So My sister dropped off a massive bag of beef fat at my house on Monday. I already had some at home, so In total, I probably had 15+ kgs (30+lbs) of fat in my fridge.
I've been rendering fat for the last 3 days. Today will be day 4. (The last day of rendering process)
I first started off by chopping up the beef fat into smaller chunks (it is better if you can mince it) and then I tossed it in a pot with about 1-1.5 litres of water and a generous handful of salt. and let it boil down for 4-6 hours.
To speed up the process I thought I would try my pressure cooker, and see if cooking fat under pressure would be faster. but I read that it could block the valves and cause the pot to explode. so I abandoned that idea. Then I tried to cook the fat in the pressure cooker. Open with no lid, at its lowest temp. But apparently my digital pressure cookers lowest temp is still too hot and it was boiling to aggressively.
So I finally settled for borrowing an extra big enamel pot from my mother-in-law
By day 2 I'm really sick of chopping and cooking fat, and I was looking for ways to speed up the process.
So I read that you can add vinegar to the water and salt mixture and render it with vinegar.
Great! So I added vinegar to 2 of my batches on the stove. half a cup to the 5-litre pot and a full cup to the bigger pot.
Blaaghh! The smell of boiling vinegar is not fantastic. But I must say it did breakdown the fat faster. The grisly bits turn to jelly though. So at the end, I smooshed the leftover bits with a potato masher and strained it through a sieve with a cloth. and then poured it in empty tubs and put it in the fridge to harden overnight.
I still wasn't thrilled with the vinegar smell but I spent all of day 3 doing the 2nd meltdown of all the oils and the smell was a lot better.
I would take out the tubs, remove the solid fat, and then scrape off the brown icky layer off the bottom of the solid fat. (The gross water and icky bits get thrown out.)
I then put the fat in a pot with just plain salted water. A generous handful of salt dissolved in water. and let it simmer for about an hour.
Then sieve and strain through a cloth and refrigerate again.
I must say there was Very Little beef or vinegar smell left after the second melt and boil. The colour has also lighted to a golden yellow in liquid form.
Today I will be taking the solid fat out again and I will see what colour the water at the bottom of the tubs are and if there is any icky layer at the bottom of the fat. If there is, I will do one last melt and boil with saltwater.
But If it is clean, I will just melt it down with no water, and slowly simmer till any remnants of water moisture is gone, and then pour the clarified tallow into tubs for final storage.
I'd probably say I have about 12 -15 Liters of tallow out of this whole session.
To be honest, there were a few moments this week where I was seriously considering just making vegan soap.
But tallow really does make great soap.
I use about 50% tallow in my recipes, So in spite of me moaning about the last 4 days. Cutting my finger open and spending my birthday behind a stove cooking fat.
I now literally have enough beef tallow to make 300 bars of soap.
And my new scale arrived, so I can make a new soap batch this weekend
