How to Cook With Beef Tallow, Including Frying
Tallow behaves like a neutral oil with a better crust and a faint beefiness that suits almost everything savory.
Use it where you would use a neutral oil, and in a few places you would normally reach for butter and then regret it.
“Use it instead of vegetable oil every chance you get.”
Gray Shipley
What it is genuinely better at
- Roast potatoes. The clearest demonstration there is. Crust that oil does not produce.
- Searing beef. Beef fat with beef in it. The flavors are already related.
- Frying. It holds frying temperatures comfortably, where butter burns because of its milk solids.
- Roasting root vegetables. Carrots and parsnips in beef fat are a different vegetable.
The frying question
“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
“Uh, yeah, I, the beef tallow fry, Malcolm Gladwell did a podcast about this in his revisionist history.”
Gray Shipley
Fried food in this country was cooked in beef fat for most of its history and the change to seed oils happened quickly and recently. That is a documented shift rather than a nostalgic claim, and it is why tallow frying has become a subject again.
How much to use
Less than you would use of oil. Tallow coats differently and a thin film goes further, which is noticeable the first time you roast potatoes in it and find you did not need the usual quantity.
Where not to use it
- Anything delicate or sweet. It is faintly beefy and it will say so.
- Cold applications. It sets hard, so it is wrong for a dressing.
- Baking that wants butter. Pastry made with tallow works but it is a different, firmer thing.
Practical notes
It sets solid, so measure it by the spoon rather than pouring. It keeps in a cupboard. Strain and reuse frying tallow a few times, and stop when it darkens or starts to smell of what you last cooked in it.
Our signature dry-aged ribeye. Thick enough to be forgiving and marbled enough to carry the night.
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Shipley tallow balm, made by Twigs&Bark from our fat. The non-cooking use people are surprised by.
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Whole dry-aged brisket. Feeds a crowd from one piece of meat, and rewards an early start.
View ProductRendering your own is in how beef tallow is made, the background in what is beef tallow, and the crust physics in how to get a great crust on steak.
- Cook to a Safe Minimum Internal Temperature, FoodSafety.gov
Food-safety temperatures and storage times on this page are cited to the agencies above rather than to us.
Written at Shipley Farms in Vilas, North Carolina: a family cattle farm raising and dry-aging beef in the Appalachian Mountains, now in its fifth generation. No shortcuts since 1872.
Every quote on this page is Gray Shipley talking, the man who runs this farm. We sat down with him, turned on a recorder, and left his words alone.
Nobody knows this beef better than we do. On food safety we leave it to FoodSafety.gov, and we have linked their page above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.
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