight](/old-ways/brine-and-dry-cure-salt-calculator-for-meat) to firewood, is in the [old ways section](/old-ways). ### Sources * [Ask Extension: Foods Preserved in Lard](https://ask.extension.org/kb/faq.php?id=924327) * [National Fire Protection Association: Cooking Safety](https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/home-fire-safety/cooking) * [Homesteading Family: Rendering Lard (or Tallow) for Homestead Cooking](https://homesteadingfamily.com/rendering-lard-or-tallow/) * [Practical Self Reliance: How to Make Tallow](https://practicalselfreliance.com/rendering-tallow/) * [The Prairie Homestead: How to Render Lard](https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2013/01/the-mystery-of-the-missing-pig-fat-and-how-to-render-lard.html) How we write: we work from extension food-safety guidance, fire-safety bodies and long-running homestead guides, and we do not claim to have rendered or tested anything ourselves. See our [editorial policy](/editorial-policy). ### Questions about rendering lard How much lard does one hog give? An old butchering rule of thumb puts it at 20 to 30 pounds from a 250-pound live hog, and only if every scrap of fat goes into the pot. The kidney fat alone comes to a few pounds. Should I add water when rendering lard? Either way works. A splash of water stops the first pieces from scorching, but every drop has to boil off before the fat goes into jars, so the dry method saves you that last step. Can I render lard in a slow cooker? Yes. A slow cooker on low holds the gentle heat rendering needs and is hard to scorch. Leave the lid off once the fat has melted so the steam can escape. How do I know if lard has gone rancid? Smell it. Fresh lard smells faintly of pork or of nothing at all, and rancid fat smells sharp, sour or stale. Mold or a strange color on the surface means the jar goes out too. Is tallow better than lard for long storage? Tallow is harder and sets firm at room temperature, and homestead writers give it about a year on the shelf. Lard is softer and better kept cool, which is why many people store it in the refrigerator or freezer. Written by Ruth Calloway Pantry, water and homestead skills Ruth Calloway writes Larder & Well's guides to food storage, water, off-grid power and the old household skills. She works from extension-service bulletins, USDA and Ready.gov guidance, manufacturer manuals and years of homesteader discussion threads, and she says plainly where the sources disagree. She does not claim to have tested what she describes; when a method is untested or risky, her articles say so. [rcalloway@larderandwell.cc](mailto:rcalloway@larderandwell.cc) Last checked 2026-11-15 More forgotten household skills, and which ones still hold up, are in the [old ways section](/old-ways). --- [Larder & Well](/) Keep the household fed, watered and warm when the stores close. 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