How to Render Beef Tallow at Home

Reader Contribution by Kristi Nebel
Published on February 9, 2015
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Fat seems to come and go in relative estimations of value and devaluation depending on various factors of its content. I’ve in recent years become a fan of pasture-fed, pure beef tallow. It came to me in the form of a sort of gift along with the purchase of a piece of my cousin’s homegrown cow three years ago. Nobody else seemed to want the stuff so I took it; there was no extra charge and it would otherwise have been thrown out.

Health Benefits of Pastured Beef Fat

Then I began to research beef tallow’s health merits. As compared to vegetable shortening or margarine, tallow wins out in many respects. It’s unprocessed, meaning it has no free radicals that can lead to a greater likelihood of cancers. It’s pure, meaning there are no carcinogenic chemicals added. In addition, pasture-fed cows are less likely to have been contaminated by staph as those sold on supermarket shelves. And I know exactly where it came from, how it was treated, and who handled it. Buying from family locally and knowing the animal was pasture-fed is important to me.

I haven’t bought shortening now for over a year, though I still use it for greasing pans now and then. Likewise, I rarely use margarine, though I consider butter an essential ingredient in my cooking. I’ve rendered beef fat into quart jars of tallow two years in a row and consider myself seasoned in the art of avoiding too much of a mess in making it. I did a bit of internet recipe research and through trial and error found how to make the best of my time in the process. The last batch of fat may have weighed about 30 pounds. I wound up with just short of two gallons of tallow, poured into quart jars.

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