When I went to The Ruby Brink, a butcher shop on Vashon Island that I highly recommend you pay a visit to for delicious heritage meats (still thinking about the pork chops I got there), I bought some rendered leaf lard. I decided that I wanted to do a test run with baking with leaf lard and try out a biscuit recipe. I’m sure I will have plenty of lard to use once we butcher the pig, but I like to be a little prepared with testing out recipes.

Leaf lard is the hard white fat that clings to the kidneys and other internal organs. The brittle crystalline structure of leaf fat yields flaky pastries and biscuits. Before hydrogenated vegetable oils, lard was the original shortening for baked goods.

I’ve never made biscuits before and these were extremely easy to make! Though i’m not sure I cut the lard into the dry ingredients as well as I should have, they were still delicious. I’ve never tasted lard biscuits before so I’m not quite sure how the texture or flavor is supposed to be. There was no obvious flavor to the biscuits that pointed to the fact that I used lard. It lacked the nutty flavor you can get with biscuits with butter, but it is a great alternative.

Ingredients used were:

• Leaf lard
• All-purpose flour
• Baking Powder
• Baking Soda
• Buttermilk
• Kosher salt
• Melted butter for brushing on top

They were great biscuits, but I was in a rush to pick up my kid that I might have taken them out of the oven slightly too soon. Next time that won’t happen. We had them with sausage gravy and there were plenty left over. Sadly, my child is a sneaky gremlin in the morning (he plans his morning food heists as he is falling asleep) and grabbed them in morning while I was sleeping, left them on the ground on a plate and OUR DOG ATE THEM. Completely disappointed but I think we all had our fair share.