12 Simple Steps to Render and Store Tallow
Personally, I use tallow to create skincare products (skin and lip balms, soap, etc) to replace toxic chemical laden products from the store. My friends and I love it :-)
But, boy, I've learned the hard way how NOT to render and store tallow! I've seen burning, crumbling, and molding. It's a serious disappointment to spend time and money to render and store tallow...only to have to throw it in the trash!
I'm sharing my simple process here in the hopes that it will help someone avoid my mistakes. Let's jump in.
My process:
1. Source your tallow. It's as simple as calling a local butcher. You want to ask for "Leaf fat from around the kidney". Tallow is NOT "trimmings", or fat you'd cut from a roast or steak. Tallow is a solid white (or cream) color chunk of fat from a specific location in the cow. Some butchers refer to it as suet. Just make sure to clarify exactly what you're looking for. If they're willing to grind or chop it for you, that will make your life MUCH easier!
2. Trim (if you want). Word of warning...when you get tallow from the butcher (especially if it's not ground or chopped), it's not much to look at. You might see connective tissue or meat attached to it. That's normal. You can simply trim that stuff off and toss it. Personally, I do not trim unless there's a huge amount of meat. I use the "waste" product from rendered tallow and I turn it into suet cakes for the bird feeders.
3. Melt with water (wet render). Notice I said MELT, not cook! Using too high a temp is a great way to produce really smelly tallow. You want to melt on a low temp, not cook it. I place the tallow in a roaster or crock pot, and fill the vessel about 1/2 way up with water after adding the tallow. I also like to add a bit of salt to help draw out any water soluble impurities/odors. I cook at about 200 degrees F overnight.
Salt is not required, and there's lots of debate about it. A quick google research will give you the info you need to decide if you want to use salt.
To salt or not? I use salt because removing as much of the odor as possible is important to me. The first time I rendered, I didn't use salt...the end product smelled so beefy that I was afraid the neighborhood dogs would attack me if I left the house haha! Totally your call. If you have lots of great reasons to NOT salt, that's just fine. I'm not here to debate...just to share what's worked for me :-)
4. De-Chunk. This is an official term ;-) This is just for those of you who do NOT have ground or fine-chopped tallow like me. Even after it's fully melted, some of the fat will be bound up in the rest of the tissues - I don't want to let it go to waste! You basically want to crush as many chunks as possible to release the fat. I've used in immersion blender, a food processor, and a good old fashioned potato masher. You can also dump it in a fine mesh strainer and press it against the mesh with a spoon/spatula to release the fat (my favorite method).
5. Strain. Now that your tallow has been melted and de-chunked, it's time to pour the whole water and tallow (and salt) mixture into a big bowl. Let the mixture cool to a temp that is still warm enough to be melty, but cool enough to be comfortable to touch. Place a big pasta strainer in a big mixing bowl, and drape some cheesecloth over the strainer. Pour the mixture into the cheesecloth. Twist and squeeze the cheesecloth to release as much fat as you can.
Discard the stuff caught by the cheesecloth if you'd like (in the trash, NOT down the drain). Or, you can keep it and let it cool in a small baking dish. Once cooled, pop it out, and roll it in birdseed. The birds LOVE it!
6. Refrigerate overnight or until a hard "puck" of tallow forms at the top, and the water puddles at the bottom.
7. Remove the fat layer from the bowl, and discard the water at the bottom. You'll see some impurities on the surface of the tallow (especially on the bottom). Use a knife or bench scraper to scrape it away and discard. It's ok for some of the impurities to be stuck in the tallow - it'll be filtered out with more rendering and straining.
8. Repeat steps 3,5, & 6 until the water in the bottom of the bowl is mostly clear and odor-free. At this point, you have removed most of the impurities from the tallow. It should have a generally uniform color and very faint odor if any.
**Change your cooling basin at this point - instead of a big deep mixing bowl, use several smaller shallow containers. I use plastic containers with lids to allow me to stack them in the fridge.
**The reason for switching to shallow containers, it to allow any remaining impurities and/or salt to make it's way out of the fat and into the water. Thinner layers of fat will be less likely to have pockets of stuff you don't want...they can get trapped in the larger, thicker pucks of fat.
9. Remove the salt. If you used salt in your rendering process, it's important to do a couple more wet renders WITHOUT the salt. The water will find any salt that's trapped, and will bind to it. As you do wet renders without salt, you'll notice the water in the bowl under the puck will become less and less cloudy....that cloudiness is the salt being pulled off. I wet render as many times as it takes for the water to be clear.
10. Melt without water (dry render). And now it's time to remove any remaining water from your tallow. This part is CRUCIAL for long term storage (either on a shelf, in a fridge/freezer, or in a product) because trapped water will cause mold. Melt the tallow down without adding any water or salt. Once it's fully melted, pour no more than 1.5 inches deep in your shallow containers.
11. Refrigerate until solid. Remove the thin pucks of tallow from the containers, and dry thoroughly with paper towel. At this point, the tallow should be very firm. If you break it or cut it, it should have a "snap" to it.
12. Store in a way that will preserve it well. This is where I've lost so much good tallow! Do NOT store in a mason jar. All it takes is a single drop of water to find it's way into that closed jar, and mold takes hold.
How I store it: I take my dried pucks and wrap them in parchment paper. Then place several wrapped pucks in a zipper bag along with a piece of paper towel (which will grab any moisture). The whole bag goes into a freezer for long term storage. Not only does the freezer pull any moisture out, but it also prevents spoilage.
Congrats! You did it! You now have pure tallow to use in cooking or in skincare products. Pro tip: I typically keep some set aside in my fridge for popping my popcorn ;-)
Enjoy!
