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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
After a few hours the liquid will become clear and you'll see small bubbles appear on the surface.
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.
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.
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.
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.
More Interesting Beef Posts
How to Make Beef Tallow at Home in a Slow Cooker
Equipment
- 1 immersion blender or hand blender optional but recommended
- 1 Slow cooker
Ingredients
- 5 lbs beef fat (beef suet)
- 1 cup water
- 1 fine mesh strainer
Instructions
- Allow the fat to thaw for 30 minutes if it's frozen. Cut the beef fat into 1 inch pieces using a chefs knife.
- Combine the beef fat and water in a slow cooker, put on the lid and cook on high heat.
- After 20-30 minutes the fat should be warm enough to puree. Pulse or puree it with a handblender. This step is optional, but will increase the amount of tallow the fat makes, as well as decrease the cooking time.
- Stir the fat while it cooks occasionally, making sure it isn't sticking in the edges of the pot.
- Once the fat turns clear and small bubbles appear on the surface it's done. Strain the fat through a fine mesh strainer. Some people use a coffee filter but it takes forever and I don't recommend that. Cheesecloth works well in a pinch.
- Store the fat in mason jars in the fridge or freezer. It will last months in the fridge, and years in the freezer.
- Bring it to room temperature before cooking with it to make handling easier.
Jeri Kastner
How long is it safe to keep a jar of tallow in the refrigerator? I guess the answer will determine what size jars I will put it in 😉
Alan Bergo
I usually do pint jars or quarts. It’ll last for a few months in the fridge no prob. You can freeze it too for longer storage.
Daniel
Great information and presentation.
Thank you
Daniel
Alan Bergo
Thanks Daniel.
Doreen Nacht
I'm really enjoying every article and thank you for your time! They are incredibly informative and easy to follow and give me great insights to many different techniques and cuts, etc. that I didn't know about before. The instructions are very clear. It's a pleasure when someone so gifted is willing to share their knowledge with those seeking to understand. So, thank you very much! I know you said the fat goes bad very quickly. After it is rendered, is that no longer the case? Also, does this substitute for anything (such as an ingredient to replace another, etc.) other than frying foods or is that it's sole purpose. Thanks very much!
Alan Bergo
Thanks Doreen.
So, with the shelf life, after the fat is rendered it will last a very long time in the fridge or it can be frozen. For general cooking I keep a jar at room temperature as it’s easier to portion. The reason fresh fat goes bad is because it contains water, just like meat.
As far as general cooking, beef tallow has a very high melting point, which means it’s rock hard when cold, meaning you want to eat it hot. This is why it’s used for fried foods. Pan roasted potatoes and searing steaks are great ways to use it. You just don’t want it to be cook when you eat it or it will be tacky.
Stacia
I'm planning on making tallow this week or next using the crockpot option. Does the water evaporate in the crockpot? Or do I need to do something prior to straining it? Thanks for the easy instructions. My grandmother had a "grease" jar in her kitchen which I'm convinced was her secret ingredient to her amazing cooking. Appreciate your help.
Alan Bergo
Hello Stacia. The water will evaporate. As I describe in this post once the fat becomes crystal clear you'll know the moisture is gone.
Glendoria
hi Allen, I was cooking beef tallow, but it had some lean meat on it. The tallow came out OK but I think with me having the lean beef on it it made like a jell at the bottomafter I refrigerated it, do I need to take all the lean beef off?
Alan Bergo
Hello. It’s fine to use meaty bone scraps to make tallow, and what you’re seeing is gel from the meats natural liquid which is high in collagen.
It is exactly the same process as when homemade chicken stock can (and should) gel in the fridge. What the is means for your rendered tallow is, most importantly, The tallow don’t burn-great! But, you do need to remove all of the gel, you can scrape it off with a spoon and discard it or add to a beef stew.
It’s important no liquid is in your tallow when you cook with it as it will splatter, so take a little extra fat off to be sure. After the gel is removed I melt the fat and put it into a fresh jar or other container.
Thanks so much for commenting-I’m going to make a batch of tallow to get some images of what you’re seeing.
Ivan
Hi Alan:
I read this article about a week ago, so I was well prepared when we butchered two fat steers this morning. I salvaged all the caul fat and kidney suet, packed it into plastic bags, and froze it immediately. In the past, when I rendered lard from my hogs, I pressure canned it in quart jars at 10 lbs. pressure for 90 minutes, and it was good for years without any refrigeration, except, of course, after I had opened each jar. My question to you is, does that apply to beef tallow also? Thanks for this article, and for your informative website.
Alan Bergo
Hey Ivan. I haven’t pressure canned tallow personally as I don’t pressure can. I have lot of friends who pressure can meat though, and that’s very similar here. The type of animal and differences in the melting points of their respective fats would not affect the shelf life after processing like that. Great way to save space.
Dan
My beef fat has been cooking for 1.5 hours and is bubbling already. Should I put my slow cooker on low?
Alan Bergo
Yes, when in doubt, turn the heat down.
Hannah
I wish I had found this article before I made tallow using another one! I really appreciate the tips and detailed directions. The recipe I used didn’t mention anything about overcooking the fat. I think I burned it and it’s affected the flavor. Is there any way to salvage that, or certain things to cook it in? Or should I just try to make candles or something with it?
Alan Bergo
Hi Hannah, I'm so glad it was helpful. Those kinds of things are exactly why I took the time to write this! As far as the fat, it depends on just how high the temperature got. I don't make candles or use fat for anything other than cooking, but I think that might work. There's one example I know of where fat is used after it's reached a higher temperature. In Mexican cuisine, it's actually traditional for the fat to reach 350 F while they're rendering it. This is pork fat, so slightly different from beef fat. The higher temp means a stronger flavor, so that type of rendered fat can only be used for savory dishes-never sweet ones. As far as telling if the fat is burned or not, try sauteing a cut up baked potato in the fat. If you like the flavor it could be salvageable, if you don't, chalk it up to a learning experience. One time I accidentally left the heat too high on a 100 lbs of fat in a pot. The pot was so charred and awful my dishwasher refused to clean it. 🙂