You can get snow-white, odorless, moisturizing tallow from suet from ruminant animals like cattle, sheep, goats, and deer. Here is one way to render the fat into tallow, using your slow cooker. This dry rendering method consists of warming the tallow and straining it to remove impurities.
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I have been rendering tallow for making skincare products for quite a while now. The first fat that I rendered was from a whitetail deer that I harvested on our property during bow season. I rendered it wet on the stovetop, adding water to the fat. For directions on rendering tallow using this method, click here to read my article detailing the steps.
There is nothing wrong with the wet rendering stovetop method, but since I have had time to experiment with other methods, I have come to prefer dry rendering tallow in my slow cooker. It yields the same amazing results, but it is less time consuming and more hands off.
What is Tallow?
Tallow is made from rendering the fat from a ruminant animal. Ruminants include cattle, sheep, goats, and deer. They all have a four-chambered stomach and chew cud, unlike pigs which are monogastric and give us lard. For more on how I render lard in a slow cooker, click here.
Tallow can be used in place of shortening in baked goods, candle making, and to make skincare products like soap, body butter, and lip balm. For my venison tallow lip balm recipe, click here! For my recipes for solid or whipped tallow balm, click the corresponding links.
You can buy fat from a butcher and render tallow from that, or if you process your own livestock or wild game like us, you will have access to plenty of wonderful ruminant fat. The purest and most odorless tallow is rendered from suet which is the fat found around the animal’s loin and kidneys, but tallow can be successfully rendered from any fatty part of the carcass.
The pictures in this post show the rendering of goat tallow from Boer meat goats processed on our farm.
Materials Needed for Dry Rendering Tallow in a Slow Cooker
- Slow cooker
- Ruminant fat (partially thawed)
- Grinder or kitchen knife
- Rubber spatula
- Mesh strainer
- Cheese cloth
- Large bowl
I use a 5-quart slow cooker to render my tallow. I use my slow cooker on the low setting, if your slow cooker runs hot, you might have to use the warm setting instead. You want to melt the fat slowly and prevent it from burning or boiling.
I can fit 2.5 to 3 pounds of ground suet in my slow cooker for a batch. The tallow renders more quickly and there is less waste if you grind it beforehand. We run our partially thawed suet through the coarse plate on our standalone ½ HP Cabela’s meat grinder and it works great. You can use a grinder attachment for a KitchenAid mixer too. If you don’t have access to a grinder, you can cut up the partially thawed fat into small pieces with a kitchen knife. Partially thawing the fat makes it easier to work with!
The rendering process takes several hours. I check on my fat every 30 minutes and use a rubber spatula to stir it and scrape any bits that stick to the sides of the pot.
After a few hours of cooking, the initial rendering will be complete and you will need to pour the hot fat through the mesh strainer lined with cheese cloth into a large bowl. A second set of hands is helpful for this part!
After the tallow cools, you can invert your bowl and inspect your rendered product. If you have impurities on the bottom of your tallow cake, you might want to repeat the rendering process.
Before rendering again, scrape the cake with a knife to remove visible impurities. Each time the tallow is rendered it becomes more pure, white, and odorless.
You can store tallow in an airtight container in the refrigerator and it will keep for about a year. If you leave it at room temperature, it keeps for 4-6 months. If at any point the tallow smells like rotten meat, it has gone rancid and should be thrown out.
Directions for Dry Rendering Tallow in a Slow Cooker
- Plan for spending 1-2 hours per rendering on this activity
- Run your suet through a grinder or cut it into small pieces with a kitchen knife (the smaller the better) and place into your slow cooker
- Put the slow cooker on low
- Every 30 minutes, stir the fat with a rubber spatula. Scrape the sides of the pot to loosen anything that sticks
- Continue cooking until all fat has melted down. It is normal to have some pieces of meat, skin, and unrendered fat floating on top
- Line a mesh strainer with cheese cloth and set it on top of a large bowl
- Carefully, pour the hot fat through the lined strainer into the large bowl
- Discard the cheese cloth and the bits that collected on top of it
- Allow the tallow time to cool and harden in the bowl
- Invert the bowl and remove the tallow cake
- Examine the bottom of the tallow cake, if there are brown spots those can be scraped off with a knife
- Decide if you want to render the tallow again
- If so, chop up the tallow and repeat steps 3-12 until you are happy with the results
- Store your tallow in an airtight container and use it for something special!
Mother, farmer, author, and teacher by trade… She loves tending to things and watching them grow!