My friend Tina asked me if I had ever made pastry using bacon fat, I hadn’t, to be honest I hadn’t even thought about it.

My tried and true “best pastry ever recipe” has always worked so I adapted it.

Ingredients

1 level cup All purpose Flour
3 oz butter frozen or from the fridge
2 tablespoons bacon fat
1/4 cup ice cold water

Directions

Food Processor

Put the 1 cup of flour, bacon fat and butter in your food processor. (3 oz butter, 2 tablespoons bacon fat)
Pulse the fats into the dry ingredients.
With the motor running pour in 1/4 cup ice-cold water until the ingredients come together and look like large breadcrumbs then stop the machine. Don’t overmix.
Take the pastry out of the processor and form it into ball.
Put it in the fridge for at least 1 hour before you use it.

To Make The Old Fashioned Way - By Hand
1. Put the flour into a bowl
2. Cut butter and bacon fat into chunks and add to the flour.
3. Rub fats into flour with your fingertips.
4. When the mix looks like breadcrumbs add most of the water and bring the dough together - you may need to add the rest of the water.
5. Wrap the pastry in parchment and put it into the fridge for at least 1 hours to chill.

I only ever use lard from our pasture-raised pigs in my original recipe but I know that most people don’t have lard but most people have bacon fat.

(Click the pic below to find out how to render lard)

I replaced the lard with bacon fat. I also cut the salt out completely because I use salted butter and bacon is usually salty.

I decided to try masking bacon fat pastry at 3 pm one afternoon, I had no bacon fat so I quickly cooked up some bacon, strained 2 tablespoons of bacon fat off and froze it.

A pie was on the table for 6pm.

Next time you have some bacon fat why not try it?

Ingredients

Directions

Food Processor

To Make The Old Fashioned Way - By Hand