Beef Tallow

Nothing will make your dog’s tail wag more than a 10kg bag of beef fat coming through the door.

Ralph wanted to make beef tallow for awhile as an alternative to peanut oil when frying, and was pleased when our local butcher Hoose said he could buy beef fat from them.

Ralph’s rant time: We’ve been using peanut oil as an alternative to seed/ plant oils (canola, sunflower etc.) as our research shows that these seem to be a huge contributor to the enormous health issues in the west. Peanut oil is also a seed oil but can actually be cold pressed and is much better than the chemical and heat extraction used in others.

Glyphosate is also heavily used in the US and other countries in canola which is toxic. Unfortunately cold pressed peanut oil is only available in India as far as we know so we had to compromise if we wanted to deep fry at all (until now!). This article also provides a good explanation as to why you should toss any vegetable oils in your cupboard. End of Ralph’s rant

Ralph’s inspiration came from a food show he once saw from the UK where a Fish and Chips place was explaining how beef tallow was traditionally used for deep frying and that he still used it- even showed him rendering it himself because it was no longer easy to buy.

After making his first batch, we put it to the test making these shallow fried chicken schnitzel and then later our deep fried chicken thighs. Not only did it pass the test in flavour, but with no gastronomical issues for Ralph the next day which he normally experienced when using peanut oil.

As an animal fat, beef tallow had a bad reputation over the years but is gaining more positive attention from a health perspective. Here are 12 uses for beef tallow along with an explanation as to why its healthy. It’s also cheap to make with about 2€ a kilo if Ralph remembers correctly (he will check and update).

We’re still spreading butter on toast, but we’ve been frying eggs and lots of other stuff in tallow and love it.

The next batch of our homemade dog food will include tallow. Mogly’s tail will for sure spin like a helicopter.

Ingredients:

10 kg beef fat (ideally sourced from a butcher) or however much you feel inclined to make

Instructions:

Remove some of the silver skin and any parts that have blood on them. The roasting pan Ralph used can handle about 3 kilos at once, so he had to do it in two stages.

Render on BBQ with two burners on low or in your oven. Our Canadian Calphalon pan doesn’t fit in our little German ovens.

It is probably safer to render without live flames but we had no choice.

Once rendered down, only solids will remain like this:

While pan is hot from BBQ, remove solids with a strainer.

Strain fat through a cheese cloth.

Pour into jars and if the fat was still hot enough they should pop down and seal themselves- we only had 2 jars that didn’t. No need to refrigerate jars, unless you use some and would like to keep in fridge for easy access.

Tip: