Our society has become very fat phobic. With heart disease, diabetes and obesity on the rise we need something to blame and fat has become the perfect scapegoat. Studies are done to determine the cause of the increase of various diseases but there is no definitive answer. When studies do not point out an absolute reason they ignore important data (such as all the other countries whose diet contains lots of traditional fats) and usually point the finger at fat. We are told it’s evil and we should make every attempt to stop eating the stuff. Sadly, what most studies don’t explain, is the fact that the “evil fats” are actually the newer, industrial fats that have been created in the last hundred years or so. This includes trans fats, hydrogenated fats and fats produced under highly processed conditions. Since their introduction to our food (along with the other “axis of food evils” – refined flour and sugar) our heath problems continue to increase no matter what we seem to do.

Rather then listen to this nonsense I, and many others it seems, are returning to real food. Traditional foods that our great grandmothers or even their mothers would have probably eaten. Foods that are made from actual ingredients rather then boxes, can and foil sealed packages containing ingredients we can’t even pronounce. Returning to traditional foods isn’t always easy. There is a surprising learning curve involved. After all my own grandmother barely remembers eating some of these foods so rediscovering them takes time. So far it’s been worth the effort.

One of the projects on my traditional foods to do list was finding a source of pasture feed beef fat. It would have been nice to find a store that sold it already to use. Instead I learned that rendering my own wasn’t all that difficult. At the local farmers market I decided to ask the pasture feed beef vendor if he happened to sell the beef fat along with the cuts of meat he had to offer. I didn’t expect him to actually have any on hand. He surprised me however by pulling out an 8 lb chunk from the freezer:

If you would like to learn how to render your own beef tallow here’s all you have to do. Take your piece of beef fat and cut it up into pieces about 1 1/2 to 2 inches in size. If I had a meat grinder or a food processor I would have ground it up even smaller. But I don’t so I had to cut it with a knife. Once your done toss the chunks into a large pot.

I added about 1 cup of water because that’s what I had read on another site. I’m not sure it was necessary. After all this was nothing but fat. It’s not like it was going to stick to the pan. But I was following the directions and added the water. I put the pot over a medium heat and stirred it every now and then. After a while the fat will start to turn translucent and look something like this:

I think it took about 2 hours for it to get to this point. From this transluscent point it didn’t take much longer for the fat to completely melt. I ended up with a pot full of golden liquid. There was a small amount of debris at the bottom of the pot. This material seems to be the fine membrane that was holding the fat together. There wasn’t any meat or other material attached to the fat so this what I believe it to be. I used a slotted spoon and scooped out most of it. In the end there was still smaller pieces that the spoon could not get out so I strained the liquid through a brand new nylon. Here’s what was removed:

All that was left behind was a beautiful, golden oil:

I covered the pot and allowed it to sit at room temperature over night so it would cool down. The liquid oil solidified and turned creamy white.

All that was left was to gently ( so I didn’t scratch the pot)  run a butter knife through the pot to break the fat into smaller pieces. I lifted each piece out and wrapped it in plastic wrap. I packaged the pieces up so they were small enough to use within a reasonable amount of time. From 8 lbs of fat I got 5.5 lbs of rendered fat. Several sites I consulted said you may have liquid beneath the solid fat. If so simply remove the solid fat and discard whatever is left. I did not have anything beneath the solid fat. The water I added in the beginning must have evaporated during the cooking process. I cut that amount up into 8 equal pieces.

I’ve left one piece in the refrigerator to use and the remaining were placed in a freezer bag. I am storing them in the freezer for future use. After the initial time spent cutting the fat into pieces there was relatively little work involved. This turned out to be a very easy project. Now I have a good supply of health fat to use in cooking.

This post has been entered into the Fight Back Fridays over at Food Renegade. Stop by the site and check out the other great blog posts featuring real, traditional foods.

Beef Tallow

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