From Waste to Worth: Beef Tallow For a Sustainable Food Future

Beef tallow is a versatile, single-ingredient cooking fat. It can be used to sear or baste meat, sauté vegetables, and even make pie crusts flaky. Unlike many refined oils, beef tallow adds a depth to dishes that’s hard to replicate. 

My relationship with beef tallow started long before Forward Farms. My dad, an orthodontist and amateur chef, would always cook with either tallow or pork lard when making meals for my sisters and me. He’d often remind us how much flavor it adds. My favorite dish of his was beef & broccoli stir fry—I still ask him to make it when I visit home. With its high smoke point, tallow is perfect for stir-fries, especially when using high heat with a wok.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TALLOW

Humans have been rendering animal fats for thousands of years. Beef tallow is no exception. One notable example comes from Native American foodways, particularly in the making of pemmican–a preserved, high-energy food made from dried meat pounded to a powder, mixed with melted fat (often tallow), and sometimes combined with dried berries. Pemmican was an invaluable travelling provision for long journeys and harsh winters, providing essential nutrition when fresh food was scarce. 

Early settlers and pioneering farmers in the U.S. also relied on rendered animal fats like tallow for cooking: frying, roasting, baking, and preserving. Pie crusts, biscuits, and many baked goods were made with animal fats for their flavor and texture, as alternatives were limited or costly. Foods were often “potted” or submerged in fat—including beef tallow—to extend shelf life. This long tradition of using every part of the animal laid the groundwork for modern “nose-to-tail” cooking, a philosophy that Forward Farms continues to champion today.

FOOD WASTE IN THE BEEF INDUSTRY: HOW WE'RE FIGHTING BACK

When I first started learning about Forward Farms’ mission, Jeff Kampfe (Co-Owner and Sales Director) explained that we value “nose to hoof” sustainability. We believe in making use of every part of the animal – honoring the resources that go into raising it and reducing unnecessary waste. Every day, our team aims to promote a more circular food economy by finding new ways to make our beef production more sustainable. 

Tallow is one of the simplest ways we put this mission into action. Despite its rich history, it has long been an overlooked byproduct of the meat industry, especially after industrial seed oils became widespread. Recent cultural shifts are bringing tallow back into kitchens, which we think is a very good thing.

Food waste is one of the biggest global challenges we face today. Roughly one-third of all food produced worldwide ends up wasted—responsible for about 8% of global emissions and costing an estimated $2.6 trillion each year. When food is wasted, so is everything that went into making it: money, energy, natural resources, packaging, and transportation. That waste doesn’t just disappear—it breaks down in landfills to produce methane, drains valuable resources, and pushes our planet closer to crisis.

As noted in a 2021 article, “Reducing food losses and wastage is widely recognized as a way to meet the challenges of global food security, global warming, the protection of natural resources and ecosystems, and access to food for those in need.”¹ The meat sector, in particular, contributes disproportionately to emissions and resource use, making it essential that we find better ways to minimize waste and build a more sustainable food system.

This is why we’ve worked hard to produce and offer our grass-fed beef tallow to American kitchens. Once a staple in traditional cooking, tallow is now being rediscovered in both home and professional kitchens for its role as a healthier alternative to seed oils and a key component of “nose-to-tail” cooking. By putting what might otherwise be discarded to good use, our beef tallow helps reduce food waste while giving consumers a versatile, sustainable cooking staple.

At Forward Farms, we believe in making the most of every resource. That’s why we’ve introduced our beef tallow—not just as a culinary staple, but as a way to fight food waste and promote sustainable living. Try it for yourself and join us in supporting a more responsible, circular food system.

REFERENCES

Karwowska, M. & Łaba, Sylwia & Szczepański, Krystian. (2021). Food Loss and Waste in the Meat Sector—Why the Consumption Stage Generates the Most Losses?. Sustainability. 13. 6227. 10.3390/su13116227. 

Notes from Project Drawdown | Reduced Food Waste 

Webster, K. (12/19/2023). A Show of Respect: Utilizing the Whole Animal. TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation. https://www.tomkatranch.org/2023/12/19/a-show-of-respect-utilizing-the-whole-animal/