Griebenschmalz – German Pork Lard Made Easy At Home
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- Pâté & terrine
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In this post I’ll show you how you can make Griebenschmalz yourself. Like the Obatzda a classic for a Bavarian “Brotzeit”.
Griebenschmalz is pork lard with added onions, apples and cracklings.
You can eat Griebenschmalz on a fresh baked bread or even with a homemade Laugenbreze (soft pretzel).
It can also be used for cooking. The lard brings flavor to vegetables or meat. If you don’t like greaves / cracklings, onion & apples in your lard, I’ll show you how to make simple lard without it.
Further down I’ll tell you the origins of Griebenschmalz. But now enough chatter!
You can watch the Griebenschmalz recipe as video or read it.
Have fun making it!
Table of Contents
Griebenschmalz – What do you need to make it?
Ingredients per 750 g
| Ingredient | Grams |
|---|---|
| Flomen (pork belly fat) | 500 g |
| pork backfat | 250 g |
Spices per 750 g
| Ingredient | Grams |
|---|---|
| salt | 13.5 g |
| marjoram | 2.3 g |
| apples (tart apples work best) | 2 |
| onions | 2 |
| pepper | 1.9 g |
The equipment to make Griebenschmalz
Cheesecloth / Fine mesh sieve
The cheesecloth is used to separate your liquid fat from remaining solid pieces of fat. You can also use a fine mesh sieve.
Homemade Griebenschmalz – Step-By-Step Instruction
Cut the onions into small pieces. The size is up to you. I cut them into fine slices. Cubes also work.
Peel your apples and cut them into small cubes. The apples will almost dissolve in the lard later.
Put the pieces of fat in a pot. If you can’t get them ground up, you can grind them at home. I would use the smallest perforated disc for this.
Melt the fat in the pot on low-medium heat. Make sure your cracklings don’t get too crispy yet.
After 15 minutes you can take out the cracklings.
If you want to have standard pork lard you have to pass the fat through a cheesecloth or sieve. This way you will remove all the remaining pieces. Then you can fill it into jars.
For the Griebenschmalz, add the apples and onions to the fat.
After 10 minutes, add the cracklings again and leave them in the pot for another 5 minutes.
Take the apples, onions and cracklings out of the fat and store them in a bowl. Then filter the rendered fat through cheesecloth. This will help to get the fine dark particles out of the fat.
Put the apple, onion, crackling mixture back into the filtered fat. The amount is dependent on your taste. The fried up apple/onion/crackling mixture seasoned with salt also tastes delicious on its own.
When the mixture has cooled down a bit, you can fill it into jars with a spoon.
Frequently asked questions
How is lard made?
How is lard made?
Lard is rendered pork fat and nothing else. Solid fat is melted down slowly until it runs clear, the solid bits are lifted out, and what is left is strained and poured into jars, where it sets white and firm. That is the first half of the recipe above: stop after the straining and you have plain lard, the neutral cooking fat you fry vegetables or meat in.
Griebenschmalz is that same lard with the Grieben put back into it. Schmalz is the German word for lard and Grieben are the cracklings, the pieces of tissue that shrink and firm up as the fat renders out of them, and the recipe here fries them with apple and onion and stirs the lot back into the strained fat. English recipes describe the same thing as pork lard with cracklings. The two fats the list above starts from are Flomen and back fat.
How long does the Griebenschmalz keep?
How long does the Griebenschmalz keep?
The lard should always be stored airtight in the refrigerator. There it can be kept for at least 1 month.
What is Griebenschmalz?
What is Griebenschmalz?
In the past, farmers slaughtered their animals themselves. The motto was “nothing is wasted”. Nowadays, this should also be more like this again ;).
For this reason, the fat tissue of the pig was also processed.
By cooking, the fat was melted and rendered out.
This is how lard was created.
Greaves / Cracklings is the name given to the tissue that contracted again after cooling.
The farmers cut this tissue into small pieces and put it into the lard.
This is how Griebenschmalz was created.
Vielen Dank!
I’m making this right now in Seattle because I had some extra fatty pork and I know this dish from My hometown of Munich. My grandmother used to make it.
I’m not getting a lot of lard rendered though …even after about 20 minutes on low to medium, so I’m wondering if I could add some American bacon strips for extra lard?
Thanks so much and will be making more of your recipes soon.
Update: ok…so I made it without American bacon and just used the pork fat I had.
Let me just say it was DELICIOUS and totally like my grandmother used to make. Anyone reading this…be sure you have good crusty German bread to go with it though!
Thank you again!
Awesome to hear that everything worked out :). Enjoy your Griebenschmalz
love the content . really tuff toget pork fat around this part of the country . government penalizes producers for having back fat on hogs so fat is more diffocult to find