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.
We make food “from scratch” on a regular basis.
We’ve found a few different sources for fats. I’ll focus on the pork-fat ones.
The most common source is to just collect fat any time we make pork things. The advantage is that it’s cheap and easy; just let it cool and add it to a jar in the fridge. The disadvantage is that it will have a lot of other flavors (especially salt).
Sometimes we just by processed lard. That’s basically the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s very pure and has no flavor besides the fat itself.
Often we’ll wet render our own fat. Traditionally that would be the trimmings off of other cuts. Unless you’re butchering a pig (or have bought into a fractional pig through something like a CSA) those bits usually aren’t available. Typically we’ll just buy cuts that are very high in fat. For pork, that would be pork belly. We’ll just buy an uncut slab and wet-render it. Trim any meat you want to cook with (belly is the part that bacon is made of) throw the rest in a pot of water an simmer it for a few hours. The fat layer that collects on top is almost pure lard.
We’ve also found that duck fat is a great substitute for lard. It has a similar smoke point to lard (slightly higher). It tastes different from lard but it’s also good enough that the flavor itself will improve meals. Duck breasts are about 50% fat if you buy them with skins. You can also buy duck fat on its own.
What you are told on the phone and what will actually happen in the store are two completely different things.
I always figured this was for health and safety reasons
It almost certainly is.
If it’s so much effort to try and get fat trimmings from butchers, why not just buy a block of lard from the supermarket?
My main reasoning is that I just wanted to try making it from scratch at least once, just for the experience. A secondary reason is that I guess I’m technically looking for “manteca de puerco”, which has more pork flavor than the shelf stable lard available at the closest grocery stores, so I have to make a special trip to get the right stuff anyway, and I’m just exploring my options as to how to get a hold of the necessary ingredients.
Where I grew up, there’s multiple huge Mexican grocery stores, so it’s easy to get exactly what I need in one stop, but where I live now, I have to go to multiple stores to get everything, and still have to make do with some minor substitutions (eg. frozen banana leaves instead of fresh).
Is it really from scratch if you don’t raise the piglet and butcher it yourself?
“To bake a cake from scratch, first we have to create a universe.” - Carl Sagan
Fair enough, I agree the situation is mildly infuriating, whatever the reason you wanted it. A lot of restaurant/pub chains over here will throw out extra food if they prepped too much, rather than letting staff take it, probably because they don’t want people creating waste on purpose but also don’t want to spend the minimal effort required to stop people abusing the system if they allowed people to take excess food home. The distrust of low paid workers leads to most stores being unable to deal with special requests unless you are speaking to the manager and I don’t know where I’m going with this…
Not sure if they still exist, but look for a butcher or maybe a deli. Chain stores have no humanity left.
I did eventually find a store that said they’d have some for me tomorrow, and said they’d put aside about 10lb! I think I only need about 5lb, but depending on what they’re charging, I might just take it all.
It keeps forever in the freezer. It’s great for tortillas and pie crust too. I’d take it all.
unfortunately, a lot of the time they really don’t have a choice at the store level. I know it’s not the most helpful suggestion, but maybe reaching out to corporate to let them know there are people who want that could help. good luck on your lard quest.
Thanks! I did finally find a store that will be setting aside way more than I probably need tomorrow. One of the interesting findings as I called around was that Location A and Location B of the same chain would give me different answers, so I think a lot of it may just be employee knowledge/interest.
Unfortunately most local managers don’t actually have the ability to negotiate. Their job is to administer the machine, and avoid getting sued.
It sucks because it often means they can’t make decisions even if they would make the store more money.
I worked at a big box store for a while and my department was turning away customers simply because we couldn’t serve them. Hiring more help would have brought in revenue far beyond their wages, but my stores hands were tied by centralized corporate policy that dictated how many people they could hire.
I had like $500k in the sales pipeline. I had an excellent conversion rate on the customers I actually had time to work with. But I was forced to spend my time stocking shelves and cleaning while my customers called in frustrated why I wasn’t helping them.
People say it’s all about profit but that’s not actually true. It’s about maximizing the ability of the central corporate office to model and predict the money flows. I wish it were all about profit.
I’ve worked for startups and other small locally-owned businesses and it’s so great to see the flexibility they have. Working for a huge corporation sucked because it was like twelve layers of command structure to get to someone who could make a decision.
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.
My kids have asked for tamales every year since I made them for Christmas about ten years ago, but I am not yet rested up from that batch. Even though we had a tamalada and they helped wrap them, the days ahead making tamale dough (two versions because we have vegans) and fillings (several versions because, again, vegans) it was exhausting. I think it will be either gumbo or oxtail soup this year, and a big pot of beans.
tamalada
I’ve never heard that word before! Looking it up, I see that my family has essentially been having an annual tamalada for probably close to 10 years now. Grandma used to make them all on her own, and since she doesn’t have anything written down, it’s been a joint effort to make sure the recipe lives on. The family recipe is central American, so they’re a bit different than Mexican tamales, but I do enjoy both!
I also did a side project last year to make vegan masa for the few vegan/kosher guests we have, and then I usually do a second traditional batch when I’m back home so I can practice, make notes, and have some to share with my local friends. It’s definitely a lot of work, usually a 2-3 day project, but it does get easier with practice, and 1-3 assistants.
I found corn broth really improves the vegan dough. You can use cobs to make it, and save the corn for something else. Corn cobs & an onion.
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.
