I do hope they post some clear warnings so they don’t go through what McD did with their fries
I sometimes cook duck and goose, and i save the fat. It makes delicious popcorn! (I pop my corn in a cast iron skillet with enough fat to transfer the heat.) It also makes delicious roast vegetables. Actually not suitable for your vegetarian friends.
Also, duck fat has a richness similar to ham, and is good in pea soup if you want to feed people who don’t eat pork.
I miss the flavor of McDonald’s tallow-fried potatoes, but i don’t cook with beef tallow. I actually have some onion-infused beef fat that was leftover when i last made oxtail soup. It was so delicious i couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, so i melted it, and chilled it in ice cube trays, and now i have a ziplock bag of seasoned beef-fat-cubes in the freezer. I pulled one out recently to saute some vegetable. But i feel a little guilty using it because i can just feel my arteries hardening.
Oh, don’t remind me! I’m really trying to be good for the next two weeks - we have an out-of-state friend visiting us then for a week, during which it will be vacation calories (which don’t count until after the vacation, natch) and I expect it’ll take a month to revert to norm.
And yes, I have a nice set of purchased duck breasts sitting in my freezer for that occasion. Because even at $15.99 a pound, it was cheaper than steak!
Yeah, the unctuous nature of duck, both as an ingredient and a cooking fat is a great draw for me. But in a two-person household, with only me eating meat, collecting a useable amount of fat from my actual cooking is pretty rare.
They labeled their fries as vegetarian, even tho they contained beef flavoring. McDs had gotten rid of the tallow fries some times before that.
Is the tallow you want to get for skincare or cooking?
Checking a couple of supermarket websites, both beef tallow and duck fat appear to be available on the shelf. At Big Y Supermarket, for instance, eleven ounces of duct fat or beef tallow for $12, both from a NYC company called Aux Délices des Bois.
I didn’t know this. We were recently given some 8-oz tubs of the shelf-stable stuff. I don’t live in an area where house-rendered lard is a thing. Is the tub-o-lard good for anything other than baking, which I’m not going to use it for? I already keep a small amount of bacon fat around.
Oh the lard.
It’s good for so many things.
Makes the best biscuits and pie crust.
Must have for cornbreads and my Mid-dau’s twig and dead leaf muffins.
Tea-cakes turn out more tender with lard over other fats.
Fried chicken just don’t work as well without lard for frying.
Of course, seed oils or a neutral oil in the kitchen. Olive oil and butter have their distinct flavors for certain foods.
Lard and Tallow have their particular uses in any kitchen.
Well not any kitchen. There are legitimate religious reasons to not use either.
Those words together make a grating sound in my mind.
Well, that’s cromulent. And if you’re that way, I’m sure you got nice tasty things as well.
I’ll change my “any” to “my” kitchen.
Why is that?
No connection to beef tallow, sorry if I went off topic.
I gather our favorite spaghetti sauce is made with lard; the label says “pork fat”.
Thank you for saying that. I was going to but you did it better than me. Fat has become political and seed oils have been demonized despite there being many scientific studies showing the benefits. I use vegetable or olive oil most of the time. Nothing wrong with that. I can see the use of beef tallow for flavor but doing it for health is giving in to MAHA propaganda.
I did see Japanese waygu beef tallow for sale in Costco. It ain’t cheap.
So, after wandering around Googleland looking at beef tallow and other critter fats, I wound up ordering smallish tubs of goose fat, duck fat, and bacon grease to try out for cooking eggs and other sauteed stuff, spreading on toast, whatever strikes me as worth trying.
I wonder if there is any chemical or taste difference between ordinary beef tallow and wagyu beef tallow?
I remember you discussing that oxtail soup fat. If I recall part of the issue was how intense the flavor was?
I’m with you but more so though. I don’t feel guilty. These just aren’t fats that I am going to bother stocking in my own kitchen for common use. Put me at a party with homemade fried chicken and biscuits both cooked with lard and I’ll tuck right in. Fries with a meal at a restaurant that are cooked in duck fat or beef tallow? I’m game. But day in day out? I can’t even imagine that.
I’ve read that there is. They don’t just have more fat, they have different fat. But I’ve never tried wagyu beef. Honestly, the photos don’t look appealing. I can, as a guilty pleasure, eat a strip of fat cap from my steak. But meat that’s got more fat than muscle fiber looks unhealthy to unappealing to me.
Well, that was more than as month ago, and I’ve used half of one “ice cube”. It’s not going to be a day in, day out thing. But i might give it another try for sauteed vegetables.
The fat around the kidneys is also very “clean”, meaning that it has little connective or muscle tissue in it, and when it’s rendered, it forms the white fat one might associate with lard.
Just plain old beef or pork fat is going to have a stronger color and flavor.