Carnivore Diet Recipes: How to Render Your Own Beef Tallow

While the carnivore diet has become extremely trendy, most average people don’t really understand the extent of it. It’s not about just removing veggies or even grains, it’s about removing everything that isn’t meat, animal fat and salt(although some do seasonings). Often times for those who are doing this for health reasons: no spices, no seasoning, no veggies, no tortillas….

I often get asked what oil I use to cook my meat as the use of vegetable oil has become so widespread it makes eating out dangerous for me. When I’m not grilling, my favorite thing to use is beef tallow...which coincidentally is expensive if you buy it premade about a dollar an once in the states.

I learned quickly that my body doesn’t respond to even a tiny amount of any vegetable oil and this is actually extremely for people on the diet to find. Simply put most of those oils aren’t healthy for us and if they are, they have short shelf life and generally are rancid before we even buy them. That stuff has a surprising effect on health.

It’s easy to make and nearly free especially here in Mexico. I pay about 10 pesos at most for a giant hunk of fat that’ll yield me around a liter of rendered beef lard. That will last me a month or a little more depending on how often I cook for friends.

The process is simple. Get some beef fat from a butcher, it’s best if it’s the kidney fat because it will come out the cleanest tasting. Often they will give it to you for free as they’re generally faced with throwing it out otherwise.

Chop it into tiny pieces or have the butcher grind it for you. I generally just chop it myself.

Put it into a covered pan and put that pan on low heat until all the oil renders out of the fat and you’re left with just the fried crispy bits. You can eat these or give them to pets, I know cats, dogs and chickens love these bits.

If you’re a busy person that isn’t home most of the time but you have an instant pot or slow cooker, put the hunks in there and turn it on low for all day.

Allow it to cool until you can basically stick your finger in without it burning you and remove all the fried bits, preferably with a fine mesh metal strainer to get all the tiniest bits out. Store in a container in the fridge or can if you want to keep it for awhile.

I use this for everything from cooking to lotion for dry skin. The uses are kind of endless. I prefer it over pork lard because I find lard has a weird flavor I don’t like where tallow generally just has a very “steaky” smell.

Thanks for reading!