A couple of days ago I
drove through our snowy landscape...
to visit Homespun Hill
Farm, where Debbie raises grass-fed beef and lambs.
I wasn’t there to buy meat,
but rather to buy beef suet. Rendering lard and getting lard on my hands had
convinced me that animal fat makes an excellent emollient for chapped hands. I
even put some lard on my face, with equally good results. Was I nuts to be
doing this? On the internet I found that many others were doing the same thing,
but one source claimed that tallow rendered from grass-fed beef was an even
better skin softener. Curious, I sought out a source for grass-fed beef and
that led me to Homespun Hill Farm.
Back home I immediately
started rendering some of the suet in a big pot in the oven set at 250ยบ F.
Within two hours the fat was rendered and ready to strain through a cloth-lined
sieve.
This resulted in almost one
and a half quarts of tallow, enough to last a lifetime as skin softener.
The next morning I massaged
a dab of tallow into my hands, cuticles, and face. Umm, very soft, indeed.
Unfortunately I smelled like a French fried potato.
That’s all right. I’ll go
back to lard for my emollient and use the tallow to make saddle soap.
Copyright
2014 by Shirley Domer
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