For most of human history, people cooked in animal fat. Beef tallow, pork lard, chicken schmaltz, duck fat. They were prized, expensive, and lasted forever. Then in the 1980s, seed oils took over — cheaper, vegetarian, marketed as ‘heart-healthy’. Three decades on, the science isn’t holding up the way the marketing claimed it would, and traditional fats are coming back.
What tallow is
Tallow is rendered beef fat. Specifically, it’s the suet (the dense fat around the kidneys and inside the abdomen) cooked down slowly until it separates from any meat or membrane, then strained and cooled. At room temperature it’s solid and creamy white. Heated, it melts into a clear, nearly flavourless oil.
You can buy it in a jar from us, or make your own from off-cuts.
What it’s good for
High-heat cooking. Tallow has a smoke point around 200°C, well above what most home pans hit. Searing steak, frying eggs, roasting potatoes — everything that needs heat works better in tallow than in olive oil.
Roast potatoes. The McDonald’s fries from before 1990 were cooked in beef tallow, and people still talk about how they tasted. Roast spuds in tallow at 200°C until they’re crispy — you’ll see why.
Searing meat. Tallow has a higher concentration of saturated fat than most plant oils, which means it gives a better, more even sear. The Maillard reaction (the browning that creates flavour) works better in stable saturated fats.
Pastry. Old-school British meat pies use beef tallow in the pastry. The crust crisps up shatteringly thin and stays that way.
What about the health stuff
The 1980s consensus that saturated fat = heart disease has been largely walked back by the scientific community over the last 15 years. Recent meta-analyses don’t find a clear link between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular disease. Meanwhile, industrial seed oils (canola, soybean, vegetable) are increasingly flagged for high omega-6 content and oxidation issues at high heat.
This isn’t medical advice — talk to your doctor if you’ve got specific concerns. But the “tallow is bad” line is dated.
How to use it at home
Pop a spoon of our grass-fed tallow into your pan instead of olive oil for any high-heat cooking. Try roast potatoes first — you’ll get it instantly.
Grass-fed tallow has a higher CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) content and a yellower colour from carotenoids in the grass. Worth the upgrade if you’re going to use it.
