Now onto the tallowmaking. But first, some complaining. I've been sick for a week, really sick, sicker than I've been since I was a kid and my tonsils came out to stop the damned ear infections. Funny thing is my tonsils grew back. Weird and freaky I know but my Papa's did too so I'm not completely shocked. Guess what else came back, ear infections. I caught a cold from my niece and about three days in my ears started to itch on the inside. The next day, they HURT. So I call my ear doc, who seriously I haven't seen in 17 years and he fits me in that morning. Dr. Arrigg ROCKS!!!! I have a "rippping" ear infection and have to take antibiotics which I haven't taken in I can't remember how long, I never get sick. It's not completely gone but it's cleared up a lot and I feel like a dork for having a ear infection in my 30s.
Anyway, I don't do sick very well. I hate being in bed and I feel like a lazy slug so by Friday I HAD to do SOMETHING useful. I decided to render out the tallow as new stuff is coming in three weeks. At least I could take breaks if I got tired and mostly leave it to do it's own thing. So I gathered everything I needed - suet, a large pot, water, salt, cheese cloth, a strainer and a large plastic tub.
Now, there's a lot of books out there on how to render tallow. Get one, read it, read it again and think long and hard before you do it. This is how I make it, not a complete set of instructions, so if you follow them and screw up and burn your house down, set the dog on fire or something it's not on me. Cool? OK here we go.
This is the suet, the fat from around a cows internal organs.
Step 1 is to cut it up into 1 inch chunks.
It can then either go into the pot or into the grinder. If you use a grinder keep the suet as close to frozen as you can while you grind or else it gums up the auger and makes a mess.
Next the chunks or ground suet goes into a pot with a few inches of water and some salt. The water helps keep the suet from overheating and smoking or worse catching fire, it is grease after all. Have the lid handy JUST IN CASE. But if you add water as everything cooks it should be fine. I keep the heat at a slow simmer.
Warning cooking suet into tallow SMELLS BAD. Do it on a nice day with all the windows and doors open. The smell fades fast but while it's cooking it STINKS. If you didn't grind you get some floating chunks of trapped fat like these. I turn off the heat and put my stick blender in the pot to chop them up real quick. Of course then I pick the sinewy bits off the stick blender and clean it really well. It's better to just grind the suet in the first place.
When it's all melted and cooked time to strain. I use cheese cloth layered in a strainer and I strain into a plastic tub.
When the tallow is cooled it will be tallow on top and water on the bottom. Sometimes there's some fine meaty bits that made it through the strainer so time to scrape the bottom.
Make sure it's cooled all the way through or you're going to have to call a plumber to degrease your pipes. I flip the whole thing over into the sink and the water, gelatin and other nasty drains off. If there's anything NOT tallow I scrape it off and throw it away. You can then either freeze it or clean it again. I usually clean it again by remelting with less water and straining through coffee filters just to make sure it's as pure as possible.
After the second cleaning I let it cool until it's solid. When it's mostly cool i stick it in the fridge to get really firm before I wrap it in freezer paper for storage.
Once it's happily wrapped and dated the tallow is ready for the freezer. I made soap and candle from it all the time. Since we get our meat by buying a cow once a year we're already paying for the suet so I figure we might as well use it.
1 comment:
Wow, what a process. It looks fun, and I can't wait to try my soap!
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