Making Tallow

I think I recall a post I made here maybe a couple of months ago about cooking oils. After that post I came to think that of the common vegetable oils, cooking versions (high temperature resistant) of two really good ones seem to be sunflower oil and safflower oil, preferably organic.

That oil is wicked expensive compared to cheap supermarket cooking oil.

The other day a friend mentioned to my wife and me about the health benefits of cooking with tallow. She was saying it is a much healthier cooking oil. Yesterday my wife and I were in the supermarket and it crossed my mind to look for tallow on the shelves. I was surprised to find it but the only quantity they had was a jar containing less than 16 ounces of tallow and that jar cost something like $16.00 plus.

That's a lot for cooking oil.

So then I remembered rendering quite a large amount of venison tallow one year when my son got an early season buck bowhunting. So since we were right in the supermarket we asked the meat guys if they sold beef fat. They did so we bought three 2-pound packages at $0.69 per pound which seems steep still but oh well, it was for a learning experience that I was in the mood for. Frozen turkey yesterday was $0.39 per pound just to compare prices. Thawed it was $2.50 or more per pound.

Last night I watched some YouTube videos about rendering tallow and this morning I got the process started and found yet another video. This one is a good one:

How to Render and Purify Tallow | ODORLESS, WHITE, WET METHOD | Bumblebee Apothecary