Standard approach is to take the fat and run it through a sausage grinder (cold) and drop it in a stock pot with a little water in the bottom. Sausage grinder breaks it down into very small, meltable pieces and the water prevents scorching for the initial batch. Be judicious with the water, as you want it to burn off during the initial part of the cook.I take it a step further and carve out any red spots / pockets / ultra-thin meat layers, etc. that are in the fat and then chop finely, rather than use my gridner. I still end up with waste, but it’s not all that much and 5ish pounds of fat gives me 2L of tallow. Goes without saying that suet is much, much easier to process than back fat, etc., as it’s largely pure fat.
Are you somewhat comfortable that your method produces a shelf stable product?
Or do you use it so often you don’t really care?
100% comfortable with storing fat on the counter. Tallow is stable for 12-18 months at room temp.
I have nothing to add to the perfection of this method. We follow a similar approach for fat from all sorts of quadrupeds and fowl. While I do love having tallow available, it’s the leaf lard that really gets me excited.
Yeah, yeah. 
In all seriousness, I cannot see an argument for rendering fat sous vide. Though I don’t like the results personally, I see the reasons for preparing meat that way, preserving the moisture being one of the advantages. But when rendering fat, you WANT the moisture to go somewhere, to go away. If it’s all trapped in the bag, I think you’d end up with something rubbery and gelatinous.
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I did it as an experiment after seeing it discussed on some websites. The theory being that there is no way for any of the connective tissue to accidentally get too warm and brown and everything breaks down with a long run. I think I did somewhere around 185 for about 4 hours. I liked the final product quite a bit, but I only ended up with about a pint and a lot of globs of fat in the filter, which I’m sure had a lot more available fat and I had read some caution about smashing those up.
As for any water within the fat and subsequently the bag, it would have risen to the top when I poured it into a container to cool and evaporated off.
Would I do it again? Nope. The theoretical goal was to make it foolproof and simple. Yeah, it pretty much works, but the overall effort was probably about the same (or more) and I felt there was quite a bit of product I left behind. I was overthinking it.
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Nothing like a skirt steak to make me appreciate my butcher. Trimmed down an inside skirt and seared in my iron skillet. I remembered to take the proof of life shot at the last minute and figured my plating skills were so bad that I might as well just chop it and take the pic on the cutting board.
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Cooking through the less exciting pieces of top round. The leathery-looking meteor on the right was a thick-cut London broil, which I kept indirect as long as I could, then pulled off to crank up the coals a bit.
Seared off the London broil first, bringing the interior up to 130ish. Dropped some skewers over the coals and let them cook for 90 seconds on each side, then started flipping/coating with Bachan’s to build up some lacquer.
The meat was chewier than I was hoping for, but not over-the-top. I guess I’d get bored of cows were just walking rib-eyes
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Six and ten ounce domestic Wagyu filets from yesterday before salting and air drying in refer for 24 hours. Will crust with telicherry and do a reverse sear for steak au poivre tonight.
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Bavette has got to be one of my favorite cuts. Slagel Farms, beautiful marbling and a great value. The bread desperately needed an upgrade, oh well.
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Looking real nice, guys. Absolutely crushed both of those. Bavette is a cut I don’t see much at all in Texas. Will see if I can order some..
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HEB should have bavette if you ask
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