If starting with unground beef fat, cut the fat into small chunks, removing any glands as you go (see video below). It is easier to cut beef fat when it is cold or even slightly frozen. It will also grind better when it's cold. Warm tallow will tend to plug up your grinder.

Grind the small chunks of fat using a course grinder. If you don't have a grinder, you can render down the small chunks you cut with a knife, it just might take a little longer.

If you don’t have time to process the tallow immediately, it can be frozen in bags until you have time to process it.

When ready to render the tallow, place thawed ground tallow into your slow cooker or roaster.  Use a liner if you wish, it will make the cleanup easier.

Add 3-4 cups of water and about a ¼ cup of salt to the roaster.  I can fit about 20 pounds of ground tallow in a roaster.  The proportions of water and salt don’t have to be exact, just add some and it’ll be fine.

Cook on low for several hours or overnight.  My roasters cook best between 200 and 250 degrees.

After several hours the fat will have melted and become liquid, and there will be little pieces of meat and grissle remaining.  These are the impurities we will discard.

Line a colander with the cheesecloth and place it over a bucket or large container.

Ladle and pour melted tallow and impurities into cheesecloth lined colander and strain.

Discard the meat and grissle.  I like to throw it out to the birds especially in the wintertime.

Pour the melted tallow into wide flat containers like roaster pans and chill in the refrigerator, or outside if it’s cold.  I like to do this project in the wintertime because then it’s cold enough to set the tallow outside.

Let it chill for a few hours.  As it chills any remaining impurities will collect at the bottom of the tallow in the water.  

Using a knife and metal spoon, cut the tallow into chunks, and carefully remove any impurities that have settled to the bottom (see video).

Place chunks of tallow into a large stockpot.  Add more water and salt and slowly melt on the stovetop.

Once tallow is melted, pour it into wide flat pans and allow it to chill.  (The wide flat pans are optional, but they do allow the impurities to settle out over a larger area.

You can repeat the melting and cooling 2-3 times until you are sure that all the impurities are out of the tallow.  For cooking, the impurities don’t matter as much, but if you’re planning to make skincare products like lotion, you’ll want it completely pure for the most perfect results.

Once all the impurities are removed, dry the tallow as much as possible and melt on the stove top in a clean, dry pot.  

Pour tallow into clean, dry jars.  Put on lid and ring and allow to slowly cool at room temperature.  Jars will self seal.

Pure tallow is shelf stable and safe to leave on the counter for extended periods of time.  The reason we seal it in jars is to prevent it from molding in case there is any moisture left in it from the rendering process.  We also want our tallow to store for more than a year on our pantry shelf, so we seal it to make sure it will last a long time.

Use melted tallow in place of any cooking oil.  It’s the best oil you can find for frying.  Make into candles, or skincare products and enjoy.