How to Make Beef Tallow at Home in a Slow Cooker

Published: Jan 1, 2024 Modified: Feb 12, 2024 Author: Alan Bergo

The secret to the best tasting French fries, hashbrowns, roasted potatoes, homemade soap and more. Beef fat (also known as beef suet) is an underused, healthy fat for cooking that's easy to make at home.

I've been making homemade tallow for over 20 years. Today I'll show you how to render fat from beef at home in an oven or a slow cooker. It'll give you perfect results, every time.

Chef's Tips

Beef fat is highly perishable. The best thing to do is order it from a butcher, or purchase it frozen. Keep the fat frozen until the day you'll render the tallow.
Smell your beef fat. It should smell clean and fresh, with a mellow beefy flavor. If you see white spots on it that is mold and the fat should be discarded as it won't taste good.
A slow cooker is the best way to render tallow. Alternately, bake the fat and water in an oven-safe pot. Do not render tallow on the stove as it can burn easily.
Store finished, rendered tallow in the freezer or fridge until you need it. Bring it to room temperature to make it easier to handle.
Don't overcook the tallow. There's no need to cook the fat until it turns brown. Overcooked tallow tastes burnt and isn't good for cooking.
Peferctly rendered tallow should be light yellow with a pleasant beefy smell. It should never orange or a darker color, which means it's burnt.

A knife next to a bag of frozen beef suet from a butcher shop. — Look for frozen beef fat or suet at your local butcher shop.

Tallow vs Lard

People often ask me what the difference is between tallow and lard. They're very similar in that they have a high smoke point comparable to vegetable oil, but there's a few important differences to understand.

A large block of rendered goat tallow on a cutting board. — Tallow can be made from many ruminant animals, including goat *(pictured above)*.

Tallow is the cooked, rendered fat of ruminants like beef, bison, goat, lamb or venison. Lard is rendered pork fat. All of the fats from ruminants have a very similar melting point and solidify quickly as the cool. Food made with tallow must be served hot to not have a sticky texture people compare to Chapstick.

Lard is always made from pork, it has a much lower melting point that ruminant fat like beef or goat. Even when refrigerated, it's spreadable and soft like butter. It's good for all purpose cooking and won't leave a sticky feeling in your mouth if it cools down.

How to Make Tallow from Beef Fat

It's easy to render beef tallow at home. First, you'll need some beef fat from a butcher or a local farm. You'll want at least 4-5 lbs of fat to make a small batch. The images below describe the process.

Cutting beef suet into large pieces for rendering beef tallow. — Cut the beef fat into pieces.

First the fat is cut into small pieces. The smaller the fat is cut, the faster it will render, and the better it will be.

Cutting suet beef into small pieces for rendering tallow. — The smaller the pieces of fat are the faster and more efficiently they'll render.

While I do grind half-frozen beef fat when I render 100 lbs or more at a time, it's best to cut it by hand at home since using a meat grinder requires some experience.

Also, beef fat sticks to things and is a pain to clean. A great chef tip is to use a bench scraper to clean beef fat from your cutting board.

Cleaning beef fat from a cutting board using a bench scraper. — Scraping beef fat from a cutting board using a bench scraper.

Adding a cup of water to a crock pot full of chopped beef fat. — When the fat is cut into pieces, it's put into a slow cooker with a small amount of water.

Stirring a slow cooker filled with large pieces of beef fat rendering into tallow. — Cook the beef fat on high heat for a few hours, stirring occasionally.

To speed up the process, you can pulse the warm fat with an immersion blender. This speeds up the process dramatically and increases the amount of tallow you'll make.

Pureeing warm beef fat with an immersion blender. — When the fat is warm, puree it with an immersion blender.

Pureeing warm cooking beef fat with a hand blender to increase the speed of rendering. — A hand blender is easier to clean than a regular blender.

After a few hours the liquid will become clear and you'll see small bubbles appear on the surface.

A spatula in a pot of cooking beef tallow showing bubbles rising to the surface. — When the fat is clear and small bubbles appear on the surface, the tallow is done.

A spoon full of clear, yellow beef tallow. — The fat should be pale yellow and clear.

Beef tallow being strained through a fine mesh strainer. — Strain the finished tallow through a fine strainer.

Pouring hot beef tallow into a jar for storing. — Pour the tallow into mason jars or another container and freeze or refrigerate.

Strain the tallow in a container and portion into room temperature glass jars and freeze or refrigerate until needed. Feed the cooked pieces of beef fat to your friends chickens or discard it.

A glass mason jar filled with warm yellow beef tallow with the lid off to allow it to cool.. — Cool with the lids off to avoid creating condensation.

Making Beef Tallow in the Oven

You can also make beef tallow in the oven. To do that you'll need a heavy bottomed pot or a Dutch oven. Follow the directions for cutting up the beef fat above, then bake it in a slow oven (325F) for 3-4 hours or until the fat is clear.

A spatula with cooked pieces of beef fat with a large stainless steel pot of beef tallow rendering in the oven in the background. — rendering beef tallow from fatty beef trim in the oven.

How to Use Beef Tallow

Beef tallow is a great animal fat for cooking. As long as it isn't overcooked, it has a high smoke point that's great for deep frying and sautéing meat or vegetables over high heat. Here's a few of my favorite things to make with it.

Pan Roasted Potatoes

The best roasted potatoes you'll ever have are made with tallow.

A small baking dish of roasted potatoes cooked in beef fat. — Roasted potatoes cooked in beef fat with herbs.

Hashbrowns

Hashbrowns are also the perfect place to use any animal fat.

French Fries

French fries cooked in beef fat are a luxury. I used to make them every day at my first restaurant, the Salt Cellar.