Steve

Here's my challenge. Let's both do some fried chicken. I'll use that crap from the grocery store as you call it, and you can use Crisco. Then we'll see which tastes better.

I'll use peanut oil which is what I always use for fried chicken. It is not as good as my grandmother's, but she used properly rendered white leaf, but it is better than when I have tried to cook it with the supermarket lard.

Fine. I've tried liquid oils and I find them inferior to the supermarket lard or Crisco. They seem to leave an oily quality in the product. But maybe that's just me.

I fry chicken saute style, not immersed, and maybe that's also a factor.

Your place or mine?

This is indeed interesting: you are BOTH serious, accomplished home chefs! In John's case, formerly a professional chef for a period of time.

Hmmm...........does someone need a JUDGE!!!!!

John: thanks for the info about Good's chips. Really appreciated. Weren't you here (the cluster party) the day I came back from Lancaster with six or seven different brands of potato chips, all cooked in lard? I'm still working off the calories from that....

By the way, the "ruptured duck" is great!

Thanks for the complement, but to call me a former professional chef is a wild overstatement at the very least. But I was of course already thinking about you as a judge; I'm sure Steve would agree. We could do this Iron Chef style with lard as the "secret ingredient." Yikes!

Yes I was there, and I certainly remember the chips, which you'll recall I also had you bring some back for me, and they are certainly great. Now I want some of those Hawaiian ones! If you plan to fly out there anytime soon just to get some (which I wouldn't put past you), bring me some too.

The "ruptured duck" is the nose art from one of the B-25's that took part in the "Dolittle Raid" in April of '42, the one flown by Ted Lawson who later wrote "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." Somehow I thought it fits.

I'm in, but it most likely can't happen until late spring. I will have to find a source for good quality lard.

Whoa! You're the one what's sposed to be using peanut oil.......

Having said that, if you find such a source, let me know. Not for our fry-off but for general use.

Or did you decide to make some nice chips while we're at it?

See, I thought we were looking for a Iron Chef style cook off meaning we use the same ingredient. But we can do a chicken cook-off, the only problem is that we would have to use the same recipe using both types of fat or else we are not really judging which is the better lipid to use as much as who has the better recipe.