The Best Type Of Steak To Make Beef Tallow (You Don't Need Wagyu)

Known as one of the most versatile ingredients you can find in the kitchen, beef tallow is cow fat that's rendered down to be used similarly to butter or oil, but it gives your food a significantly more pronounced flavor boost as a result. This is the reason why several restaurant chains use beef tallow in their kitchens, and many home cooks have begun to follow suit by buying pre-packaged beef tallow from the store. However, if you're someone who frequently cooks beef at home, it's actually quite easy to make your own tallow as long as you know what you're doing. More specifically, anybody who likes to cook brisket could easily make a fair amount of beef tallow when doing so.

The reason why brisket is such a great option for making beef tallow is due to both the ample fat on the cut of steak and its overall placement on the meat. Whole briskets include large sections of fat on them, most of which isn't needed and can be removed before cooking the meat. Because of this, you can benefit greatly by making beef tallow using the leftover pieces of a brisket that otherwise may go to waste. This differs from other cuts of steak, like ribeye, which typically contains a lot more intramuscular fat (also known as marbling) that can't be removed from the cut and thus isn't as optimal for the job of making beef tallow.

Now, there are many things to keep in mind when making beef tallow using your brisket trimmings to warrant the best results in the easiest manner. For starters, the best course of action is to either chop or grind the trimmings up, as that will make the process much quicker than if you leave the large pieces of fat whole. Then, putting the smaller pieces of brisket trimmings into a pot with water — which will help it render evenly as it evaporates — and simmering it will leave you with the liquid gold known as beef tallow. This rendering process is what separates beef tallow from simple beef fat, as it makes the ingredient much more versatile and flavorful.

You can also use any residual fat that you left on the brisket as it cooked, but never rendered to make beef tallow, although it'll likely yield far less tallow than the trimmings that were removed beforehand. To do so, celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern suggests cooling the brisket in the fridge in order to let the fat coagulate into a more malleable form. This allows you to more easily scoop the fat out and use it for beef tallow.