foxhill Posted November 17, 2005 Share Posted November 17, 2005 I have been using tallow to make my soap for a while and of course there is no place locally I can get some so I went to the wholesale meat co. where my uncle is a butcher today and got 10 pounds of suet to make my own tallow. At $0.39 a pound I figured its worth a try, plus it's already ground up. My dogs were lovin me when I came in with a 10 pound bag of beef suet! Anyone else ever rendered their own tallow? That is going to be my saturday project. I really hope my house doesn't end up smelling nasty Wish me luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lorrie Posted November 17, 2005 Share Posted November 17, 2005 Never done it but maybe you could post more information about it? Also I would love to hear how things go. Good luck~~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxhill Posted November 17, 2005 Author Share Posted November 17, 2005 Theoretically it is a simple process. You cook the suet in a big pot with water and some salt for several hours and then strain out the cracklins and let the liquid harden, the water will separate from the tallow when it hardens. Then you render it again with water and baking soda, strain again and let the liquid harden. I also found a similar method that uses a crockpot for the second rendering, but I think big soup pot will be easier than transferring to a second pot. We'll see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobinInOR Posted November 17, 2005 Share Posted November 17, 2005 Yup - I posted some pics on the old forum - here's a copy from my July post: I got some free fat from Safeway. It was just the subcutaneous fat from steak trimmings, not the better organ fat, but it worked just fine. It was in long strips, so I just cut it into chunks w/ a kitchen shears. I used Cyndi's (Muller Farm) technique of dry rendering - putting the fat in a 200F oven. Set the timer and every 1/2 hour dipped out the oil that had liquified. Here it is after a couple of hours, mostly done. I drained it into one of my gallon oil containers. Rubberbanded a sheet of Bounty paper towel over the opening to filter it - Bounty help up fine without tearing. Next pictures aren't too good, my camera doesn't do white really well. But here's the fat after it cooled And the plain no color no scent bars. I just took my regular recipe and sub'd out the palm, substituted the tallow, so the tallow is at 25%, the rest being RBO, coconut, PKO, castor. A bit whiter than my usual bar. The fat in the can smells a little meaty, but the soap doesn't have any smell at all - much nicer than the lard I tried last month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxhill Posted November 18, 2005 Author Share Posted November 18, 2005 Thanks Robin, I may try that method instead, sounds a little easier. I was lucky enough to get the suet before they got rid of it and even luckier that it was ground already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vec Posted November 18, 2005 Share Posted November 18, 2005 My grandmother used to make lye soap before she passed away. I have watched her render fat a few times...she used a huge cast iron pot outside on a fire. She boiled hers down in the pot (but she was doing huge ammounts....they had hogs) then strained it into buckets where after it cooled she scraped the goodies off the top. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobinInOR Posted November 18, 2005 Share Posted November 18, 2005 It's a mess and a pain no matter how you do it - just depends on how much actual time you spend fiddling with it. I liked the oven way cuz I could ignore it, but it's still a pain to keep separating it. Have fun! I like doing things the basic way. DH won't let me start a fire in the back yard so the oven it has to be lol... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxhill Posted November 18, 2005 Author Share Posted November 18, 2005 Well I do have a big barbeque pit and a huge cast iron cauldron type pot that hangs from a tripod that we used to when we did pig roasts, but honestly it got too freakin' cold last night to be hanging out all day scooping out fat! I'll stay in the house where its warm and do it the easy way. I have a 18 quart turkey roaster that goes up to 350 degrees, I wonder if that would work better, then I wouldn't have to bend over to scoop out of the oven. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxhill Posted November 20, 2005 Author Share Posted November 20, 2005 The turkey roaster worked great! I ended up with about 6 pounds of tallow. I am so excited! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tlc26 Posted November 20, 2005 Share Posted November 20, 2005 Did it smell bad like you thought it would? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxhill Posted November 21, 2005 Author Share Posted November 21, 2005 No as bas as I expected, since the suet is from around the kidneys it didn't really smelly beefy, just like a deep fryer sort of. I think using the turkey roaster helped alot too, it certainly made it easy. The dogs were big fans though, they were hanging around in case I dripped anything while I was straining. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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