How Exactly Is Beef Tallow Made?

Beef tallow is rendered fat from beef trimmings, which can come in handy in the kitchen as a cooking ingredient. It has a rich beefy flavor (naturally) that you can use to sauté or roast veggies or meats. If you have enough of it on hand, beef tallow makes for a superior frying oil for french fries and other fried foods. Not only that, but you can also use beef tallow to make candles and social media influencers at one point were using it for skincare (to dubious results, seeing as Healthline reports that tallow can clog your pores).

Beef tallow is something you can easily purchase at the store, but it's also something you can make at home as well. The process is simple, you take all the beef fat trimmings you have on hand and cook them low and slow until plenty of liquid fat is rendered from the chunks. You can do this on the stovetop in something large like a Dutch oven or you can opt to use a slow-cooking device like a Crock-Pot instead. Be sure not to overheat it — your final result should be a barely-there yellow color when examined closely. Then, using a cheesecloth or a fine-meshed strainer, you can simply strain the liquid fat carefully into a heat-safe container and store it in the fridge until you need to use it.

If you've noticed some extra chatter around beef tallow lately, it's for a reason. Recent backlash toward traditional cooking oils derived from seeds has brought more attention toward beef tallow as an alternate cooking oil. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has advocated Americans "make frying oil tallow again" in the belief that it's healthier for you. (A report from The Atlantic casts doubt on the claim.)

Does frying a potato in beef tallow taste good? Sure it does. Are fries good for you? Arguably not. But beef tallow is still a useful cooking ingredient that allows you to utilize every scrap of what you've purchased, which means you're both stretching your buck a long way and preventing food waste. So if you're up for it, you can make your own tallow, or you can buy various quantities of it either at the supermarket or online. Just treat it like any other cooking fat and you've got another ingredient to use in your cooking.