Larding and Barding

[Keltin]

To lard or bard is to add fat to a lean and tough cut of meat. With larding, you often use a thin strip of frozen lard (called a lardon) cut from bacon and press the frozen lard strip into the meat. Using a larding needle to puncture the meat first helps facilitate the process.

These days, you can approximate the same thing with the injectors that are often sold for injecting turkeys and chickens.

Barding also refers to adding fat to a lean and tough cut of meat, but with barding, you lay the strips of fat over the meat as it cooks instead of puncturing the meat. You’ll often see this done when smoking tough and lean cuts of meat for many hours. To do this, you would simply drape some bacon over the meat and then smoke it low and slow (or roast it on the oven).

Although effective, most prefer to simply use a wet mop for basting the meat while smoking (or roasting), but barding with bacon (or some other fat) is a viable choice. Yet another option is to use a tiered smoker and place the fattiest cuts of meat on the high racks and the leaner cuts on the low racks so that the rendered fat from the fatty cuts drips down to the leaner cuts below.