The other day I mentioned in a post about heirloom beans, that when cooking beans it’s best to use some sort of fat—be that olive oil, freshly rendered lard or bacon fat. The mention of the word “lard” seemed to cause something of a stir, prompting one reader to comment that it was “fattening and disgusting.” Turns out, there’s a difference between fat and fattening—and recent research shows that lard may have gotten an unfair rap. (The fresh kind that is, not the industrial scary stuff.) In fact, according to bonappetit.com, freshly rendered lard “contains less bad (saturated) fat and more good (monounsaturated) fat than butter.” Think of it more closely akin to olive oil. For more info on fats, check out this article by Nina Planck. And thanks everyone for joining the debate!
Next time we’ll talk about my favorite diet food, melted lardo (cured pig fat with rosemary) on crostini, and after that we’ll discuss why I can no longer fit into my blood red velvet Gucci tuxedo pants from Tom Ford’s final collection for the label, circa 2004…
