Butter, Lard, and Beef Tallow - And when to use them

[Day of the Cope]

Making tallow is the easiest thing ever. I suggest asking your local butcher to save the beef fat trimmings and it costs next to nothing. From here, give your tallow a rough chop (you don't have to mince it), throw it into a large enough roasting pan, and stick it into your oven at the lowest temperature you can achieve. Give it a stir every few minutes until it starts to "sweat"; doing this allows you to avoid using water and avoid burning anything. Once it start to "sweat" enough, crank it up to 200F until it starts to build up enough liquid (enough to form a half-inch layer). From here, crank it up to 250 and let it render until the fat itself is well browned. Get rid of the solid bits with a spider strainer and filter through cheese cloth resting in a mesh sieve.

Even the "bad" oils are only often bad because of how they're processed. The raw version of the same oils could be fine.

If you know how most bad oils are made, you'd understand there's no "raw" version. They always involve some kind of solvent in order to be extracted as cold pressing is completely out of the question.

 

[souschef]

I always use butter in my cooking, never bothered with anything else really

Butter has a too low smoke point, you can't use it for everything

 

[Battery Low]

I like to use ghee as my animal based cooking fat, if I'm cooking at higher temperatures. Husband often opts for dripping because it's more of a neutral flavour than ghee.

 

[RollerGator]

Weren't old fashion burgers cooked in beef tallow? I'd like to try that.

 

[TheRedChair]

Weren't old fashion burgers cooked in beef tallow? I'd like to try that.

Yes. Yes they are good.

Most of the beef fat/fat I make Farmer's soap out of it. This also works well enough for washing clothes as well.

 

[WhatInTheActualFuck]

Weren't old fashion burgers cooked in beef tallow? I'd like to try that.

Technically, once you start cooking it, it's going to be cooking in beef tallow/fat unless you're doing something ridiculous like using 90%+ lean beef.

 

[AnOminous]

I like to use ghee as my animal based cooking fat, if I'm cooking at higher temperatures. Husband often opts for dripping because it's more of a neutral flavour than ghee.

Cold-pressed first-press grapeseed oil is my favorite for high temperature frying. Peanut oil has a higher smoke point, and I like that for deep frying, because grapeseed oil of high quality is sometimes absurdly expensive.

Either one will do for 400+ degree flash frying.

To bring it somewhat back on-topic, beef tallow has a 420 smoke point so can be used to some extent for flash frying but be careful. I've flash fried tofu in beef tallow, for some reason, I found that amusing.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

plant fats

Lolwut?

sir your arteries called. They're begging you to stop.

Wrong. Eating animal fats has no relationship with arterial plaque. Do you know who has atherosclerosis? - People who smoke and consume seed oils.

 

[WilliamDeLaPole]

Lolwut?

From Wikipedia:
Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are oils extracted from seeds or from other parts of edible plants. Like animal fats, vegetable fats are mixtures of triglycerides. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of seed oils, or fats from seeds. Olive oil, palm oil, and rice bran oil are examples of fats from other parts of plants. In common usage, vegetable oil may refer exclusively to vegetable fats which are liquid at room temperature. Vegetable oils are usually edible.

Could just be where I'm from, but generally people out here differentiate between animal fat by saying "plant fat." Talking to a physician as an example, they won't say, "You need to eat more vegetable oil," they'll say, "You need to eat more plant fats." Looking at it now, might just be a flowery way of putting it since people tend to associate vegetable oil with canola and other unhealthy seed oils.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I'm waiting for fast food chains to return to beef tallow to know if it really makes their low quality food taste better

 

[Iron Jaguar]

I'm waiting for fast food chains to return to beef tallow to know if it really makes their low quality food taste better

You don't need to wait - I can tell you that food fried in/with beef tallow is infinitely better. I can STILL remember what McDonald's French Fries used to taste like.

@WilliamDeLaPole
Plant oils are not fats. Fat is the adipose tissue of an animal.

 

[AnOminous]

You don't need to wait - I can tell you that food fried in/with beef tallow is infinitely better. I can STILL remember what McDonald's French Fries used to taste like.

It's literally an objective fact. French fries fried in beef tallow are just better.

