What Is Beef Tallow?
Beef tallow is rendered beef fat, and very little else.
Tallow is beef fat that has been melted slowly, strained and allowed to set. That is the whole definition. What is left is clean, firm at room temperature and keeps for a long time without refrigeration.
How it differs from the other fats
- Lard is the same thing from a pig. Softer, slightly different flavor.
- Butter contains milk solids and water, which is why it burns at a temperature tallow is comfortable at.
- Seed and vegetable oils are extracted from seeds, usually with heat and solvents, and are liquid at room temperature.
“Use it instead of vegetable oil every chance you get.”
Gray Shipley
That is Gray's whole position on it, and it is the practical reason most people come to tallow.
What it is actually used for
- Frying. The traditional use, and the one it is best known for.
- Roasting vegetables. Potatoes in beef fat are a different vegetable.
- Searing. Beef fat in a pan with beef in it is the obvious pairing.
- Skin. Which surprises people, and is not a new idea.
“Uh, the chemistry of beef tallow is almost identical to the chemistry of human skin. And so people don't think about tallow so much as soaps and lotions, but, uh, but it is really enriching and nourishing for skin.”
Gray Shipley
That is the reason the balm exists and the reason tallow turns up in skincare rather than only in kitchens.
“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
Why it went away
Not because anybody decided it cooked badly. Seed oils were cheaper to produce at scale, easier to ship as a liquid and backed by decades of marketing. Restaurants that fried in beef fat moved across in the space of a few years, and a generation grew up without it in the cupboard.
Where ours comes from
From our own animals, because the fat is already here. A farm that sells whole animals has trim whether or not anybody wants it, which makes rendering it the obvious thing to do rather than a product decision.
One honest note: we do not currently list rendered cooking tallow in the online store. The balm is listed. If you want the cooking kind, ask at the farm store.
Shipley tallow balm, made by Twigs&Bark from our fat. The non-cooking use people are surprised by.
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Our signature dry-aged ribeye. Thick enough to be forgiving and marbled enough to carry the night.
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Beef broth bones. Hours of low simmer and you have something no carton can match.
View ProductMaking it is covered in how beef tallow is made, using it in how to cook with beef tallow, and the wider argument in nose-to-tail beef.
- Freezing and Food Safety, USDA FSIS
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 USDA FSIS, and we have linked their page above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.
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