Rendering Beef Fat into Tallow

We purchased 10 pounds of beef fat from the butcher to render into tallow. I only used one bag of the beef fat and froze the other bag to render at a later date. The process is very simple. The oven does most of the work. 

Sharp knives are a must.

Cut the fat into small cubes.

I ended up with some nice stew meat that I cut from the fat. 

Add 1/2 cup of water to the beef fat. Cook in a preheated 230-degree oven
for 3-4 hours until the fat chunks are nice and brown. I would suggest doing
this on a cold day. The oven warms the house nicely. Unfortunately, we are
experiencing very warm weather for the beginning of February. It was almost
60 degrees today. I had to open the door several times to cool off. The house 
warmed up to a whopping 72 degrees. Way to warm for us. 

Strain the tallow into jars. Let cool completely before putting on the lids.
The tallow will turn white and solidify. 

We should end up with 3 quarts of tallow and 1 1/2 pounds of
stew meat for around $11 dollars. That's a bargain!

Number One Husband was on the opposite end of the table
making his famous baklava.

He usually makes it around Thanksgiving, but anytime of the year works for us.

I save and dry the sweet orange rinds that were strained
from the honey syrup used in the baklava. It makes a 
wonderful addition to tea. 

Breaking Down and Hand Trimming a Whole Chuck Roll - Rendering Beef Fat into Tallow

This was our first time cutting up a chuck roll. This blog post is not a how-to post, but I will link the video from YouTube that we followed. I would highly recommend learning from an expert.  

We purchased a whole chuck roll from Sam's Club on
our last grocery haul.

Sharp knives are a must. 

I drained all the liquid from the chuck roll.

We separated the actual chuck roll from the rest of the meat.

This is the end where the butcher cut off the ribeye steaks.

We cut off three chuck eye steaks and cut the rest into chuck roasts.

We cut the rest of the meat into Denver steaks, Sierra steaks,
stew meat and we reserved the beef fat to render into tallow.

I will use the fattier beef chunks for Guisada (Mexican stew) and
the leaner beef chunks for stew meat.

The cuts are now packaged and ready for the freezer.

Number One Husband started the process of rendering the tallow. I must say that
we prefer the oven method over the stove top method. 

The oven method requires nothing but the heat from the oven and about 3 to 4 hours. Whereas the stovetop method required someone to watch it closely and it needed to be stirred to prevent burning.

Number One Husband had great success rendering the fat. The only part that was discarded
from the whole chuck roll was the little rendered crunchy fat pieces. I fed them to the chickens.
We could have eaten them with a little Cajun seasoning, but it wasn't our thing.

Here is the link that we used to learn how to: Break down a whole chuck roll

Mrs. Smith