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

It's literally an objective fact. French fries fried in beef tallow are just better.

Yeah you would know about all the fried foods, John Goodman impersonator

 

[WilliamDeLaPole]

Plant oils are not fats. Fat is the adipose tissue of an animal.

I think you're focusing on semantics instead of chemical compounds: lipids, glycerides, etc. Plants and animals have these compounds, and that's usually what people are referring to when they talk about plant and animal fat. My original statement wasn't trying to say that beef tallow and olive oil are the same thing if that's what's confusing you.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

You don't need to wait - I can tell you that food fried in/with beef tallow is infinitely better. I can STILL remember what McDonald's French Fries used to taste like.

@WilliamDeLaPole
Plant oils are not fats. Fat is the adipose tissue of an animal.

I mean it in the context of McDonald's fries only containing 80% potatoes today rather than 100% as was in the past.

 

[Wuhan Wet Market]

I regularly make tallow. It’s very easy but time consuming. However I can make months worth of it in an afternoon. I add a little bit to instant noodles to make them tastier. Huge difference.

 

[WonderWino]

Lolwut?

Wrong. Eating animal fats has no relationship with arterial plaque. Do you know who has atherosclerosis? - People who smoke and consume seed oils.

That isn't true at all. Plenty of non smokers develop atherosclerosis and its existed as long as humans have, long before seed oils even existed in peoples diets. Animal fats are the main cause of atherosclerosis, due to the amount of saturated fat in animal fat

Plant oils are not fats. Fat is the adipose tissue of an animal.

Nigger what? This is not true. Plant oils are lipids, lipids are fats.

 

[AnOminous]

@WilliamDeLaPole
Plant oils are not fats. Fat is the adipose tissue of an animal.

Agreed on the beef tallow part, but a fat is any mixture of triglycerides. Sometimes it's used more narrowly just to mean mixtures of triglycerides that are solid at room temperature, like beef tallow or palm oil.

 

[Penguin Sandwich]

Necroing with a crosspost from the US Politics General 2 - Electric Boogaloo:

More chains are frying with beef tallow. Archive.

Fast food chain says they’ve ‘RFK’d’ their fries, opting for healthier cooking alternative​

Steak ’n Shake’s shoestring fries will now be cooked in beef tallow, often touted by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.​

There’s a kitchen shakeup at an American fast-food chain.

Steak ‘n Shake has announced a major change to its beloved shoestring fries, and they say the inspiration partially came straight from the new Trump administration’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Starting in March, all Steak ‘n Shake locations will cook their fries in beef tallow instead of vegetable oil. The company broke the news on X with a post declaring; "By March 1 ALL locations. Fries will be RFK’d!"

Steak ‘n Shake’s Chief Operations Officer, Daniel Edwards, joined "Fox & Friends" Thursday to talk about the change, saying the company had been considering the switch for some time.

"We’ve actually been thinking about this for a while. Our owner, my boss, is a man named Sardar Biglari," Edwards said. "He called me one time and said you know, ‘Why should Europeans have better fries than Americans?’"

Edwards explained that Biglari’s love for beef tallow fries started when he visited Belgium as a child, where he had what he called the best fries of his life. That memory stuck with him, and for years, he wanted Steak ‘n Shake to capture that same taste.

Now, thanks to a new supplier capable of meeting their beef tallow needs, the chain is making the leap.

"We found a supplier that could finally do that for us, and he said ‘We got to do it, we got to do it everywhere.’ And so, we did," Edwards said. "We RFK’d our fries."

Secretary Kennedy has been a vocal advocate for using beef tallow in cooking, often arguing that seed oils, commonly used in fast food, may contribute to rising obesity rates.

While the science of that claim is still up for debate, with the American Heart Association stating there’s "no reason" to avoid seed oils, Steak ‘n Shake believes the switch is about more than just health.

"They’re so much better," Edwards said, arguing customers will notice a major difference in the new fries.

"These fries cooked in beef tallow – it’s crispier, it’s golden brown, it’s absolutely delicious," he said. "You’re going to love them when you try them. You’re not going to want to ever go back to the old way of doing fries. And it’s the authentic way, the original way."

The company is betting that its back-to-basics approach will win over customers looking for that rich, old-school flavor.