I Never Cook Beef (or Chicken!) in Olive Oil Anymore — For the “Best Flavor Ever,” I Always Swap in This Instead

I cook pretty much all of my meals at home. This means that in addition to experimenting with different spices, produce, and proteins, I also like to play around with cooking oils. Yes, they all have their time and place in the kitchen (for frying, baking, drizzling, or searing). Beyond function, I like to see which ones can impart the most flavor to my ingredients. 

I’ve got all sorts of oils in my cupboard: algae oil, olive oil, coconut oil, and sesame oil. But recently beef tallow has re-entered the chat, and there’s a new cooking fat on the market: Kettle & Fire’s Beef Tallow. It’s my latest go-to for both achieving a great sear and extracting big flavor. Here’s what you should know, and why I’m loving it. 

Kettle & Fire is widely known for its selection of broths (including bone broth!). Earlier this month the brand launched its first-ever cooking fat: beef tallow. Beef tallow is rendered beef fat that has been cooked down. The process involves simmering beef fat to separate it from other tissues, then filtering it. Once cooled, the remaining solids form a rich, golden fat that’s excellent for cooking. This particular jar is made with one ingredient: grass-fed and grass-finished beef tallow. 

Beef tallow is shelf-stable and has a relatively high smoke point of 400°F — lower than ghee’s 485°F, but significantly higher than butter’s 350°F). It’s closer to extra-virgin olive oil’s 410°F, but has a more beefy flavor (as you might expect it to). 

Historically if you’ve wanted to cook with beef tallow, you’ve had to make it on your own — until now, with Kettle & Fire’s readily available one (without the hours of work). Fresh off the launch, you can buy it at Kettle & Fire’s website as well as in a two-pack at select Costco locations across the Midwest and Southeast. 

Unlike a neutral oil, Kettle & Fire Beef Tallow is full of savory, beefy flavor. My dad taught me from a young age (he’s a chef), that the most flavorful cuts of steak are the ones with great marbling of fat, because that’s really where all the flavor comes from. I’ve had food cooked with beef tallow before (shoutout to Jesse and Ben’s Beef Tallow Fries!), but I hadn’t yet cooked with it — and boy, did it deliver. 

There’s a slight chill in the air, which means I immediately started craving a good beef stew. I usually sear my beef with a neutral oil or olive oil, but this time I used a tablespoon of beef tallow. I’ve made this recipe dozens of times before, but this time it had such a dreamy, savory flavor that I could only credit to the beef tallow. 

To double check, I fried an egg in a teaspoon of tallow for breakfast the next morning. (The things I do for research!). It gave my egg a boost of umami that other oils just don’t have. I will definitely keep front and center in my cabinet — at least until the jar runs out. 

Have you cooked with beef tallow before? Tell us about it in the comments below!