Different fats have different uses in cooking. Extra virgin olive oil? Great for salad dressings and sautéeing, not so much for frying or high-temperature roasting. Sunflower oil? Great for high heat, but utterly flavorless. And then there’s beef tallow, which has both a high heat tolerance and adds flavor to your cooking; in this case a distinct umami.
In recent months, tallow has gotten a moment in the spotlight. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began pushing it as a healthier alternative to commonly used seed oils like canola or safflower. It’s not, and certainly not at the scale Kennedy has advocated (saturated fats like tallow can increase cholesterol). But like so many delicious things we write about at Bon Appétit, tallow can be enjoyed in moderation, adding meaty depth to a range of recipes.
Here’s the thing, though: Tallow can be messy. Typically you have to scoop it, measure it, melt it, and clean up whatever instruments you used for those steps. South Chicago Packing, an Illinois company that specializes in producing different fats has a novel solution to all that: Wagyu Beef Tallow Spray.
This pressurized canister full of liquid beef tallow works just like any canned cooking spray. SCP’s wagyu tallow is made through a process called fractionating (stay with me here), which separates tallow that liquifies at room temperature from tallow that solidifies. There is nothing added to the tallow at any point during the process and the canister is pressurized simply with air. Because the liquid tallow will solidify when chilled—thereby becoming impossible to spray—the canister shouldn’t be refrigerated.
I’ve been coating potatoes and root vegetables with tallow spray before roasting them in the oven. I’ve also been using the spray to grease a cast-iron pan before frying eggs. It makes my savory cooking even more, well, savory. The flavor is subtle—just enough to kickstart your taste buds and make you reach for another bite. The makers of the tallow at South Chicago Packing tell me they spray it on steaks before searing for some beef-on-beef action.
Shelf-stable and good for up to 18 months, my tallow spray can now sits on the counter next to my olive and sunflower oils, ready to hit whatever I’m cooking with a little something extra.
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