By Maria Laura Ricaud Solorzano (May 12, 2006)
In Spanish, the word "pig" is known as puerco, chancho, cerdo, and marrano, and pork is king in the Mexican kitchen. Pork was introduced to Mexico by the Spanish, and Mexicans embraced this contribution, which became part of Mexican traditional cooking.
I don't know any Mexican who doesn't enjoy a taco made from carnitas (pork meat) or chicharrones (deep-fried pork skins). Pork matches perfectly with chilis, nopales, tortillas, salsas, moles and pipianes. All Mexicans enjoy pork and the flavor supplied by its fat.
Pork fat was basic to our grandmothers' cooking and was used for frying or to add flavor and enhance the texture of cookies and other baked goods. (Butter in cookies leaves them crunchy, but pork lard in cookies leaves them soft and chewy.) It is the lard that adds the distinctive Mexican taste.
For me, it's painful to see this wonderful fat lose the battle against vegetable oil, which is becoming popular in Mexico because everyone claims it is better for your health-but I think this conclusion ignores considering the chemicals involved in processing some vegetable oils. Also, personal experience tells me that pork lard couldn't be so bad because in my family this is the fat everyone has used for generations without suffering high cholesterol, heart disease or obesity. And pork lard is used in the majority of the old-even centuries old-Mexican cookbooks.
I own several cookbooks published in the early 1800s, and I am very interested in the history of cooking. I've noticed this interest in others, and there is a recent trend to reprint some of these old cookbooks from the past. Very active in this regard is the Mexican government cultural group Concultura.
So, thinking about the long Mexican history of cooking with lard and the health of my own family for generations, I searched for information comparing the health-related qualities of pork lard and other cooking oils. What I've found is that many North Americans are rediscovering pork lard, including New York Times food writer Corby Kummer. In response to the New York City health commissioner's request that local restaurants stop using cooking oils that contain trans fats-comparing them to lead and asbestos hazards-Kummer proposed that we bring back lard, "the great misunderstood fat." Kummer reported that lard contains just 40 percent saturated fat, compared with nearly 60 percent for butter. Its level of monosaturated fat (the "good" fat) is a "very respectable" 45 percent, double butter's paltry 23 or so percent.
Another food writer, Pete Wells, cites Kummer in his own article "Lard: The New Health Food?" (December 2005, at www.foodandwine.com ) and then goes on to recount his experiment in rendering pig fat and then cooking with it. (Rendering is how we extract cooking fat from the chunky raw stuff; the grease in a pan of cooked bacon is rendered bacon fat.) What is critical to understand about Wells's account is that by rendering the pork lard himself he has recreated the process of homemade lard in Mexico-a process that does not include hydrogenation. It is the process of hydrogenation that creates the bad trans fats, which leaves extra LDL cholesterol (the "bad" kind) in your arteries while it takes away the good cholesterol. In Mexico, if we don't render the lard at home we buy it direct from the butcher, who doesn't know anything about chemistry. That is why the pork lard in Mexico is not hydrogenated, unlike nearly all the commercial lard available in the United States.
Wells was happy with the results of cooking with pork lard: "When we want deep-fried excellence, we'll reach for the best fat for the job: lard."
He also pointed out the flaw with extra virgin olive oil-that it has a strong flavor-which is not something you want in frying or when making Mexican food.
For more information about the health aspects of cooking with pork lard, see the sidebar for excerpts from syndicated newspaper columnist Dr. Ed Blonz's article "Limit-but don't eliminate-your fat intake (in his column "On Nutrition," first published January 26, 2005, by Newspaper Enterprise Association and reprinted here with permission).
At this point in my life I cannot imagine wonderful Mexican food-tamales, beans, salsas, pozole, mole, pipián, or a fried tortilla to thicken a salsa-without pork lard.
I want to thank my grandmother for giving me her best secret for seasoning salsas. She told me, "Always fry your salsas in pork lard." I pass on this tradition to the many people in my basic Mexican cooking classes, and today I pass my grandmother's secret on to you.
Along with the health information, I offer you a recipe for cooking nopales in pork lard for your consideration. ¡Buen provecho!
To learn about María's traditional Mexican cooking classes, go to her website www.traditionalmexicancooking.com.mx or call 152-4376.
Nopales Guisados
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6 medium nopales (cactus pads) with spines removed, diced and boiled in 8 cups of salted water with half a medium white onion, one large garlic clove and the juice of two limes
3 tablespoons pork lard
1 chile serrano with the seeds, chopped
1/2 medium white onion, diced
1 large garlic clove, chopped
4 large plum tomatoes, diced
10 cilantro sprigs with stems, chopped
salt to taste
Boil the cactus pads until they are tender but firm, not mushy. Here in San Miguel this can take around 30 minutes. When the cactus is ready, strain the water, discard the onion and garlic and wash the cactus in running water until the cactus is no longer slimy. Save the cactus.
In a saucepan, heat the pork lard and sauté the chile serrano, onion and garlic together until the onion is translucent. Next, add the tomatoes and salt, and continue cooking until the tomatoes are cooked and start to soften. Add the cilantro and the cactus and cook for 3 or 4 minutes more. (If it becomes too dry, you can add ½ cup of chicken broth or water.)
Note: The Mexican way to eat this vegetable dish is inside of a fresh, hot tortilla rolled as a "taco," but you can also use this as a side dish with any meat or as a topping for rice.
Limit-but don't eliminate-your fat intake
By Dr. Ed Blonz, "On Nutrition"
We are constantly told to limit saturated fats in our diet, but the word is "limit," not "eliminate." The key is balance, and most fats (which are solid at room temperature) and oils (of the same composition but liquid at room temperature) are blends of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.
In the case of lard, like other food fat, 100 percent of the calories come from fat. Of the fats in lard, about 39 percent are saturated, 45 percent are monounsaturated and 11 percent are polyunsaturated. Compare this with olive oil, in which 14 percent of the fats are saturated, 72 percent are monounsaturated and 9 percent are unsaturated. Additionally, because lard is of animal (typically pork) origin, it contains cholesterol; one-quarter cup (51 grams) of lard contains 49 milligrams of dietary cholesterol. Of further interest is that much of the saturated fat in lard comes from stearic acid, a saturate that has been found to have a neutral effect on blood lipid levels.
So where does all this leave us? Lard is not a fat that should be used with abandon-no fat is. But as with any dietary fat, and perhaps especially with one high in saturates, the dangers come not so much from the fat itself as from the level of fat in relation to the other foods in the diet. Even the best of the food fats will compound problems when added to an unbalanced, highly processed, fast-food type diet that is bereft of vegetables and fruits. Whole foods of plant origin give the body the nutrients and variety of healthful phytochemicals it needs to properly handle dietary fats. Eat well and stay active, and fat becomes another integral element in the food we make and enjoy.
In dishes such as tamales, where the fat serves as an integral element in a traditional recipe, lard can be used so the food can be treasured for its rich and unique flavor and texture. The good health and longevity experienced by [those] eating traditional Latin American fare bears out this point.