Smalec - Polish Pork Dripping

There was a lot of fat on the pigs when we were processing them at the weekend, so gets added to the sausages but there was still a lot there. 

One of the guys was Polish and wanted to make smalec. This is basically like dripping but with pork fat instead of beef and the fat is flavoured. 

It was simple to make. We first minced up a good amount of fat. 

 It was then rendered it down on the hob until it started to separate.

 Then an onion cut in half was added to flavour the fat, he did this on sticks so he could stir it round.

 He took this outside to cool for a while then once it was cold enough to pour into plastic containers he broke up the onion and shared it between three tubs.

 Once cool it solidified.

 Apparently they spread it on bread instead of butter with a sprinkling of salt and fresh onion on top.

I tried it on some fresh bread (without fresh onion - no way can I eat that) and a bit of salt, it was lovely, a great alternative to butter and one worth remembering encase things ever got harder and dairy products were harder to get.

Stores for a long time as well as fat is basically a preserve.

Apparently they sometimes flavour the fat with apples instead of onions. I think I still prefer beef dripping but this is genuinely good to eat. The girls liked it as well!

Who else has tried this or something similar?