Beef Tallow Recipe Keto/ Carnivore Approved

What Is Beef Tallow?

It is put simply rendered, or heat-processed, beef fat.

The rendering process consists of gently cooking and liquifying raw beef fat. Once liquified, it’s allowed to cool and harden. This makes it shelf-stable, just like butter or coconut oil!

Tallow has a high 400°+ F smoke point which means it can be used for both baking and frying.

My husband and I have been living the ketogenic lifestyle and we are both feeling great! We are losing weight, feeling energetic and healthier then we have in quite sometime.

We decided to make our own beef tallow. It is surprisingly easy to make. We thought we would share how we made our first batch.

We have used it when we make eggs, low carb chili and deep fried wings. Did you know that Buffalo Wild Wings uses beef tallow when frying their wings? That’s what makes them so good!

We started with the main ingredient, beef fat. We have a local meat processing facility near us and they have a little shed where they have a freezer full of bagged fat trimmings for sale. We have bought it a few times to feed the birds, the birds love it! We got our fat or suet from there. It comes in bags of 3-4 lbs. It’s the honor system, you leave $2 per bag. My husband picked up three fresh bags and we went to work.

If you don’t have access to beef fat, ask a local butcher or if you are preparing a large brisket that you are trimming fat from, save the scraps in the freezer and you can use that for rendering also.

We started by cutting up the fat. When we made our first batch we used bigger chunks. It took a while to render down that way so we used our meat grinder for the rest and it worked out great!

This is our grinder. We bought it from Amazon. Here is the link for the one we have https://amzn.to/3675mVS We have used it for grinding venison as well. It’s a nice machine.

I recommend grinding a bunch at one time since you already have everything out.

My handsome husband ground up all the fat at once.

We used a coarse grind. The fat was partially frozen. It makes it easier to grind that way.

The next step was to start rendering. We filled large pots with the fat. I added a small amount of water, around a cup and a tablespoon of salt. Then set the heat to the lowest setting. LOW & SLOW is the key. You don’t want a boil.

The fat slowly cooks down into a liquid. We took turns checking and stirring the pot, making sure nothing was sticking.

This was when it was close to done. We heated until nearly all the fat pieces were melted into liquid fat.

Next we strained the liquid. I only had a small metal strainer so I will be purchasing a big one but we made this work. We used a milk bag that I bought off Amazon, you can find them here, https://amzn.to/3pdUEDZ. We poured the liquid into a large bowl so it could firm up and separate from any water that was left behind.

This is a glass bowl we used and you can see it firm up better. Any water will be left at the bottom when the fat firms up.

This was a picture after we started scooping out the fat. You can see the water left behind that we tossed.

Look at all that marvelous fat! We decided to go one more step in the purification.

We took the beautiful solidified fat and melted it down one more time on the stove, low and slow.

We once again strained the liquid and poured the liquid into clean glass jars.

Below are some pictures of some wings we deep fried in the tallow. They came out so delicious!

We started with three 3-4 lb bags of fat trimmings. We ended up with 8 quarts of beef tallow. It can be used for sautéing and deep frying. Beef tallow can be stored at room temperature, refrigerated or frozen.

Here is a list of supplies that I recommend:

• Large Stock Pot
• Grinder
• Ladle
• Mixing bowls
• Cheese cloth or nut milk bag
• Metal fine strainer
• Glass storage jars with lids

We also put down wax paper to make clean up easier. Here is most of our supply 🙂