Hey, my name is Ian. I’m with MassWildlife’s Central Wildlife District in West Boylston.
Today, we’re going to give you some tips on how to render bear fat. Bear fat is a resource you might find yourself with in abundance if you’re lucky enough to harvest a bear this fall. It’s great for baking, cooking, and conditioning leather, and there are many other uses. So we just want to give you some tips and know-how on how you can make the most of your harvest.
Today, we’re going to be rendering fat from a bear that was harvested last fall by a hunter out in the western part of the state. I was lucky enough to be given this bear fat, and I’ve kept it frozen in my freezer. Prior to getting it ready to render down, I had to pull it out of the freezer and let it defrost. Luckily, since it’s the summer and pretty warm out, it defrosted quickly.
It’s always great to have gloves on—this stuff is very greasy, and they come in handy for keeping your hands dry while you’re working with the bear fat.
You don’t need too many materials to render bear fat. Today, we just have a knife, a cutting board, the bear fat itself, and a high-walled pan (a pot would work as well). We’re using an electric burner, but you could also do it on a propane stove. Sometimes it can be tricky to keep your heat at a consistent level with those, which is why we opted for the electric burner. You could also use a burner in your house, but not everybody finds the aroma appealing.
With the bear fat, you’re going to want to cut it into small, one- to two-inch chunks. We can load this pan pretty heavily— as it cooks, it’s going to render and shrink down a lot. So we’re going to top it off fairly high with those one- to two-inch chunks.
Now, does your pan need to be hot before you put this in, or can you put it in cold and just heat it up on its own? You can just put it in cold and let it heat up on its own.
You’ll typically do this in batches, correct? Small batches seem to work the best.
How long does it take until the cracklings come out? Depending on how much you load into the pan, it could take anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes to half an hour. We filled this pan pretty heavily, so it’s probably going to take about 30 to 45 minutes to render it down. This is also the first time I’ve used this hot plate, so we’re figuring out its intricacies with temperature as we go. But right now, we’ve got it at a good temp—low and slow—and that should give us a really nice, clear lard product when we’re done.
At this point, we’re getting pretty close to the consistency we want. Looking at some of these pieces of bear fat that have rendered out, I had a couple of big chunks in there—I should have cut them up a little bit more. The smaller and more uniform they are, the more fat you’ll get to render out of them.
That being said, these are about good to go. I’ve got a mixing bowl here with some paper towels, and I’m going to scoop them out into that. We’re going to let the oil cool, turn off the burner, and then we have cheesecloth set over the tops of these mason jars. We’re going to filter the liquid through that, and we should get a nice, clean product when we’re done.
Now that our rendered bear fat has cooled significantly, we’re going to start filtering it into these jars. We cut the top off a two-liter bottle and attached cheesecloth to the end with a rubber band—it’s pretty simple and basic. We’re just going to fill up each jar.
After they’re full, we’ll put lids on them. This will stay in your freezer for a long period of time. I have a couple of jars that are over a year old, and I still use them. You can also leave it out on the counter or windowsill, but it probably has about a six-month shelf life that way, so I’d suggest keeping it in the freezer.
We’ll go ahead and start filling.
And here we have the end result: a fresh jar of bear lard. I’ll probably use mine to make some cornbread in a cast iron pan.
Well, I hope this has been helpful and gives you some cool ideas for what you can do this bear season if you’re successful. Best of luck out there!