Rendering Tallow

by Anne-Marie Faiola, photos by Nancy Colpitts

Rendering tallow is often looked at by new soapmakers as a daunting task. To start out, you'll want to get clean suet from the local butcher's shop. They should sell it to you for $.10-$.25 per pound. You may have to trim it up a little bit depending on how closely the butcher makes his cuts. As you'll see though, it's a simple process:

Thanks to reader John K. who submitted these additional tips on Rendering Tallow:

1) If you can get grain fed beef tallow, the oil will be almost totally white. Grass fed beef tallow is yellow like in your illustration.

2) We use our crock-pot set to low - you then are not taking a hot roasting pan in and out of the oven (safer). This applies to lard too.

Here is the ground tallow from the butcher...

Put the tallow in a roaster and turn oven on at 200 F degrees...

After 45 minutes it starts to melt...

Filter through a fine sieve into a pot of water with a peeled potato in it. It needs to boil in water with a potato for approximately 60 minutes. Boiling time may vary with size of pot, but a good rule of thumb is 45 - 85 minutes.

Here it is, solid, after being in the fridge approximately 5 hours. Length of time to cool in fridge will depend on your quantity of tallow, typically 2-5 hours are required.

And here is the final product ready to freeze... Five pounds of ground tallow rendered out to approximately four pounds after two renderings. Read another method submitted by Lisa Mostyn - thanks Lisa!

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