So you joined up with the grass fed beef trend and even brought home all of the fat. You took the plunge and even rendered down all of the suet and trimmings!! Holy cow!! (Haha, couldn’t resist.)
Now what?
While you can eat your tallow of course, most people are not about to add a scoop to their soup or spread it on toast.
What do you do with it? Plenty!
10 Uses for Your Rendered Beef Tallow
Frying
Before the saturated fat scare, when everyone decided to replace natural saturated fats with “healthy” trans fats (oops), restaurants and home kitchens usually filled their fryers with tallow. Tallow is abundant and very shelf stable. It has a high burn point and doesn’t easily oxidize like some oils. If it looks a little funky after a couple fryer uses, you can always strain it through cheesecloth again.
Shortening for baking
Take those recipes that call for (trans fat) shortening, and use tallow instead. What do you think people used 90 years ago?
Soaps
Saturated animal fat makes a very firm soap bar that can last a long time. Find a lye soap recipe and try your hand at a tallow based batch. Add essential oils to mask the beefy scent.
Skin Moisturizer
All those natural body butters are just fats. Tallow will serve the same purpose and your dogs will love you even more.
Woodwork conditioner/protector
One of my memories from childhood was watching my mother rub Vaseline into our wood furniture when the wood became dry. Furniture polishes are oil based to condition the wood and bring out the grain and shine. Mix a couple drops of lemon oil into a couple ounces tallow for a wood conditioner/polish.
Suet birdseed bricks
Make your own suet bird seed blocks for your bird feeder. Here is my homemade flock block suet brick for my chickens.
Animal feed
Melt and use tallow as the fat source for your homemade animal feed. Use it in cat food, dog food, or the birdseed bricks. Your animals need some fat in their diet, especially in winter. A little dollop mixed into the chicken, rice, and peas in your dog’s dish will be delicious. Just make sure it’s just a dollop.
Sausage making
Most sausages have pork or lard mixed into other lean meats because sausages require fat for preservation and curing. You can add tallow as the fat instead.
Protecting combs and waddles from frostbite
Have chickens? If you live in a cold climate with frostbite risk, you have probably heard of the trick of rubbing Vaseline on the waddles and combs. You could use tallow instead. Although it might make your birds smell even more delicious to predators. Frankly, I don’t think it matters.
Diaper rash cream
What?!? Yes. Most commercial diaper rash creams have fish oils and beeswax to create a barrier to protect skin. You can also mix tallow and a liquid oil to make your own barrier cream. You want your ratio of tallow to oil to be about 50/50 so that it is a spreadable cream. Keep in mind, much like beeswax, tallow could build up in cloth diapers and cause repelling unless you wash in hot water.
What other uses for tallow do you have?