Rendering Beef Fat to Make Tallow

[Music] good morning and welcome to Rose Red Homestead where today we're going to be doing something that I think is quite fun very different than what we have ever done before we are going to turn some beef fat into Tallow um Tallow is from beef like lard is from pigs and so it is rendering the fat from beef and um I've done quite a bit of research on this watched a number of other folks who have done it um who have rendered the fat a lot of the information come from people who are really promoting uh making beef Tallow or they make it themselves and would like to sell it to you and of course are extoling the benefits of how wonderful it is it's great for cooking it has a very high flash point which means that you can do deep fat frying with it without it smoking too badly and um it's great for anything that you would use with lard once in a while I use lard for pie crust you could also use beef Tallow for pie crust um also it has um well here's just a brief list of the things that I've learned is it is very rich rich in vitamins a d e k and B1 it is um a good anti-inflammatory it helps with infection helps curb infection it's good for your nervous system it helps your body burn fat other fats it it is great for skin and it gives some protection from free radicals so a lot of people will use Tallow for making hand lotion and soaps and some people just use plain Tallow to rub on their skin so a lot of things but the the bottom line is that beef Tallow is still a fat and it is a saturated fat and with a saturated fat we want to be very careful and not eat too much of it so watch your intake I'm going to certainly watch mine um as lovely as it sounds I don't want to uh clog up my arteries with saturated fat so rendering the beef fat um is and all beef fat is not created equal um you can cut the the um layers of fat off of steaks and roasts if you wish and just stick it in your freezer until you have enough to process brisket is notorious for coming with a huge layer of fat you can trim that fat as well now those fats from those parts of the cow are not quite as good for making Tallow as the fat that surrounds the organs particularly the kidneys and that very rich fat is called Su you've probably heard the term Su s t and that is the very best beef fat for making Tallow so I just went to our local butcher and asked if they had sew it they ordered me some and I ordered 5 lbs of it and here it is we just picked it up this morning and I asked if they could run it through their grinder to prepare fat for rendering it is very best if it is chopped into smaller pieces and not great big chunks it's nice if it all renders and at about the same rate so if you don't get Sue it if you're not asking your bit if your bitcher that wouldn't work your butcher if you are not asking your butcher to run it the grinder then uh chop it in small pieces yourself and you'll have much better luck with it there are three ways that I know of that you can render this fat you can use your oven which is going to be what we do you can uh do it directly on the stove top or you could do it in a slow cooker the key to getting really good Tallow is um low and slow you want the temperature to be low you want it to render very slowly a couple of the videos that I watched when they showed the finished product it was brown we don't want that we don't want it to Scorch or burn it should be light yellow in color when we're done and when it solidifies it is almost white so that's what we're going for now if you are going to do it on your stove top and maybe even in your slow cooker you may want to add a cup or so of water to it and that water um will keep it from burning on the bottom we'll keep it from turning that brownish color because that's what we want to avoid and during the cooking process the water just evaporates and boils off and so you don't have water mixed in with your Tallow I'm not going to do that because I'm going to put it in the oven at about 225 which is very low and my oven holds a pretty steady temperature as opposed to my slow cooker even on low it it's too hot and I'm not going to do it on my stove top because I'm not sure um I I would use water if I was going to do it on my stove top to prevent any burning but when I put it in this heavyduty um Dutch oven and then in my oven on a very low temperature I'm I'm con I'm sure that I don't need to add water it will just very slowly melt it's going to take several hours some people also add salt to help remove the impurities from the fat but with this sew it's pretty pure and so I don't think I need to do that so we're just going to get started I think it will all fit in here we'll find out this is 5 lbs that has been run through the butcher's grinder I stood there and watched him do it it was quite an ordeal here's the first package and you can see how small the pieces are so this should be perfect kind of like hamburger yeah it is kind of it feels kind of good and then here is I was playing it felt good then here is the second package and I'm just breaking it up now it keeps for a really really long time you can keep it out on your countertop you can keep it in your refrigerator you can freeze it and it's especially nice if you have your own beef or if you buy a whole side of beef you can ask the butcher to please save you the fat as he is cutting it up he or she he or she okay so we will be around all day long um I'm sure this is going to emit a smell I'll let you know what it smells like some people say it smells kind of good kind of like beef cooking um we'll see but I'm going to get this in the oven and I'll bring you back probably a couple of times during the process so that you can see how it is progressing so will see you sometime soon well it has only been an hour and I just checked and I did not expect this so the little brown Nubs are a waist probably little bits of meat but you can see that the Tallow itself is beautiful and yellow and we're done I cannot believe it I I'm just I don't think there's anything left I might give it about another 15 minutes just to be sure I don't know those look like little tiny pieces of meat I think we probably have melted everything that we're going to get melted so I think we're done and it took only an hour at that low temperature in the oven and the sew is is pretty pure I'm just going to taste one of those and see yeah it's meaty gristle so we're done so I'm going to get set up to get this in jars and we will strain it and I'll show you how that is done I'm just going to put it in these canning jars these are one qu canning jars and you we'll need to strain it now we can do it in two steps or I prefer to do it in one step two steps is you you use something to get the big pieces out and then you use a finer cloth to get the smaller pieces out I'm just going to put the strainer right inside this uh funnel and then I'm going to put the cloth inside here and this is just a piece of dish towel sheeting it's almost brand new it's been washed probably a couple of times I used it for our powdered milk series and that way we can get everything with one blow so here we go now it is a little slower doing it this way because of the fine cloth I will continue to do this and we will come back when everything is all strained and into the jars so we got two quarts and then plus a little bit here here are the leavings from the pan I just piled them all in there and I'm just going to let them drip into this pint jar until there's no more dripping now you might notice that this one is a little more cloudy than this one that's because this one is starting to set up and this one I just finished and so it's still pretty warm and so it's just as clear as a bell all the way through until it starts to cool and then it turns cloudy and then it solidifies um here is the pan so we've pretty much got everything uh one thing that you do not want to do is to take the cloth if you're going to use a cloth and squeeze it to get the last of the oil out because that puts impurities right in and it will turn cloudy and it will um I'm not going to say contaminate but it uh disturbs the color and puts some of the impurities back into it so that's why I'm just going to let this one drip until it stops then I'll fill this up a little bit more and we will come back after these have solidified so you can see what they look like so here we are with our finished project we got two quarts of Tallow plus another additional cup and I ran a little experiment this one I put in the refrigerator so it could cool faster and it has turned into this beautiful light cream colored um solid fat these two were I left out at room temperature and this one has solidified and you can see from the bottom that this one is starting to as well I thought we might just um see how solid not super solid it's not like Crisco but still it is it is solidified and the little bit that I got on my hands when I was working with it boy it sure made my hands feel good so it's kind of nice in any case I'm going to be using this as part of our cooking um sometimes replacing vegetable oil when I do things with cooking in that way we'll do a stir fry maybe and use this I love it that it has such a high smoke point so that makes it a nice oil to use when cooking at higher Heats I think this has been a very easy and painless project taking about 1/4 of the time that I thought it would so give it a try save the fat on your beef and you would do this same thing with pork as well with pork fat so thank you so much for being with us for being a part of our community we really appreciate you and love your comments um sometimes we get so many comments we can't possibly get through all of them Jim is doing a great job answering everything that he can and um I am doing some answering but Jim is doing the most although we have conversations about some of the things that you are saying if you have suggestions for things you would like to see us do please let us know in comments under the video and we will to certainly take everything into consideration we will see you again very soon with more [Music] videos

Channel: RoseRed Homestead

Views: 14,445

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Id: 55mx9GHVHlc

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2024