I bought a big bag of lard (pork fat) a while back and stuffed it in the freezer until I had time/energy to deal with it. Well, it sat there for nearly a year before I bothered to figure out how to deal with it. See, I like to make tamales, and to make tamales, you need lard. Real lard, not shortening or butter or anything else. Also, I love it for making tortillas, and I've been told that fries are wonderful cooked in lard. I knew you had to "render" it to make it smooth and ready for use, but I had to go online and check out how to do that. I found some examples on some real food blogs, and wha-la, I made lard. All you do to render lard (or tallow, if you have that) is dump it in the crockpot and cook it on low for hours. Seriously. The hard chunks of fat melt into liquid, and the unusable bits stay solid. Strain and put in jars. Cool and refrigerate or freeze. The most time consuming thing was straining it into jars. I got 5 pint jars of lard for one large crockpot full of pork fat.
Tonight, I'm making fries.
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