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Once upon a time, animal fats were an important part of most cultures' diets. Today, as we re-examine highly processed, plant-based fats, many people are choosing to return to the old ways. The only problem? Buying good quality animal fats can be expensive! However, the good news is that it's very easy to render "raw" animal fats and make a high quality product.

NOTE: Today, I'm going to show you how to render tallow, but the process is the same with any animal fat.

Why Animal Fats?

It used to be that animal fats were widely used in cooking and baking. Then along came Crisco; it used a new process called hydrogenation to find a use for a by-product: cottonseed oil. Originally, the manufacturers wanted to sell Crisco as an ingredient for soap, but to really create booming sales, they instead jumped on the "pure food" bandwagon, initiated by the federal government in order to give consumers protection from adulterated and mislabeled food. Crisco, the manufacturers claimed, was a more "pure" alternative to tallow and lard. Unfortunately, we now know that the more processed a food is, the less healthy it is for you. In fact, canola oil, vegetable oil, and other highly processed oils are now understood to cause body-wide inflammation, which in turn is linked to nearly every disease. (If you'd like to read some studies supporting the idea that animal fats are healthier than highly processed fats, go here, here, here, here, and here.)

An early Crisco sales display. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

What are the Benefits of Tallow?

When used in food, grass fed and finished tallow has high levels of  Conjugated Linoleic Acids (CLAs), which, studies show, fight inflammation, reduce plaque build up in arteries, reduce blood pressure, help fight cancer, and more. Grass finished tallow is also a great source of vitamins B6, B12, Ks, iron, selenium, phosphorus, riboflavin, and potassium.

In addition, tallow has 40 to 50% monounsaturated fat - believed to be the most heart-healthy fat; it's the same type found in olive oil.

When used as a lotion for the skin, tallow absorbs readily and is anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial - but won't clog your pores. It's natural levels of vitamins A, D, E and K also help create skin elasticity and help with collagen development.

How to Use Tallow 

In the U.S., tallow generally refers to the fat surrounding the kidneys of cattle, which is called suet. In other countries, tallow may refer to the kidney fat of any ruminant animal, including sheep, goat, deer, elk, and bison. Although it can prove confusing, any type of fat from any ruminant animal can also be called tallow. Just know that fats from other parts of the animal may have a stronger flavor and scent, while tallow made from suet is neutral in flavor and smell.

(By the way: Rendered pig fat is called lard; rendered chicken fat is called schmaltz. Literally any animal fat can be rendered.)

Tallow is widely used in savory cooking and baking. It's fantastic for frying. (Did you know that McDonald's original French fries were fried in tallow?) It's also used for sauteing and in savory cooking anywhere you might use store bought oil. Use it in place of butter or other fats in pie dough, biscuits, and other baked goods; it makes pastry flaky and tender. Tallow is also excellent for soap and candle making - and it's said to be the best skin moisturizer you can find. Finally, it makes an excellent fat for seasoning cast iron pots and pans.

How to Find Fat for Rendering

As homesteaders, you may collect the fat from your own cattle at butchering time. Or, if you purchase a steer for your freezer, you may request that the butcher set aside fat for you. Otherwise, you can buy unrendered fat at any good butcher's shop. You can also save the fat from any cuts of meat you buy. (I've read that the fat from beef brisket is pretty close in flavor to suet, once rendered; later in the year, I'll give it a try and let you know what I think.)

And yes, you can also buy tallow - but be sure to read labels carefully. Ideally, you want minimally processed tallow made from grass fed and finished cattle. Some tallow may be made from other animals and those, of course, have a different nutrition profile. Fatworks has a good quality tallow (as well as other rendered animal fats).

How to Render Tallow

There are two basic ways to render any animal fat: Dry or wet. Dry rendering (where the fat is the only thing put in the pan) can result in scorching and off-flavors, unless great care is taken. Wet rendering (where a bit of water is added to the pan, along with the fat) has the potential to go bad on the shelf if the water isn't completely removed from the finished product. 

Until recently, I had always wet rendered. In fact, if you're using a heavy-bottomed pan or pot on the stove, I still recommend this as the best method. (If you're only rendering small amounts of fat from cuts of meat you buy, this is also the method I recommend.) However, if you have large quantities of fat and access to an electric roaster or crock pot that can go to 150 degrees F. or lower, dry rendering is easy and do-able. I'll give directions for both methods.

How you begin this project depends on what your fat looks like. If you've butchered your own cattle, you'll see the fat around the kidneys is naturally wrapped in what Jill Winger calls "a weird sort of 'cellophane'." She recommends pulling off as much as possible, but advises that it will be impossible to remove all of that "wrapping." That's fine.

But most of us will have a butcher to do that for us. That butcher will then either give us large chunks of suet that haven't been trimmed (in which case, you'll need to cut off any bits that are not fat), or he will provide trimmed suet cut into smallish pieces. If your suet isn't ground or in at least 1/2 inch chunks, you'll start by either chopping the fat small or running it through a food processor.

