Suet is fat taken directly off an animal, and usually refers to the type of fat that is solid at room temperature. Tallow is what you get when you render suet, and also is solid at room temperature.

This is snow, but it reminds me of suet…without the blood. You are welcome, all my friends who really don’t care to see dead animal parts.

Once I have a batch of suet, I put it into one of my big pots and add water until I can see water start to float the fat. I cover the pot and bring it to a simmer. I simmer the fat for a couple of hours, until all that hard suet becomes soft. I then uncover the pot and mash the fat into small pieces with a potato masher.

I boil that fat on a low fire until all the water has boiled away, stirring occasionally so the fat solids don’t stick to the bottom of my pot. This can take a couple of days, if only because I turn off the fire when I’m not around to supervise. A grease fire would be bad. Eventually, the fat gets to be this clear golden color and the solids begin to brown and crisp.

I separate the tallow from the solids by ladling the whole thing into a wire sieve over that big glass mixing bowl. I’ve tried pouring it from the pot into the sieve, but it tends to splash all over. Tallow is like paraffin or wax and sticks to the table and everything else. Before the tallow hardens on my sieve, I sprinkle it with baking soda and then wash in hot sudsy water. The baking soda combines with the fat to release it from everything else.

Once cooled, I cover my bowl and put it into a cold place. I let it cool uncovered to keep water from condensing on the tallow. The picnic table qualifies as a cold place this time of year. Because the fat shrinks at a different rate than the glass, it pulls away from the bowl and slides right out.

Small bits of fat solids sink to the bottom and need to be removed before using the tallow to make soap.

Michael was a potter in a prior life, and would like to be again. This means we still have clay trimming tools, which work perfectly for trimming the solids off the tallow. This process need to be done quickly because those trimmings become sticky as the tallow warms.

The scrapings and fat solids go to the birds. Less fat than in suet blocks sold for winter bird feeders, but the chickens still love it. The ducks, not so much.

So far we have about 8 pounds of tallow, and will probably end up with a total of about 10 pounds.

Michael will turn the tallow into soap. I LOVE deer tallow soap. Michael is not concerned with making uniform bars that are pretty, but the soap treats my delicate skin well. Thank you to these lovely animals that provide us with so much!