This is an odd name for a post I know. One challenge I have is the oil & fat for our diet. Local butter is crazy expensive but still a mainstay in baked goods and because of the health benefits I choose to continue buying coconut oil. My other oil of choice is olive oil from California.
We don’t fry much or use much mayo (which I make using a combination of olive and coconut oil) so I typically purchase just a few bottles of olive oil a year, mostly in the summer months when we like to sautee oil-absorbing veggies like egplants and zucchini.
Last spring I had made beef broth from Thundering Hooves soup bones which tasted great but had an amazingly thick layer of beef fat on the surface. After letting the broth cool I scraped it off and stored it in the freezer, unsure what to do with it.
Last night I pulled it out, shaved off a chunk and heated it in the frying pan. Then I took about 4 of the potatoes from our tuber buy through Sustainable Greenlake and cut them with the mandolin. Thanks for growing them for us, Skeeter! I fried them gently in the tallow until golden brown and crunchy, then sprinkled on some kosher salt and gave them to the kids.
Even Mr. Pancake aka “I don’t like potatoes” was lured into trying one based on his brother’s ecstatic reaction. They scarfed them down faster then I could fry them. The potato chips were crunchy and salty with a hard to place beefiness, much like the McDonald’s french fries of my youth.
So when we pick up our cow from Cascade Range Beef complete with soup bones next week and I make bone broth for winter Pho I know just what to do with the tallow this time. Potato chip on! And now in search of a fry daddy…
7 responses so far ↓
1 kitsapFG // Nov 5, 2009 at 1:11 am
Excellent! The chips sound delicious.
2 Rebecca // Nov 5, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Hey, great idea. I think I’ll try freezing the tallow next time too!
3 admin // Nov 5, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Rebecca, you get so much of it when you make soup. A few weeks back I posted to several local groups that I had pork leaf lard and got an overwhelming response so I expect I’ll do the same with the tallow.
4 Beef Bone Broth // Nov 14, 2009 at 1:44 am
[...] overnight and in the morning remove the beef fat that has hardened and separated. Reserve the beef fat (tallow) and freeze for frying potato chips and other [...]
5 alison // Nov 23, 2009 at 2:05 am
My understanding is that the fries at McDonalds are fried in a frying compound that includes beef tallow, or at least they were in times past
6 admin // Nov 23, 2009 at 2:28 am
Hi Alison,
They were indeed until some time in the 1980’s and man were they good! We made french fries two days ago and gorged ourselves silly.
7 Pam // Jan 9, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Homemade tallow chips and fries are AWESOME! Try them with lard, too — you won’t be sorry.
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