NO ESCAPE FROM FAT OF THE LAND
Lard is one thing people can’t easily run away from when living in Shanghai. The rendered pig fat known in Chinese as sounds heavy and greasy, but it’s found in so many iconic dishes and snacks in Jiangnan areas (south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River).
Lard goes into both savory and sweet dishes. People add it in the filling of steamed buns, in the scallion oil dressing for noodles and even in sweet, sticky cakes and glutinous rice balls.
In traditional Chinese pastry, lard is what provides the flakiness, like the shell of Suzhou-style mooncake.
In fact, lard is one of the things that gives soul to Jiangnan flavors, as people say using lard to cook a dish is half way to victory.
Chinese people have been using lard for thousands of years.
In the very beginning, before the creation of the character the oil made from cows or sheep was called while pork lard was called according to “Kao Gong Ji,” the “Book of Diverse Crafts” on science and technology in ancient China that was compiled in the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC).
Ancient peoples cooked with animal fat for a very long time. In the Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC), people cooked meat and fried food with animal fat. The extraction of vegetable oil started much later in the Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220).
In an era of material shortages, lard was the main dietary fat Chinese people used. A few decades ago, people actually preferred fatty pork than lean pork because the excess fat could be used to render lard and make cooking oil at a low cost.
Chinese author Deng Xian once wrote in the article “The Story of a Bowl of Lard” that when he went to the countryside as an educated youth during the “cultural revolution” (1966-76), once he drank a bowl of lard that smelled so good, because there was no meat, eggs or other nutritious food.
Starting in the 1990s, increased supply in the market led to lard being replaced by vegetable oil. Today, lard is no longer the No. 1 everyday cooking oil in Chinese households.
Although lard and other animal fat is regarded as unhealthy in modern diet concepts, the occasional intake of lard in small quantity isn’t doing immediate harm to the body. Lard actually contains more unsaturated fat.