I feel like I’ve gone mad. I’m 37 so don’t think I’m ancient and as a kid and even as a teenager I can always remember my mum frying things like Sunday breakfast in lard, even our chip pan was full of lard.
I was talking to some friends the other day and mentioned this and NONE of them even knew what lard was and said they don’t know what I’m talking about. I said fried tastes less greasy when it was fried in lard rather than vegetable oil and as per our chip pan it could be reused. Blank stares and frantic google searching to try and prove i was correct.
One of my friends always used to say my mums homemade scotch eggs were the nicest ones she’d ever had and I told her they were deep fried in the lard in the chip pan. She didn’t believe me lol.
Please tell me I’m not the only one whom remembers this!
35 comments
Yup I remember this, a pan full of lard, heated up as and when needed
We used dripping rather than lard, but yes
It was definitely a thing for quite a while for the British, in Indian food Ghee is used for cooking a lot which is similar to lard in texture and result but without the pork content. It definitely gives food a certain taste and can improve the texture of certain dishes but goes off a bit quicker after cooking and sitting compared to vegetable or sunflower oil.
You can still buy lard.
It was lard in the frying pan, bur beef dripping in the chip pan when I was a kid,
I still do my bacon in lard. Admittedly don’t do it often, but it’s definitely worth it.
My mum’s fella was on about this yesterday. Got chippy and he started going on about how the chips were way better back when they used to fry ’em in lard.
Yes about 15 minutes ago
I remember it as a kid but then hydrogenated vegetable fats came in. We’d have been better off sticking with lard. No trans fats in that.
My MIL still does her roast potatoes in a whole block of lard, they are bloody lovely.
Yes. I’m in my fifties and we always had a pan of lard ready for chips or sausages etc. Sometimes people would leave it outside to cool as well. I’m sure that was very hygienic, lol.
My home city local fish and chip shop fries everything in beef dripping, it makes it taste so much better than the sunflower oil other places use
I still do it. Use lard, tallow, butter and ghee for frying, olive oil for cold things.
Refined oils are bad for you.
Yeah my in laws had a chip pan full of lard they’d fire up for home cut chips. Piles and piles of them. Their standard dinner was a gigantic dinner plate – the biggest ones I’ve ever seen – piled at least three inches high with lard fried home cut chips, enough salt to stop a whales heart, one lard fried egg and all the bread and butter you could stomach.
It should have been a tour de force of good old British comfort home cooking. It was *vile*, slimy and sickening.
Yes, I remember cooking breakfast this morning.
i was just reading about how it is healthier than vegetable oil at hot temperatures
Everything at home was fried in lard when I was a kid
I remember my grandma always had a small cup of lard in the fridge. If she was cooking stuff she’d scoop a bit out, use it, then pour the remainder back into the cup for next time.
I still do and supermarkets still sell it.
Yep chip pan that solidifies when cold and getting a clip for writing my name in it.
Also Yorkshire puddings made in fray bentos pie tins with the tins pre-heated in the oven until the lard started to smoke.
Don’t forget puddings made with suet too. Chocolate Suet Pudding – I’m starting to drool.
EVERYONE should be using animal fats or fruit oils (EVOO, avocado) to cook now. Seed oils are carcinogenic and disastrous for your body. It’s no coincidence that the obesity epidemic coincided with a surge of industrialised gutter oils.
Lard is really cheap in Lidl. Buy some and fry in it.
Yep, lard was ubiquitous when I was a kid. Up until around 1980, everything fried was done in lard. I have a particularly fond memory…
My Dad used to fry bacon in lard and my treat as a kid was to dip bread in the fat as it fried (“dip-n-bread” we called it). Once dipped and sprinkled with salt, it was a scalding, delicious treat. Naturally, by the mid-1980s we had given-up on such things as medical opinion recommended that bacon only be grilled. I had not tasted dip-n-bread in all the years since, until a few years ago when I mentioned my memory to my then teenage daughters. I decided to fry some bacon in lard, so they could try it. Unsurprisingly, it was even more heavenly than I remembered. My daughters didn’t agree though, they both nearly threw-up on the first bite and declared that I must be some sort of animal to enjoy such things.
So yeah, now I just use lard for Yorkshire puddings (oil just doesn’t work properly).
Yeah, I know I’m getting forgetful but it was only last week.
I only remember it from Bottom when Eddie eats lard straight out of the packet. I don’t think I’ve ever used it when cooking.
I used to work in a fish and chip shop and we would have these massive industrial-sized blocks of lard that we would just dump in the fryer. I remember them being surprisingly heavy.
It was the most common way to fry stuff until the 80s
My best friends parents used it.
Yes I do, fried eggs in lard to have with chips……Best tasting eggs you’ll ever eat
We had loads in the house growing up, my mum makes dumplings with them in. So yeah we fried stuff all the time in lard.
My grandma still fry’s everything in lard
Yep for sure. My parents had a fish and chip shop and they used beef dripping to fry everything in, basically industrial lard. Also best bit of a chip pan with lard in is that it sets at room temp, so less spilling.
I still do. I dp my Yorkshire puddings in lard if I can’t get hold of beef dripping.
I’ll sometimes use it instead of vegetable oil if I’m browning meat too for extra flavour.
I still do this