It’s a trade off, if you want old school butcher store service, you’re gonna pay old school butcher store specialty pricing (which is usually at least double what you’re going to pay for the same cut in a supermarket)
In the southeastern US, we have plenty of fatback in stores, among other odds and ends. The employees laughed when I had to ask what it was.
I hear you, I hear you and here’s my two stories:
Once at Large Chain Supermarket I found some lamb chops on special. Took them to the self serve checkouts but the item didn’t scan. The team member had a look and said, it’s because it’s past its expiry date ( the date was the day before). The meat was in perfect condition though, no dark spots or dry edges or any discoloration. So I asked if I could take it for free, and she said no, and she put it in the trash bin right next to the checkout.
Now I’m not blaming her since I understand that’s what she has to say since it’s her job, and I also understand the supermarket would be liable if they sold me something that caused me food poisoning. But I believe the real motivation is profits. It would be all to easy to have a law saying supermarkets are not liable for expired items if they are taken for free; but if that was the case most people would be waiting for the nearly expired items and sales would plummet. I think this is messed up, I don’t know. I have no idea about what do supermarkets do with fresh nearly expired food but I have the naive hope they at least use some for their bakery/rotisserie section.
(I took the meat out of the bin after paying for my other groceries so I did, in the end, get it for free. And it was delicious)
The other story happened while working for Well Known Retailer. I had to grab a wheelie cart/trolley or whatever they’re called, to put stock on the floor. But the only cart left was full with old merchandise. So the manager led us to where the big dumpster bins were, and said, okay help me chuck these out. And she started throwing away all these very expensive scented candles in perfect condition with no other flaw than being old. I’m talking about $30 - $50 candles. I asked if I could take some for free, and she said we weren’t allowed. I asked about buying them with a discount, and she said that was also not allowed because the items weren’t even part of the inventory anymore. So we just trashed roughly $1500 worth of merchandise. It’s just messed, those could have gone to a Salvation Army store or something instead of getting dumped (and broken in the process).
Wow! I don’t know where you live, but where I live, meats generally have a “sell by” date, not a “use by” date, and I very often see meats that have almost reached their “sell by” date in the discount bin. Also, I was recently visiting a town where crabbing is a popular activity, and some of the grocery stores sell meat that’s past it’s expiration date as crab bait at a significant mark down.
The needless waste is so frustrating. One explanation that I’ve heard is that allowing employees take “waste” merchandise may incentivize employees to create more “waste”, but I’m not sure why donating the “waste” would be a problem.
I’m in Australia. Here when meats approach their date they mark them down, but you don’t see them still for sale after the date. I found an item that wasn’t supposed to be on the shelves anymore. Yeah the waste is really frustrating.
I heard France has laws that require supermarkets to donate food that barely over expiration date.
It’s ridiculous that within 24h food goes from totally safe to totally unsafe.
That isn’t up to the grocery store. That is purely FDA regulations. In the past there were no regulations and everyone was sick and the food was nasty. If you are curious you could read some of the muchracker journalism such as the book titled “The jungle”
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be regulations. If I’m paying for something I expect a certain level of quality and safety.
I’m also saying people should have the right to take a risk if they want to eat something out of a trash can for free. “You can’t take our trash for free because you might sue us” is very much mildly infuriating to me
Everyone who hasn’t needs to go read the jungle. It’s an incredible book.
Love you! I’m all about dumpster diving, finding free shit, etc.
Coworker of mine used to go out with her husband, crack of dawn, twice a week. They’d pick of trash before the garbage truck arrived, have a garage sale every Saturday. Give away what ever didn’t go.
LMFAO, they would make $300-$400 every weekend! “Yeah, we pick up our neighbor’s trash and sell it back to them.”
In the 90s I had a paper route. Used to pick up vacuum cleaners on the curb. Cleaned with a new belt and bag? Done. I couldn’t keep any in stock. Nice beer money!
Another friend of mine picks up free washers and dryers. The parts are mostly the same and the shit’s free. He’d make $500-$800 a week flipping 'em on Marketplace. And this guy was already clocking $100K at his day job!
Try a butcher shop or ethnic grocery store with a meat counter.
Separating the trimmings from the rest of the waste isn’t the only thing that requires effort. I presume that the management doesn’t want to give ordinary employees the authority to just give stuff away, which makes sense. Even if it isn’t a problem in this specific case, it can be a problem because employees won’t always be knowledgeable or honest. Having management review what is being given away involves overhead, and deciding how much to charge you because of that overhead involves more overhead. I probably wouldn’t bother with all that if I ran the supermarket unless I really hated throwing things out, because I would assume you won’t be willing to pay enough to make it worth my time.
They made this bullshit illegal in New York. All food waste has to be donated to the city. They even come pick it up. You can be fined extremely heavily for throwing edible food away. This applies for restaurants, grocery stores, etc.
As another commenter mentioned, it may not be truly sent to the landfill, but sent to some sort of scrap processing facility.
https://lemmy.zip/comment/15409560
After calling around more, at least one other store told me that they use the fat trimmings for other things, such as sausages.
In my area they give a tax break to companies that donate food for the food banks.
Walmart is feeding those in need
Find a local, independently owned meat market. That is where we get beef tallow for making deer burger. They will sell anything they have that someone will pay for.
One of the other markets around here said they can offer lots of beef tallow, and suggested I try some of the Asian markets, but the challenge is that most of those are a hassle to get to via public transit. I did find at least one other that says they can provide pork fat on Saturday, and I still have a few other places to call too. Worst case, I make a special trip to the Mexican market to buy rendered lard. Just wanted to try rendering it myself this time, and found it super frustrating that no code = trash.
