In my Thanksgiving recap post, I briefly hinted that there was a theme this year to our feast.

And no the theme wasn’t related to the decor or a color scheme or anything like that.

It was food related, as almost every dish we ate had it incorporated somehow.

This year the focus for our Thanksgiving feast was around lard.

Yes, you read that right.  LARD.

Or Pig Gold as I refer to it.

I purchased half a hog this year and with the fat that came with it, I rendered that down into lard.

I knew I wanted to use lard in the pie crust but also wanted to use it in different ways with the other parts of the meal.

I made biscuits using lard instead of butter and they turned out a lot better than I expected!  My expectations were low only because I’m still getting used to baking at elevation.  These rose beautifully and were very flaky.

I was also surprised by how full they kept me! We ate these for breakfast Thanksgiving morning and they kept me full and satisfied all the way until about 3pm. Which was just in time for the big meal.

Lard was also used in the pie crust and I’m sorry I have no picture of that.  We were too busy eating it for me to snap a picture.

Along with using lard instead of butter on the turkey, I also used it to make the roux for the gravy.  Scott declared that as the best gravy we’ve had yet and I’ve been making gravy for a while folks!

The only items that did not have lard in them in some way were the collard greens and the stuffing.

Everything came out tasty and I definitely plan on using it again next year for Thanksgiving!

Have you used lard in cooking before?