FOR DRY RENDERING:

1. Place the fat in your cooking device; I recommend an electric roaster or crock pot that goes down to 150 degrees F. or less. For dry rendering, the fat should not be frozen.

2. Turn the heat on low (150 degrees F. or less). This low temperature will help prevent the suet from burning.

3. When all the fat has melted, it's time to strain it. I recommend using a fine mesh strainer (I use these) lined with good quality (grade 50 or higher) cheesecloth (or a double or triple layer of cheap cheesecloth, which is much more "holey"). Some people like to use paper coffee filters instead of cheesecloth. Situate the lined strainer over a large bowl. 

After the first filtering: tallow on the left and what was filtered out of the fat on the right.

4. Everything that's in the strainer is bits of meat, ligaments, etc. I feed this to my dogs, cats, or meat-eating livestock. What remains in the bowl is tallow.

5. You can stop here, but I highly recommend that you repeat steps 1-4 again. This ensures the tallow is free from anything other than fat. This extra step also means you'll get a neutral smell and flavor and a longer shelf life. But first, put the bowl of tallow in the refrigerator to harden.

Tallow hardened in a bowl after a first rendering.

Some people report that after letting the tallow harden in a bowl, they can flip the bowl and easily remove the big clump of hardened tallow; they then scrape any impurities off the bottom. However, I found it impossible to slide hardened tallow out of the bowl, even after softening it a little at room temperature or putting the bowl in a sink of warm water. Instead, I allowed the tallow to soften just a bit on the counter, then used a spoon to transfer it to the electric roasting pan. As I came near the bottom of the bowl, I tried to avoid any impurities. (I ended up mostly finding gelatinous material at the bottom of the bowl; I reserved this for using as broth for cooking.)

Tallow returned to the pan and beginning to melt after a first rendering.

6. After repeating steps 1-4, you may pour the finished tallow into (absolutely dry) glass jars, to be stored in the pantry or fridge. Pure tallow will last at least 6 months, and up to a year, in the pantry. It may also be refrigerated. Or you may line a rimmed baking sheet with waxed paper, and pour the warm tallow on top. Once the tallow begins turning solid, transfer the sheet to the fridge to harden further, then use a knife to slice the tallow into bars. Remove the bars with a spatula and wrap in plastic wrap, wax paper, or waxed fabric. This makes the tallow easier to freeze - allowing you to pull out and thaw smaller quantities at a time.

Tallow cut into bars and wrapped in some of the gazillion rolls of plastic wrap I inherited from my mom :)

FOR WET RENDERING ONLY: 

Before melting the fat, weigh it. For every pound, put about 1/2 cup of water into your cooking device. Now add the fat. (It's fine to use frozen suet with the wet rendering process.)

Fully frozen suet going into the electric roaster, along with water.

Turn the heat to low (150 degrees F. or so). Do not use a lid; you want the water to be able to evaporate out of the fat.

Now follow steps 1-4, above.

The electric roaster after the first rendering. Clean all this up before rendering again.

After straining the fat, clean and dry the pot thoroughly, then return the tallow to the pot and cook at 225-250 degrees F. If there's water still in the fat, the mixture will bubble. Continuously hold the fat at this temperature until all bubbling stops. (Bubbles mean there is still water present.)

Is rendering tallow a smelly process?

I've heard horror stories about how rendering tallow stinks up the whole house, but I did not find that to be the case at all. There was a very mild beef scent in my kitchen only. If the process is smelly for others, I can only guess at the cause. Perhaps the fat wasn't trimmed well before rendering began and/or suet wasn't used.

What color should my tallow be?

Warm tallow is golden in color. Cooled tallow is typically pure white. I say "typically" because dairy farmers tell me that tallow from dairy cattle cools to a yellow color. But if you're not using fat from a dairy cow, cooled tallow that isn't white is the result of cooking it too hot or not filtering it well.

The tallow to the left is cooled; the tallow to the right is still warm.

Should my tallow smell?

It should have a very slight scent only. Typically, stinky tallow means the fat wasn't filtered well enough. In fact, in soap making, tallow is often rendered and filtered many times, so if you are bothered by the scent of your homemade tallow, just keep rendering and filtering it. In addition, if you use fat that isn't suet, it may also have a stronger smell and taste. 

How do I use this hard tallow?

If your house is cooler than the mid-70s, the tallow will be hard and difficult to scoop out of a jar. To make removal easier, place the jar in a bowl of warm water or temporarily place it next to a heat source (like a wood stove).

Can I reuse my tallow?

Traditionally, tallow and other animal fats were reused after frying food. So if you fry French fries in tallow, strain the fat through a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth, and then pour it (warm but not hot) into a glass jar. Strongly flavored or scented foods will make the tallow taste different, so you may wish to dump tallow that was used to cook, say, fish; or you may simply wish to strain it, mark it as "fish tallow," and use it the next time you cook fish.

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