The Ultimate Beef Tallow Cooking Guide: How to Fry, Roast, Season Your Blackstone, and Cook Better Every Day

If you are new to cooking with tallow the first thing you need to know is this: you do not need much.

About a teaspoon covers a whole medium sized pan. That is it. Tallow is rich and dense and a little goes a long way. Once you know that 1 thing you are already ahead of most people who try it for the first time and use way too much.

Here is everything you need to know to cook with beef tallow every single day.

Why Tallow Performs Better Than What You Are Currently Using

Grass-fed and grass-finished beef tallow has a smoke point of around 400 degrees Fahrenheit. That means it stays chemically stable at the high temperatures needed for searing, frying, and roasting without breaking down the way seed oils do.

Seed oils are high in polyunsaturated fats that oxidize under heat. When they break down at high temperatures they release compounds you do not want in your food. Tallow is high in saturated and monounsaturated fats that hold up under heat without oxidizing. You get clean, stable cooking fat every single time.

It also has a mild, neutral flavor that enhances your food instead of overpowering it. No chemical aftertaste. No processed smell. Just clean fat that makes everything taste better.

How Much Tallow to Use

Less than you think.

For a medium sized pan, about 1 teaspoon is enough to coat the surface and cook with. Scoop it out, drop it in the pan, and let it melt. It spreads easily and covers more surface area than you expect.

For deep frying you will obviously need more volume to submerge your food, but the principle stays the same. You do not need to fill the pot. Use enough to cover what you are frying and you are good.

Start with less and add more if you need it. Tallow is efficient.

Everyday Stovetop Cooking

For everyday cooking I just use tallow whenever. Scrambled eggs, sauteed vegetables, ground beef, chicken, anything that goes in a pan.

Scoop about a teaspoon into your pan over medium heat. Let it melt and coat the surface. Cook your food the same way you normally would. That is genuinely all there is to it.

Medium heat works for most everyday cooking. Tallow handles it without smoking or breaking down. For higher heat searing you can push the temperature higher knowing the fat can handle it.

Deep Frying With Tallow

Deep frying with tallow is a completely different experience than frying with vegetable oil.

The fat stays stable through the entire fry. Your food comes out crispier and cleaner tasting. McDonald's used to fry their french fries in beef tallow before switching to vegetable oil in the 1990s. Older customers come up to me at markets and tell me those fries were incredible. They were. Because tallow is what made them that way.

For deep frying heat your tallow to between 350 and 375 degrees Fahrenheit depending on what you are frying. French fries, chicken, fish, donuts, anything you would normally deep fry works beautifully in tallow. The high smoke point gives you a wide window to work in without worrying about the fat breaking down.

Let the tallow cool completely after frying before storing. You can strain it and reuse it a couple of times before replacing it. It holds up much better through multiple uses than seed oils do.

Roasting and Oven Cooking

Tallow is incredible for roasting. Toss your vegetables, potatoes, or meat in melted tallow before putting them in the oven. The high smoke point means it handles oven temperatures without burning and the fat helps create a crispy exterior that seed oils and olive oil just cannot match.

Potatoes roasted in tallow are genuinely in a different category from anything you have had before. Crispy outside, fluffy inside, and a flavor that comes from the fat itself.

For roasting, melt about 1 to 2 tablespoons of tallow and toss your vegetables or potatoes until well coated. Roast at 400 to 425 degrees Fahrenheit as you normally would.

Seasoning and Cooking on a Blackstone

My husband seasons his Blackstone with Raw Gold and cooks on it regularly. Tallow is 1 of the best fats for flat top griddles because it hydrates the surface, builds up the seasoning over time, and adds flavor to everything cooked on it.

For seasoning a Blackstone with tallow: heat the griddle to high, apply a thin layer of Raw Gold across the entire surface, let it smoke off and polymerize, then repeat 2 to 3 times. Each layer builds on the last and creates a durable non-stick surface that improves with every cook.

For everyday cooking on the Blackstone, add a small amount of Raw Gold to the surface before cooking. It melts fast, coats evenly, and brings a richness to smash burgers, steak, vegetables, and breakfast food that makes everything taste better.

Cast Iron Cooking

Tallow and cast iron have been paired together for longer than any other cooking combination. The fat bonds to the iron surface and builds a natural non-stick seasoning that gets better the more you use it.

For cast iron cooking, add about a teaspoon of Raw Gold to the pan over medium to medium high heat. Let it melt and coat the surface before adding your food. The fat will continue to season the pan with every use.

For seasoning cast iron from scratch or stripping and re-seasoning, apply a very thin layer of Raw Gold to the entire surface including the sides and bottom, then bake upside down in the oven at 450 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour. Let it cool in the oven. Repeat 2 to 3 times for a strong base seasoning.

Slow Cooker Cooking

Yes, you can use tallow in a slow cooker. Add a tablespoon or 2 to your slow cooker when browning meat or cooking a dish that benefits from added fat. Tallow works especially well in slow cooked beef dishes, stews, and braises where the fat has time to infuse into the food and add richness.

Because tallow is shelf stable and has no water content it holds up through long slow cooker cooking times without breaking down or separating in a way that affects the dish.

Quick Reference: How Much Tallow to Use

• Stovetop medium pan: 1 teaspoon
• Searing steak or chicken: 1 to 2 teaspoons
• Roasting vegetables: 1 to 2 tablespoons melted
• Deep frying: enough to submerge your food, typically 2 to 4 cups depending on pot size
• Blackstone or flat top seasoning: thin layer across the entire surface
• Cast iron seasoning: paper thin layer buffed in until the pan looks almost dry
• Slow cooker: 1 to 2 tablespoons

The Bottom Line

Cooking with tallow is simple. You need less than you think, it works at medium heat for everyday cooking and high heat for frying and searing, and it makes everything from scrambled eggs to french fries to Blackstone smash burgers taste better.

God designed this fat. People cooked with it for thousands of years. Once you try it you will understand immediately why they did.

Shop Raw Gold Cooking Tallow at texasgoldtallow.com