How Is Beef Tallow Made, and How to Store It

You need beef fat, a heavy pot and several hours in which you are doing something else.

Which fat

Suet, the hard fat from around the kidneys, renders cleanest and sets hardest. Trim from around the cuts works too and gives a slightly softer, beefier result. Either is fine; suet is the traditional choice.

The method, which is mostly waiting

• Cut it small or run it through a grinder. More surface renders faster and more evenly.
• Lowest heat you have. A splash of water in the pot at the start stops the first pieces scorching before any fat has melted out.
• Leave it. Two to four hours. Stir occasionally. It should never bubble hard.
• Strain it through a fine sieve or cloth into a clean jar while it is still liquid.
• Let it set at room temperature. It will go from amber to white as it hardens.

What is left in the sieve is cracklings. They are salted and eaten, not thrown away.

“That's the only way you should do it. It may be lard, but if it's not lard, it, it, it has to be tallow.”

Gray Shipley

“I, the more I learn about food, the more important to me, clean label and food that's made of food.”

Gray Shipley

Rendered tallow is a one-ingredient food, which is most of its appeal. Nothing is added to it and nothing needs to be.

Why low heat matters so much

Heat is what makes rendered fat taste of something other than itself. Too hot and the solids brown, the fat takes on that flavor and the result is dark and assertive instead of clean and neutral. Low and slow gives you a fat that tastes of almost nothing, which is the point.

Storing it

• Cool and dark. A sealed jar in a cupboard is traditional and works.
• Refrigerated if your kitchen is warm, or if you rendered it with any water left in it.
• Frozen if you made a lot. At zero degrees Fahrenheit it keeps safely, the same as anything else.
• Clean spoon every time. Crumbs and moisture introduced into the jar are what actually spoils it.

“Uh, even just not eating, you know, it's nice to have a, a food product you can, you know, rub on your hands, but my sister will use it for wrinkles. I'm not going to say which one I'll use it for sunburn.”

Gray Shipley

If you would rather not

We render ours from our own trim. It is not listed in the online store at the moment, so ask at the farm store if you want the cooking kind rather than the balm.

What it is and what it is for is in what is beef tallow, and cooking with it in how to cook with beef tallow.