Why It's Essential To Cook With High-Quality Beef Tallow

Beef tallow is, put simply, the fat from cooked beef that has been rendered to use for cooking. After being rendered, the fat is stored and, after it's cooled, will turn solid and white, similar to the consistency of softened butter. The best use for beef tallow is using it in place of cooking oil to infuse extra flavor into your dishes. For example, you can fry eggs in beef tallow for a richer taste.

Before you get to using beef tallow in your cooking, it's important to keep in mind that quality makes a huge difference. To explain why, Tasting Table spoke with an expert, David Burke, one of the chefs at this year's U.S. Open, who was promoting his partnership with Flavors of the Open presented by DOBEL.

Burke explained, "Since fatty tissue can store things like pesticides and feed additives, it's important to cook with [high-quality] beef tallow which is generally defined as being sourced from grass-fed cattle or those raised on organic grains." With that in mind, when buying beef tallow, look out for a label that specifies the tallow was made from grass-fed cows. Or, if you go to a high-quality restaurant, you can turn steak scraps into easy beef tallow right at home.

When it comes to the quality of beef tallow, Burke had one other suggestion: Turn to wagyu beef. He said, "You could probably make that tallow from wagyu beef yielding the best flavor and is healthier than regular beef tallow, because wagyu beef is healthier in the first place."

As for what makes wagyu beef tallow different from regular beef tallow, wagyu beef tallow is also much richer. This is due to the fact that wagyu cattle, a Japanese breed, have more intramuscular fat cells, also known as "marbling."

The only downside is the high price of wagyu beef. The reasoning for this dates back to the late 1990s when Japan banned all exportation of wagyu cattle, leaving the U.S. with a short supply of wagyu cattle to work with and making wagyu beef rare and expensive. But if you're willing to splurge on wagyu, you'll surely appreciate the taste of the tallow that you make from it.