Beef tallow

I’m ashamed to say in the 10 years we’ve been raising cattle for beef, I’ve never asked for the fat to render from our processor. How wasteful! This year I did. I’ve never rendered down beef fat or pork lard so it was a new experience. I *think* it went well. I just crammed as much as I could into the crockpot. In trying to keep a low boil, I switched it back and forth from the low setting to the warm setting if it seemed to be boiling too fast. I let that go for over 24 hours, stirring slightly every few hours. The smell in the house was not great. 🤢 Maybe that’s a better task when I can open some windows? I did two batches which yielded a little less than 4 pints of creamy white goodness. I plan to use it to fry potatoes, but my husband is on a no candida diet right now so the potatoes will have to wait. I couldn’t quite get to all the fat, the last batch surrounded a bone that wouldn’t fit in my crockpot and I’d lost my steam at that point. It went to the dogs, who are both on a raw meat and bones diet. They devoured it happily. 🐾

I guess these are the cracklings left over? I’m told they’re good in soup, but the smell of the fat cooking down for so long turned me off, so these went to the dogs too.

Before it had cooled

Voila!