The Essential Differences Between Butter And Beef Tallow For Cooking

Just about every chef loves the sight of butter sizzling in a hot pan. The incredible aroma and flavor it gives to any food it's cooked with has made it a staple in kitchens everywhere. But there's another natural fat that once rivaled butter's popularity: beef tallow. This cooking fat, made from rendered cattle tissue, was the go-to choice for frying before vegetable oils took over. If you've been considering cooking with beef tallow, you should know that it's used very differently from butter in the kitchen.

First, we need to look at how they're made. Butter is created by churning cream until it separates into butterfat and buttermilk, so you get a result that's about 80% fat, with the remainder being water and milk solids. Beef tallow, meanwhile, being rendered animal fat, is almost 100% pure fat by composition. These numbers matter big time when you're cooking. Specifically, butter's lower fat percentage means it starts to smoke and burn at around 300 degrees Fahrenheit — we call this threshold the smoke point, and it's the reason nobody deep-fries in butter. Tallow can handle much higher heat, having a smoke point up to 420 degrees Fahrenheit. That makes it a much better option for high-temperature cooking.

The flavor difference is where things get really interesting. While butter is creamy and lightly sweet, tallow is more savory with nutty notes and a hint of beefy flavor. With different heat tolerances and taste profiles, it's no surprise, then, that these two fats shine in completely different cooking scenarios.

When a dish calls for low to medium heat and needs its flavor enriched, butter's your best friend. It's perfect for sauting vegetables like green beans, which you can then dress with a delicate garlic lemon sauce (with a few spoonfuls of clarified butter for extra flavor). And for baked goods, from simple chocolate banana brownies to fancy Italian meringue macarons, you'll have a hard time pulling any of these off without a stick of butter or two.

Tallow, on the other hand, excels in any recipe that requires high heat. Use it to deep-fry a batch of mindblowing french fries or baste a steak with it to develop a crust as well as amplify the beefy flavor. Its relatively neutral, but savory profile makes it the perfect option for making heartier dishes like beef stews and roasts, as well. As a bonus, you can strain and store tallow for later uses, so if you fry often, it's a great way to save a few bucks.

Between butter and tallow, no one's really better than the other. If possible, we highly recommend giving them both a place in your pantry.