Eating more meat is of course more expensive but using the leftovers can make this way of living more economical and less wasteful. The animal fat is a often discarded as unhealthy and high in saturated fat but as it turns out, saturated fat isn't what clogs up our arteries. So in my quest to produce less waste, I saved up around 500g of hard, waxy white beef fat from the fore rib. Here's how I rendered it down into beef tallow:
The fat itself had been in the freezer so I left it to defrost. Here it is before any prep:
Once fully defrosted, I painstakingly removed all the visible meat and chopped the fat into 1cm cubes then popped into a small stainless steel pan over a low heat:
Here is a picture of the gas underneath just to show how low it really was:
I kept the lid on to avoid the fat spitting and after half an hour, stirring occasionally, fat started to collect in the bottom of the pan:
Once there was enough to drain a little, I drained through kitchen cloth over a metal sieve and strained out all those little beefy crumbs:
After cooking for another half a hour, most of the fat had turned brown and crispy:
So I gave it one final strain and ended up with this much tallow:
Once cooled it turns opaque, white and hard like lard. It can be scooped out and used for frying or even whipped up with essential oils to make a body butter. Apparently it's the best fat for cooking the perfect crispy fries. And no food waste!
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