How to Render Beef Tallow

Beef tallow is one of our favorite rendered fats. It's easy to render, tastes amazing, and has lots of uses in, and out of, the kitchen. Learn how to make beef tallow in this tutorial.

We strive to eat nose-to-tail when we harvest an animal. That means we render all manner of fat, including lard, schmaltz, and even deer tallow in our cooking adventures. Beef fat is no exception.

When we purchased a steer this past spring, I told the butcher shop we wanted the fat and they couldn't get rid of it fast enough. They handed us more than just our steer worth of leaf fat. We had enough to render down over five gallons of grass-fed beef tallow, that's pretty impressive... though it was quite a time-consuming task to get it all rendered down.

Rendering your own beef tallow is really pretty easy even if it isn't widely done anymore. Contrary to a lot of beliefs, tallow and other traditional fats are healthy fats.

Animal fats have many benefits to the hydrogenated vegetable oils that are rampant in our cooking and baking nowadays and it gives respect to the animal by utilizing every last bit of it instead of just the convenient parts.

What is beef tallow?

Tallow is the rendered fat of cattle and sheep. While fat from any part of the animal, even a chuck roast or other cut of beef, can be rendered, or cooked down, into tallow. Typically, it is rendered from the fat surrounding the animal's organs.

Unlike pigs, who store a great deal of fat under the skin, bovines do not. While you can definitely work to get all the fat off the animal (like we do for deer) and render it down, most of us don't go out of our way. The highest quality tallow comes from the leaf fat, which is the fat surrounding the kidneys and there is quite a bit of leaf fat there.

What does beef tallow taste like?

While it would seem since it's rendered from the fat of the animal it would taste quite rich and strong, the opposite is actually true. Pure beef tallow has a very light beefy flavor, but it's not strong or offputting.

The flavor is a little stronger than lard, but it's still mild. It tastes amazing and until 1990 McDonald's actually fried their french fries in it. It has gotten a bad rap, like most natural, animal fats, but it actually has several health benefits.

What is tallow used for?

Tallow is a superior cooking fat with a high smoke point, making it a great cooking oil as it can withstand high temperatures without oxidizing and going rancid. As I mentioned, McDonald's cooked their fries in 93% tallow oil until 1990.

My favorite way to use tallow is definitely cooking with it. A dollop on top of a grilled steak or in a cast iron skillet to fry an egg... it's absolutely delicious.

It honestly has seemingly endless limits in the kitchen, just use your culinary imagination for roasting, frying, deep frying, and even baking applications. You can substitute tallow for butter in any recipe that calls for butter at a 1-to-1 ratio.

Another great way to use it is in skin care products.

Rendered tallow contains fatty acids similar in composition to human skin making it easy to absorb. This means it's excellent for making tallow balm, salves, and soaps. In fact, tallow soap with a bit of charcoal is an excellent facial cleanser, it's simple, has no weird ingredients, cleanses, and won't clog your pores.

It is antimicrobial, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory making it excellent for making medicinal salves for cuts and scrapes as well as other skin problems.

Since it has such a high smoke point, it also makes long-lasting candle wax. We often use some tallow from deer or beef to make tallow candles.

Beef tallow makes an excellent leather weatherproofing material. It's much more natural than the products at the store and works even better at waterproofing your boots, coats, and other leather goods.

What you need to make beef tallow

• Fat from a cow or steer, preferably grass-fed. We utilize the leaf fat from around the kidneys, it's a pretty good chunk on the average-sized bovine.
• A very sharp knife and cutting board. You can also use a grinder to make rendering a bit quicker, but you'll want to wrap the grinder shoot in an ice pack to keep the fat from clogging it up since it's so oily.
• A crockpot or large stock pot
• A fine mesh strainer
• Cheesecloth
• Glass jars and/or food-grade buckets for storage.

How to render beef tallow

Prepare the fat

First, you'll need to cut the fat up into small chunks in order for it to render down more quickly and easily. Don't throw out the kidneys! Even if you don't like them, you can make them into kidney dog treats or feed them to your backyard chickens.

As I mentioned, you can grind up the fat, which will make it render even more quickly, but it's difficult because of how waxy it is, but you can wrap the nozzle in an ice pack to help prevent it from melting if you choose this option.

Add fat to the crockpot (or stock pot)

I find using the crockpot is an easy way to render beef fat. You can also use a stock pot just be sure to heat on very low heat. Whether you use the crockpot or stock pot, you're going to keep the lid off for this project.

Don't overfill, but fill it full, it will heat and melt down so what you start with is not what you'll end with.

Heat low and slow to render

You don't want high heat, which is what makes the crockpot so perfect for this task. Even so, just put it on low heat on the stove and let it lightly simmer. It should bubble once it begins to melt, but just periodically. It should never boil. If you have it on the stove and it starts boiling, turn the heat down and stir it well.

Be patient

The rendering process takes quite a while, the larger your chunks of fat, the longer the process will take. It takes about 5 hours for a 6-quart crockpot full to render down for us.

As the fat is rendering, you'll notice bits of meat and other impurities floating around in the pan, this is normal. You don't need to do anything but wait.

You'll know the fat is rendered completely when the impurities are floating and the meaty bits are cooked and generally sank to the bottom of the vessel. The tallow will be clear and no longer cloudy.

Strain the fat

We always double-strain our rendered fats. First through a mesh strainer and the second time through a piece of cheesecloth lined in the strainer. This helps get all of those impurities and unwanted bits out of the tallow making it purer and not having an off-taste.

Simply pour the liquid fat into a wide-mouth quart jar or other storage container running it through the fine mesh strainer first. Then, pour it back through a second time lining the strainer with a piece of cheesecloth, paper towel, or coffee filter to get all those fine impurities out.

Cool, Store, and Use

Once you've poured the tallow into the storage containers of choice, it's ready to use. You can use it hot right now as a liquid, but once the final product cools to room temperature it will become solid fat (much harder than lard) and almost pure white.

Technically tallow and all other rendered traditional animal fats are shelf-stable. This, however, requires that it is kept in a dark place in an airtight container. If air gets to it, it will not stay good. If you have a nice basement pantry or root cellar, this is the ideal place to store it as a shelf stable option and it will keep for a long time (upwards of a year).

While shelf stable, I recommend refrigerating it where it will keep for quite a while, or freezing unused portions. We keep a large bucket of tallow in our freezer, a jar in the fridge, and a smaller jar on the counter. Tallow is very hard when cooled and refrigerated and frozen tallow can be difficult to break up. So, we keep a little in the cabinet just like we keep softened butter on the counter. Rebels, I know.

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