I have been making my own suet for years and all of my birds devour it,
whereas they won't touch store-bought. Even birds that don't normally
eat suet love this stuff. I have two suet hangers hanging down from a
pole, one attached to the wooden stand that holds all of my feeders for
the clinging birds, and one suet feeder laying flat on top of the wooden
arm for birds that can't cling. It's hilarious watching the Eastern
Wood-Peewees trying to get it. They obviously can't stand or cling like
the other birds, so they'll just keep flying at it over and over trying
to peck bites of it as if they were chasing insects.
My birds now go through so much of it, I make about 18 cakes of this a
month, so my recipe is big. You can cut this down, but I guarantee that
it won't be long before you'll be making the full recipe once a month,
sometimes more often that that.
I take a 4-qt. saucepan and fill it up with lard (which I now buy in
25-lb. containers at Wal Mart) and melt that. While that's melting, in
a huge bowl I mix 2 pounds of yellow cornmeal and 4 cups of flour. I
then add 1½ packages of dried fruit bits. To that I add peanut hearts,
sunflower hearts, and some thistle. I add as much of these last
ingredients as the mix will accomodate, have never measured it out, but
it's quite a bit. You need a huge bowl for this, I use a 13 qt. one.
Then I scoop some of the dried ingredients into a seperate bowl, and
stir in melted lard so it all holds together well. The volume is too
large to do this in one step, you need to do small bowl-fulls at a time
or you would never have the strength to stir it. I then pack it into
store-bought suet containers I've saved and begged from friends. The
consistency is right when it shakes a little like jello once it's in the
containers. If you don't have enough lard in the mix, then it just
crumbles when you unmold it.
I then put the containers in the freezer and freeze them. You need to
leave them in the freezer for at least 4-5 hours. That way they're
frozen solid and unmold perfectly. Otherwise they seem frozen and
really aren't, and part sticks to the container when you try to unmold
them. I then wrap each cake in saran and keep it in the freezer until I
need it. When I unwrap each cake as needed, I save the saran and use it
over and over.
Molding it in saved store-bought containers makes it fit perfectly into
suet holders. In the summer, to keep it from going rancid, I take a
large serrated knife and cut each cake in half and just put out halves
at a time. Any melted lard left in the saucepan can just be poured back
into the lard container, which can be stored at room temperature.
This is alot of trouble and definitely requires some dedication, but
when you see the results, it's worth it.
I also have several other suet recipes I've collected and saved over the
years, but I would have to send them as attachements which isn't allowed
here. So if anyone wants those, contact me off-list and I'll e-mail
those. But this is the recipe I've settled on as being the best of all
that I've tried.
Leslie Fellows
