I’ve been calling around various grocery stores this week, trying to get a hold of pork fat trimmings so that I can make my own lard for some recipes. One of the stores I called today said that they couldn’t give me the trimmings because they don’t have a code for it. I forget exactly what I said, but it was something to the effect of, “so you’re just going to throw it away instead?” “Yes.”
I understand that it does require some effort to separate from the rest of the waste, so I don’t mind paying a bit, but its upsetting that they have no way to pass scraps along to someone who will use them instead of just tossing them in the waste.
Edit for anyone invested: I called around to a few other stores after making this post. One or two mentioned that they don’t necessarily throw all of those bits away, but often use them for other products, such as sausages. I also found a store that will be putting aside their trimmings for me tomorrow, and they should have more than I need. It’s almost an hour away on the bus, but right next to another store that should have any other hard to find ingredients that I’ll need for the tamales.
Also interesting was that different locations of the same chains had different answers for me regarding even their ability to provide the scraps to me, so the suggestions that a manager might be able to make it happen are probably very accurate.
Not an answer for you right now, but I just make lard whenever we get a big hunk of pork, I get the one with a bone and skin cut the skin & fat off and render it and it’s quite a project but makes enough for my purposes though the year, I don’t use it often. I wouldn’t expect a shop to do that for me for any amount I’d be willing to pay!
I’m making tamales, and while I will be buying a big hunk of pork for them, it won’t have enough fat to make enough lard, plus I also wanted to make the lard ahead of time, since it doesn’t need to be super duper fresh. Looking at my notes from last year, I used about 7lb pork shoulder and 2lb lard. The thing is, I asked around about it last year and had multiple butchers say it would be no problem, so I was caught off guard when the staff at those same stotes all said no now. Anyway, I did finally find a butcher that will be saving the fat trimmings for me tomorrow.
If I buy one of those roasted whole chickens from the store I strip a bunch of meat off then I boil the skeleton in a crock pot. Makes great bone broth.