Over the previous few years within the US and elswhere, beef tallow has grow to be a buzzy ingredient for residence cooks and restaurant cooks alike. After all, the usage of this fats is just not new. The culinary use of beef tallow in dates again to Historical Rome, the place it was used within the northern areas of Gaul and Britannia, in addition to in Egypt. In Apicius’s 4th-century cookbook Cooking and Eating in Imperial Rome, the ingredient is used as an alternative to caul fats in a hamburger-like Roman dish referred to as isicia omentata, and as a frying fats for numerous meals. The Yale Babylonian Tablets point out that Egyptians used beef tallow in recipes nonetheless recognizable right now, equivalent to a Babylonian beef stew much like kabab halla, and reveal that animal fat, together with tallow, have been repeatedly used alongside vegetable oils for cooking. 

Many 18th century British recipes, together with Yorkshire pudding and meat pies, used tallow and it stays a key ingredient right now for these dishes. It is also used for frying fish and chips, in addition to a rub to protect meats and add an additional punch of taste to them. In northern France and Belgium, beef tallow has lengthy been used to prepare dinner french fries, and it has been in style for hundreds of years in France, the place cooks use it to braise meats, make pastries, put together confit, and construct the roux in gravies.

The Beef Tallow Renaissance

For contemporary cooks, nonetheless, the dialog round beef tallow is elevated formed by questions in regards to the well being results of animal fat versus seed oils and impartial oils, together with concerns of taste and whole-animal use. A pattern amongst social media influencers and podcasters has emerged, casting beef tallow as a more healthy different to seed oils. The “trad spouse” motion—whose adherents hunt down rural lives on farms and ranches in a return to a so-called conventional way of life—performs into it, too. In its most excessive kinds, the motion has pushed a full agrarian revival, full with cattle herding, butter churning, and tallow rendering. Some eating places have adopted seed oil-free menus, which Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. endorses as a “more healthy” alternative.

The present renaissance round beef tallow follows its decline within the late Nineteen Eighties and early Nineties, when Phil Sokolof, founder and president of the Nationwide Coronary heart Basis, campaigned to change it with vegetable oils to cut back the nation’s saturated fats consumption and decrease levels of cholesterol. Quick-food spots, together with McDonald’s and Wendy’s, made the swap and subsequently confronted long-running criticism thattheir fries weren’t pretty much as good. Now, shifting preferences—and evolving well being analysis—could also be setting the stage for the return of crispy french fries and animal fat to our diets.

Is Beef Tallow the Perfect Cooking Fats?

First, the fries. In response to Dr. Eric A. Decker, a meals scientist on the College of Massachusetts, Amherst, taste is essentially the most compelling motive to prepare dinner with beef tallow. Its excessive smoke level, round 480°F (250°C), makes it perfect for frying. “If you throw [a potato] within the fryer, the temperature is so excessive that water evaporates immediately,” Decker says. “If you take it out of the fryer, water really leaves the cell,” and because the potato sits and cools, it continues to soak up the tallow, infusing it with wealthy, meaty taste.

For Jacob Williamson, former chef on the Dallas Italian steakhouse The Saint, fries are among the many least attention-grabbing makes use of for beef tallow—and so they aren’t even on the menu. Whereas working the Saint, Williamson—whose résumé contains stints in kitchens run by legendary cooks Wolfgang Puck and Jean-Georges Vongerichten—developed a beef tallow rendering program and almost eradicated butter in favor of it. 

“It has extra umami, and if you wish to deliberately impart taste into meals somewhat than utilizing only a common oil, that is positively the best way to go,” Williamson says. His favourite makes use of embrace roasting and searing root greens, brushing it on steaks earlier than serving, and incorporating it as a strong fats in baked items. His menu featured a snickerdoodle cookie made with wagyu tallow as a substitute of butter.

Price, High quality, and Well being Concerns

Decker says that almost all grocery retailer beef tallow is unlikely to match the standard of freshly rendered tallow comprised of suet, the fats that surrounds a cow’s kidney. The cow’s weight loss program, whether or not grass- or grain-based, performs a vital position in taste. “When McDonald’s stopped utilizing tallow [in 1990], the worth of tallow simply plummeted,” he says, explaining that the market turned saturated with lower-quality beef tallow—a pattern that continues right now. “So in case you’re shopping for a glass jar of tallow within the grocery retailer, you are not essentially getting that flavorful tallow,” he says.

Meals scientist Allison M. Kingery, managing director of Purdue College’s Meals Entrepreneurship and Manufacturing Institute, notes that the excessive worth level generally is a barrier to entry for individuals to make use of beef tallow. “I feel it does really feel like a splurge,” she says, noting beef tallow is considerably dearer than butter and much pricier than seed oils and impartial oils. “I feel [its biggest] downside is the constraints on who can afford to make use of this as an everyday product.”

One other consideration earlier than including beef tallow to your weight loss program is its excessive saturated fats content material—about 52% of its complete fats. “That makes an influence only for heart problems danger and presumably growing levels of cholesterol,” says Theresa Gentile, MS, RDN, CDN, and coordinator of the house enteral diet program at Maimonides Medical Heart in Brooklyn. 

For Gentile, the primary motive to make use of beef tallow is as a part of whole-animal butchery—for sustainability. “I feel individuals love to leap on totally different tendencies,” she says. “True proponents of beef tallow, I feel they need it as a result of it’s a return to a complete pure meals, as a result of we’re utilizing the entire animal…in nose-to-tail cooking.” However she notes that for these sourcing fats from the grocery store somewhat than using tallow as one part of a complete animal, butter is an equally pure animal fats that is simply pretty much as good and flavorful—and rather more inexpensive. Plus, it is decrease in saturated fats.