Heard a guy at the market say he throws out all his beef fat trimmings

I told him I render mine down for tallow and he was shocked, said he'd never thought of that. How many of you save your trimmings versus just tossing them?

4 comments

4 Comments

laura_wilson2mo ago

Wasn't there a whole thing on a cooking blog about tallow for pie crust? I read that using it instead of butter makes the flakiest crust ever. I tried it with some trimmings from a brisket and it worked so well. The crust was super crispy and had this rich flavor. It's way better than store-bought shortening and basically free if you save your scraps.

the_laura2mo ago

Save your trimmings" is a good start, but you actually need to render them to get tallow. Just keeping the raw fat won't do much. It's a simple process that gives you great cooking fat.

wendym872mo ago

My grandma's tallow fries are the best.

the_faith21h ago

Oh, I have to disagree with the crowd here. I've tried rendering tallow a few times and honestly the smell fills up the whole house and lingers for days, plus it's a messy process that never seems worth the small amount of fat you end up with. Store-bought shortening is cheap enough and doesn't require me to spend an afternoon tending a pot of sizzling scraps on the stove.

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