How To Make Beef Tallow

The next time you make a smoked beef brisket, save the trimmed fat scraps and learn how to make beef tallow with them! Or, if you are lucky enough to have it, use beef suet. This easy beef tallow recipe works on the stovetop or in a slow cooker, and all you need is beef fat. Beef tallow is excellent for deep frying and adds a ton of flavor to your dishes, but this liquid gold has many other uses, too!

I have tossed a lot of fat trimmings from the many briskets and tri-tips I've smoked over the years. Then one day it finally dawned on me that I could render the fat and use it to cook with instead of buying expensive cooking oils, duh!

After all, Mom did the same with beef and lamb fat trimmings. Once she rendered the fat, she took it a step further. Instead of tossing the crispy pieces of fat, she salted them and handed them out to us kids, who waited excitedly to devour them. These sinful treats are commonly referred to as cracklin', but in Assyrian, they are called "kazikeh". They make a great Keto snack, too!

Holiday cooking is the perfect time to start. Prime rib, beef roasts, and briskets all come with fat you can trim and render, so you'll have a jar of tallow ready for frying potatoes all winter.

Jump to:

• 🥩 What Is Beef Tallow?
• 🔖 Which Beef Fat to Use
• 🔪 Helpful Tools
• 🍖 How To Render Beef Fat on the Stovetop
• 🍲 How to Make Beef Tallow in a Slow Cooker
• ✅ How to Tell When Your Tallow Is Done
• 🫙 How Much Tallow Will You Get?
• What Readers Are Saying
• ❄️ How to Store Beef Tallow
• 🛠️ Troubleshooting
• 🍗 What Can You Do With Tallow?
• 🤷🏻‍♀️ Recipe FAQs
• 👩🏼‍🍳 Pro Tips
• 🫙 More Food-Related Articles
• Did You Make This Recipe?
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

🥩 What Is Beef Tallow?

Tallow is fat rendered from beef, mutton, deer, and other ruminants, but beef tallow is the most common. When it's warm, it's a clear, golden oil. Once it cools, it turns creamy and firm, a lot like softened butter. It has a high smoke point and a mild, savory flavor, which makes it perfect for frying and searing.

Tallow for cooking is simply beef fat rendered over low heat, then strained. Tallow can also be purified to make tallow for skincare by washing it with salt and water several times until it's white and nearly odorless. That cleaner tallow is what I use to make tallow balm, lotions, tallow lip balm, soaps, and candles!

🔖 Which Beef Fat to Use

All you need to make beef tallow is beef fat. You have two options:

• Suet: This is the fat around the cow's kidneys (also called leaf fat). It renders cleaner and gives you a firmer, whiter, milder-tasting tallow. Ask your local butcher for it; you can often get it for free or for very little.
• Fat trimmings: The fat you trim from a brisket, tri-tip, or oven-roasted tri-tip works great, too. Just cut away as much meat, sinew, and connective tissue as you can, since those bits can burn and darken your tallow.

I keep a zip-top bag in the freezer and add fat trimmings to it every time I trim a brisket. Once the bag is full, it's tallow day! Choose grass-fed, grass-finished beef fat whenever possible.

🔪 Helpful Tools

• Sharp knife
• Cutting board
• Dutch oven or slow cooker
• Fine Mesh Strainer
• Mason jars
• Optional: a meat grinder or immersion blender to break up the fat so it renders faster

🍖 How To Render Beef Fat on the Stovetop

Step 1: Defrost beef fat or suet, if frozen, then chop into 1-2 inch pieces. Add fat trimmings to a medium-sized pot, cover, and cook over very low heat until the fat is rendered and the fat pieces shrink and become crispy. The total cook time can take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours, depending on how low your heat setting is.

Pro Tip: For faster rendering and more tallow, grind the fat while it's still semi-frozen. If it warms up too much, it will clog the grinder. No grinder? Chop it small or use a food processor.

Step 2: Use a slotted spoon to remove crispy fat pieces and enjoy them as a snack or feed them to your dogs or chickens! Use a fine mesh strainer to strain the tallow into a measuring cup.

Pro Tip: I like straining the tallow into a measuring cup so I know how much tallow is rendered and what size jars I need to store the tallow.

Step 3: Pour the tallow into mason jars and allow it to cool completely before adding the lids. Hand-tighten lids and store on the counter, in the pantry, or in the fridge. Tallow can also be frozen for longer storage.

Pro Tip: You can strain the oil through cheesecloth, a paper towel, or a coffee filter if you don't have a fine-mesh strainer. For the cleanest tallow, strain it twice: once through the strainer, then again through a coffee filter.

🍲 How to Make Beef Tallow in a Slow Cooker

If you'd rather not babysit a pot on the stove, a slow cooker (crock pot) works beautifully. It's the hands-off way to render beef fat, and the gentle heat makes it hard to burn.

1. Add the chopped or ground fat to the slow cooker. No water is needed.
2. Set it to low and cover for the first hour.
3. Remove the lid so the moisture can escape, then stir and check on it every hour or so. Plan on several hours; it takes longer than the stovetop.
4. Once the fat pieces are crispy and golden brown, strain and store the tallow just like the stovetop method.

✅ How to Tell When Your Tallow Is Done

Whichever method you use, your tallow is ready when:

• The fat pieces have shrunk and turned crispy and golden brown, with no white, solid pieces left.
• The bubbling slows down or stops.
• You no longer hear popping or sizzling, which means the water has cooked off.
• The liquid fat looks clear and golden, not cloudy.

🫙 How Much Tallow Will You Get?

The 2½ pounds of beef fat in my recipe card makes about three 8-ounce jars of tallow. Your yield depends on your fat, though. Clean suet yields the most, while brisket trimmings with meat still attached yield less. Here's what one reader got from his brisket trimmings:

❄️ How to Store Beef Tallow

• Warm your jars first. Pouring hot tallow into cold jars can crack them, so I warm mine in a 200°F oven for about 20 minutes.
• Pantry: Well-strained tallow with no water left in it keeps for months in a cool, dark pantry with the lid on tight.
• Fridge: Refrigerate it for even longer storage.
• Freezer: For the longest storage, freeze it in jars, or let it harden in a bowl and freeze the tallow puck in a freezer bag.

If your tallow ever smells sour or rancid, or shows any mold, toss it.

🛠️ Troubleshooting

• Dark tallow or a burnt taste: The heat was too high. Keep it as low as possible; tallow should never boil hard or brown quickly.
• Strong beefy smell: That's normal for cooking tallow, and it's great for frying! Too much heat makes it stronger. If you want a mild, nearly scentless tallow, use suet and follow my purified tallow method.
• Cloudy tallow or water at the bottom of the jar: It wasn't cooked long enough to drive off all the moisture. Gently reheat it until the popping stops, then strain it again. Water left in tallow can make it spoil faster.
• Bits in your tallow: Strain it a second time through a coffee filter or cheesecloth.

🍗 What Can You Do With Tallow?

Tallow has many different uses, and some just might surprise you! For example, tallow can be used as a lubricant and to make candles, soaps, and salves. You can even use it to lubricate your rifle; you decide!

It has a high smoke point, making it excellent for frying chicken, French fries, and seasoning cast-iron skillets. Use it in place of butter or oil for searing steaks, roasting potatoes, or frying eggs. Some people even use it in baking!

Have pork fat instead? It renders the same way into lard. Check out my how to render pork fat post for all the details.

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