The Beef Tallow Mistake That Can Completely Ruin Your Meal

Take yourself back a hundred years and you would have found beef tallow in any home kitchen. Made by rendering beef fat, it's a byproduct of cattle farming that was easily accessible — but as vegetable oils became cheaper to produce and consumers became more health-conscious, beef tallow fell out of favor. With the decline in use goes a decline in know-how, and the average home cook today is understandably not as familiar with the tips and tricks for using beef tallow.

One mistake that's easy to make is overseasoning your dishes. If you treat beef tallow like other cooking fats such as butter or vegetable oil, you'll find that your dish ends up out of balance when it comes to salt or other seasonings. One of beef tallow's great features is that it acts as a binder, helping your seasoning penetrate your food. The result of this is that more of the seasoning that you add to the dish is going to end up in your mouth.

Beef tallow is also rich in umami. And while umami isn't quite the same as saltiness, it's a satisfying savory quality that plays the same role as salt in enhancing the flavor of a dish. Not only is a lot of salt or seasoning unnecessary when cooking with beef tallow, but it will also overwhelm the fat's taste, which is its best feature.

Between the cost and the cholesterol, beef tallow might not be a fat for everyday cooking, but in the right dish, it can be something special. The best way to use beef tallow is to lean into its flavor profile, pairing it with complementary tastes or adding it to dishes where it can be the star of the show.

Using beef tallow for fries or roast potatoes is the perfect example of this. The humble earthy vegetable will be brought to life with the umami beef tallow and just a little salt. McDonald's used beef tallow to cook their fries up until 1990 and now rely on adding beef flavoring to canola oil to maintain the same taste.

The high smoke point makes it a good option for frying or searing. Cooking a steak with beef tallow is going to intensify that meaty flavor, while using it for fried chicken will give you a big savory boost without the need for a lot of salt. You can even use it for your breakfast — an egg fried in beef tallow makes a simple but luxurious start to the day.