Lardo, Italian Cured Pork Fat

Lardo is one cured product you will almost never see done with wild game; I’m not saying it’s impossible, and I’ve done it, but to make really good lardo — which is cured and dried back fat — you need that fat to be at least an inch thick.

This used to be rare even on domestic hogs, although thankfully with today’s resurgence of heritage pigs, it is no longer so hard to find proper back fat to make lardo at home.

The keys to this unusual cut of meat (fat?) are salt, time… and a sharp knife. You really want your lardo sliced paper thin, and ideally from nut-finished hogs, so that fat melts on your tongue.

Incidentally, the fat on nut-finished pigs, notably the famed jamon iberico in Spain, is very low in saturated fat. Try to get pork finished on walnuts, acorns, peanuts or hazelnuts to get this effect here in the United States.

A few things to remember: Don’t bother trying this with a factory pig from the supermarket. They’re bred lean and pumped full of nasty hormones and antibiotics, and those things tend to lodge themselves in fats. Go with a small grower who is raising pigs the old way. Farmer’s markets are a good place to look.

Lardo comes from Colonna, Italy, and is traditionally aged in marble boxes, which you can see in the picture above. Obviously that’s not feasible here, so you will want to cure your pork fat in as dark a place as possible — light is the enemy, as it will oxidize the fat and turn it rancid over time.

I will hang it in my curing chamber loosely tented with aluminum foil. Not touching the fat, but shielding it from light when I open the chamber for other reasons.

Why make lardo? It is definitely a conversation piece, served over bread on a charcuterie platter. But lardo also works well in any recipe you might want to use English salt pork or French petit salé in — only lardo is better.

Italian guanciale, a similar cured product made from hog jowls, is a good accompaniment, as is prosciutto d’oca, a cool cured ham made from a goose leg.