Tallow
Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2022 12:34 pm
What's tallow? I'll tell you. Cooking oil (or soap, or candle wax) that you get from simmering fat for a few hours. Rumor has it that McD's used to make their fries in tallow, which is why they used to be better, before the vegetarians whined about it.
I've mentioned before that I prefer to buy large slabs of beef and cut my own steaks off of it, for a savings of about $2 per pound. But when I cut up a 14 pound strip loin, I trim off about 2 pounds of fat. In the past I didn't know what to do with it and threw it away.... but then I googled "what can you do with beef fat?" and here we are.
Start with all the fat trimmings. Put them in a big pot. Low heat.
After about 4 hours with frequent stirring, it looks like this. I've heard people sometimes take those beef cracklins out and save them for beef soup.... which is insane. Using waste from waste..... I dig it.
I used my fry basket of get out the big chunks, and poured the rest through my thin mesh strainer.
Funnel it into a wide-mouth jar, pop it in the fridge, and you have a quart of organic, home-made cooking oil, from your beef waste. It solidifies white like Crisco once it cools, so use a wide-mouth jar if you refrigerate it because it'll be like scooping candle wax. But the end result is amazing. There's no difficult thing to this, and everyone should do it to reduce their carbon footprint.
I've mentioned before that I prefer to buy large slabs of beef and cut my own steaks off of it, for a savings of about $2 per pound. But when I cut up a 14 pound strip loin, I trim off about 2 pounds of fat. In the past I didn't know what to do with it and threw it away.... but then I googled "what can you do with beef fat?" and here we are.
Start with all the fat trimmings. Put them in a big pot. Low heat.
After about 4 hours with frequent stirring, it looks like this. I've heard people sometimes take those beef cracklins out and save them for beef soup.... which is insane. Using waste from waste..... I dig it.
I used my fry basket of get out the big chunks, and poured the rest through my thin mesh strainer.
Funnel it into a wide-mouth jar, pop it in the fridge, and you have a quart of organic, home-made cooking oil, from your beef waste. It solidifies white like Crisco once it cools, so use a wide-mouth jar if you refrigerate it because it'll be like scooping candle wax. But the end result is amazing. There's no difficult thing to this, and everyone should do it to reduce their carbon footprint.