What is Suet? “Render therefore unto suet the thing that was beef fat”, goes an old adage. Suet is raw beef fat present around the kidney and loin region of cows, that is, around a beef’s hindquarter. Suet is available in packaged forms in stores. Sometimes packaged suet is dehydrated and can be mixed with flour, which can go rancid or can be unsuitable for preparation of tallow or bird feed. This is why it is better to get raw suet from your butcher. However, when you buy from suet, ensure that you get only the fat around kidneys and loin area. All other fat is not suet and should not be used in suet recipes or suet uses.

Popular uses of Suet: Suet, as such, has a lot of traditional uses. It is used in puddings, in the making of mincemeat, in making of cakes, bird feed and a lot more. But, the most common and primary use of suet is to make tallow.

1. From suet to tallow: Beef tallow is made using fresh suet. Suet is traditionally rendered into tallow for use in soaps, candles and cooking. Raw beef fat is solid at room temperature and has a high smoking point of 40 degree Celsius. To be rendered into tallow, suet is heated on a pot, until it is cleansed of its impurities. When the fat melts and the red skin turns into brown, you can sieve the crackled pieces of fat from the liquid using a cheese cloth. The liquid fat, when cooled or refrigerated, becomes tallow. Tallow is pure white or yellowish in color depending of freshness or quality of suet.

2. Suet as bird feed: Suet is traditional bird food. It is used to attract many kinds of birds – woodpeckers, wrens, chickadees, nuthatches, kinglets, thrashers, creepers, cardinals, and starlings. Suet, when mixed with peanut butter, is good food for juncos, jays, bluebirds and goldfinches.

3. Suet and cooking: Suet is an important ingredient in the traditional English Christmas pudding. Since it has only a mild beefy smell, it imparts a rich and tasty flavor to any kind of dish. Suet is used in many recipes including the preparation of Haggis, steak and kidney pudding, Christmas pudding, mincemeat, spotted dick,  rag pudding, dumplings, Jamaican patty, Windsor pudding etc. Suet can be made into suet cakes for other uses.

It should be remembered that grass fed suet tastes better and is healthier compared to suet from grain fed industrially-raised cows.

Nourishing Traditions: In her book Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon talks in detail about the full spectrum of healthy foods and not-so-healthy foods. Based on the research done by Weston A. Price, she gives healthy fat recipes, explaining why animal fats and harder oils like butter, lard, beef tallow, coconut oil and olive oil are not heart-killers as we think. Price, a dentist and nutritionist, investigated several groups to find out which is evil – taking traditional diets or civilized/processed foods. His findings revealed that people who resorted to the traditional way of cooking and consumption of animal fats and oils lived hale and healthy while those who took refined food succumbed to a lot of diseases, especially cholesterol-related, heart ailments (inspite of it).

Based on Price’s findings, Sally Fallon detailed the nourishing traditional foods of America and the good they bring to the Americans in the book. The book also illustrates with real life studies and instances, how the projected conditions of hyper-cholesterol and arteriosclerosis do not stem from intake of saturated fats, but from processed, unsaturated fats.

Why beef tallow is not evil: Tallow is rendered beef fat. This fat, called Suet, is taken from the kidney and loin area of the cows. Kidney fat of grass-fed cows make good tallow, compared to the industrial, grain-fed ones. Tallow, when rendered, is stable at room temperature and has a high degree of saturation (56%). Unlike hydrogenated vegetable oils, it has a high smoke point (40 to 45 degree Celsius) which makes it ideal for any kind of deep frying.

Tallow  is an excellent source of niacin, vitamins B6, B12, K2, selenium, iron, phosphorus, potassium and riboflavin. Grassfed beef tallow contains high ratio of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) which is a cancer-resistant agent. Contrary to the popular conception, tallow is good for health as tallow fat is similar to the fat/muscles in the heart. Recent studies have shown that human beings need at least 50% of saturated fats like tallow and lard to keep the heart pumping hale and healthy. Tallow from pasture-raised cows also contains a small amount of Vitamin D, similar to lard. It is also a good source of K2 in its suet form.

Tallow nutritional facts: According to the findings of USDA, beef tallow consists the following amounts of  fats, proteins and carbohydrates:

Beef Tallow (USDA #04001) – per 1 serving cup:

• Calories – 902
• Total Fat – 100g
• Total Carbohydrates – 0g
• Dietary Fiber – 0g
• Sugars – 0g
• Cholesterol – 109mg

All giant food chains or companies have their secretive “flavor company” which adds “natural or artificial” flavor to their food stuffs. It is originally these flavor companies that manufacture the real taste of fast food in the United States. With man-made additives occupying the food space, people want to go in for a shift and try natural food flavors. Cooking French fries with beef tallow is an attempt at getting the original, real-crispy taste of French fries.

How to cook French fries with beef tallow? Before we go into the details of cooking, it is important to understand how harmful or harmless cooking with beef tallow is. There is rampant talk about the evils of saturated fats and the question of the digestibility of animal fat in cooking. It has been found out that 97% of animal fat is digestible and that low polyunsaturated fats present in beef tallow is good for health. As for the condition of atherosclerosis, it has been proved that coronary heart disease due to atherosclerosis is common with people in every other country and consumption of high fat has little do with it.

French Fries recipe: To cook French fries with tallow, you would need the common ingredients like russet potatoes, filtered water, 6 to 8 cups of beef tallow (better if it is grass fed), sea salt and equipments like deep fat fryer, tongs, cookie sheet, parchment paper, paper towels and French fry cutter.

1. Peel and cut the potatoes using the French fry cutter to the desired size. Then, soak them in filtered water for 30 minutes or even overnight (depends on your time availability).

