Rendering Clean Animal Fats Guide
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farmerinthewoodzRendering Clean Animal Fats Guide
Uploaded by
farmerinthewoodzRendering Animal Fats
Ruminants/herbivores, such as but not limited to cow, deer, elk sheep, goats etc. produce fat. There
Are 2 categories of fat in general: Trim fat, trimmed from the carcass’s muscles and suet fat, the fat
in the abdominal cavity, most of it around the kidneys. In the US once any rendered fat from these
animals is referred to as “tallow”. In the Old Country, this would be neigh sacrilegious, as only the
rendered suet fat is considered tallow (Talg), all other rendered fat is just that, rendered fat.
Trim fat such as for example what is pictured below, I would never render for skin care products
without first trimming all of the meat bits and anything that is not fat off. Then I would smell it and
also discard any fat that smells like meat locker. Fat has a tendency to absorb surrounding scents,
so trimming off and discarding anything that smells or will create an unwanted smell during
rendering must be removed prior to rendering to get a clean product that does not required wet
renderings to make it smell good.
Omnivores, such as but not limited to pigs and bears also produce fat but it is referred to as lard. In
pigs, we differentiate lard from leaf fat and lard from back fat. (Visual of leaf lard in a pig
[Link]
Would never consider wet rendering for leave on skin care products. My reasons: I only use suet fat
and leaf lard for salves, balms and whipped products. Even with suet tallow and leaf lard, I freeze
the fat first so that I can peel all of the fat globs out of the membrane they are encased in. These
membranes are super thin. I hand chop my suet fat and leaf fat so I can pull anything that may smell
off or not look right or is covered in dried blood. I used to run it through a grinder, but I don’t like
cleaning the grinder…
I dry render at 225f in the oven and ladle off liquid fat as soon and as often as possible. I stir the fat
pieces every ~30 min so all pieces are exposed to heat evenly and render evenly. I ladle the liquid fat
into a stock pot and keep it warm. When the cracklings turn to a light golden color, I stop ladling off
for leave on skin care products but continue to render the cracklings a little longer, but never to the
point of roasted brown cracklings. With trim fat, I trim off anything that is not pure fat, and all outer
parts of the fat that was exposed to the meat locker air while the animal was hanging for a week or
more to age the meat. Even with that fat, I process the same way as suet and leaf fat. I use rendered
trim fats and the rendered suet and leaf fat from the darker cracklings primarily for soap making.
When I have ladled off the fat, I reheat it and filter it through a coffee filter into hot jars or into the
disposable aluminum bread / brownie / pie pans.
Each batch I render, not sure how many pounds of fat, takes me about 12hrs, start to finished
sealed jars.
Why do I not wet render? I do not want to change the fatty acids profiles or wash out more nutrients
than absolutely necessary. I start with clean fat, nothing that is not fat will end up in my rendering
vessel, I stop rendering before my tallow or lard have a chance to take on that cooked meat or fried
fat smell. I have never had beefy or meaty smelling tallow or lard. At best, my rendered fats have a
mild, complimentary nutty scent.
Hope this helps. It’s my process and I am very happy with the clean, rendered once and filtered
suet tallow and leaf lard it makes for me.