2. Add beef tallow in the deep fat fryer and start heating. The smoke point of beef tallow higher than most harder oils and hence you can heat it up to 370 degrees. Once you have checked with a thermometer on the temperature of the fryer, slowly add potatoes to it.

3. As you add potatoes, the oil will start splitting, so stay a little away from the fryer. Fry for say 3 minutes or till you get the desired color. Then take the fries one by one using tongs and transfer them to the cookie sheet.

4. French fries should go for a second fry in order to get the real taste. Bring the tallow to 380 degrees and then deep fry the fries again. Now, transfer them to the Silpat-lined cookie paper.

5. Now, sprinkle salt and serve the fries after you have mixed adequate salt all over. Your fries will for sure taste like the original pre-1990 McDonald’s fries.

Why tallow for cooking? Tallow is an extremely stable fat and has a high smoke point. Due to its high degree of saturation (56%) and low level of polyunsaturated fatty acids (3%) it is ideal for deep frying and cooking. But with the invasion of hydrogenated vegetable cooking oils, tallow cooking has been pushed to the back burner. Several studies that analyzed heart disease in the early 20th century claimed that saturated fats were responsible for high rate of heart diseases. Immediately, there was a wave of change in American cooking habits and people shifted to vegetable, unsaturated fatty oils. The fast food industry aggravated the change with production of a series of popular, vegetable oil food items. However, recent discoveries reveal that saturated fats have little role to play in causing Coronary Heart Diseases (CHDs). It has been proved by few that the fat surrounding the human heart is similar to that of beef fat and that the heart needs at least 50% of saturated fats to sustain itself in a hale and healthy manner.

With so much confusion about whether or not saturated fats should be avoided, you might wonder why one should risk one’s life taking tallow. The reason is simple – tallow has its own set of benefits which cannot be offered by items cooked in hydrogenated or processed vegetable oils. Here are a few health benefits of using beef tallow in cooking:

1. Stable, not easily rancid: Tallow is stable at room temperature and does not generally go rancid quickly. It has a high shelf life if rendered free of impurities. Added to that, it can be used for any sort of deep frying (like pure olive oil) as it has a high smoke point compared to other oils or fats.

2. Bone health: Framingham study mentioned in the ‘Nourishing Traditions’ (a book) points out that at least 50% of the dietary fats should be saturated. This is because calcium can be be effectively incorporated into the skeletal structure only in the presence of saturated fats.

3. Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA): Recent research points out that conjugated linoleic acid or CLA is a potent cancer fighter and fights all three stages of cancer – initiation, promotion and metastasis. Since most anti-cancer agents block only one of these stages, the high concentration levels of CLA present in grass-fed beef tallow can help in preventing and fighting cancer in humans.

4. Immunity builder: Tallow is a great immunity builder owing to its antimicrobial properties. When used in cooking, it can give instant energy to the body as a saturated fat.

5. Omega-3 retainer: Beef tallow retains Omega-3s in tissues than many other hydrogenated oils or animal fats. This is another plus to tallow as it accomplishes this only on account of its composition as a saturated fat.

The article briefs on how, with the dawn of the 20th century, the United States had to grapple with the sad truth of the growing number of coronary heart disease or CHD which caused more than 30% of deaths at that time. Similarly, Myocardial Infarction (MI) or a massive blood clot in the coronary artery leading to death, claimed more than 3000 deaths in 1930 and about 500,000 deaths in 1960. Scientists at that time were gripped by the devastating statistics of deaths, and wondered what caused such sudden changes in American lifestyles? They found out the truth to hidden in processed vegetable oils. Statistics pointed out that Americans were taking too much of items cooked in vegetable oils instead of the ones cooked with traditional butter, cheese, tallow or lard.

Truth about lipid hypothesis: A theory of lipid hypothesis said that saturated fat and cholesterol from animal fat raise cholesterol levels in the blood, leading to fatty deposits in the arteries and thereby, resulting in fatal conditions like atherosclerosis. This theory was popularized by Kritchevsky, a Russian who conducted cholesterol experiments with rabbits.

Though Kritchevsky’s theory was much publicized, there were several other theories which were less known: A 1955 report revealed that soldiers killed in Korean war showed high levels of atherosclerosis; a 1957 study proved that vegetarians in Bantu had atheroma in arteries just as their meat-eating, fellow people  in South Africa; a 1960 study pointed that even the Japanese who take less animal fat were victims to atherosclerosis; in 1968, an International Atherosclerosis Project involving 22,000 corpses from 14 nations revealed varying degrees of atheroma in all parts of the world. The study revealed and concluded that animal fat had little role to play in atherosclerosis and lipid hypothesis was far from truth.

What’s wrong with vegetable oils? With established proof that atherosclerosis is not a condition associated with animal fat, let’s look into why vegetable oil is not so good for health. Vegetable oils are highly refined, processed, bleached and hydrogenated modern oils with little nutrients. One can spot this difference between processed and natural food by just analyzing between industry butter and grass-fed cow’s butter. The former looks pristine and lily-white but lacks in nutrients, the latter is yellowish and country-like but full of rich vitamins. Since tallow is made from grass-fed cows, it is rich in fat soluble vitamins like vitamin K2. Similarly, the carotene levels of tallow are higher compared to vegetable oils.

Why beef tallow for cooking? Apart from the above reasons, beef tallow has been in use from time immemorial. The traditional French fies made in tallow oil could prevent cavities and osteoporosis (since Vitamin K2 is great for bones and teeth). When people cooked with lard or tallow, cancer and heart attacks were unknown. The recent studies too prove that even the so-called fatty foods can be nourishing and healthy if cooked with the right kind of fat. This is why beef tallow is always much better for cooking than the highly-processed, nutrient-less empty vegetable oil.