I love to give a purpose to every usable piece of an animal when we harvest it.
I often think about how good the Native American people were at this. They would eat all the organ meats, use the intestines, use the blood, use the hide, the hooves, the head and lastly use the meat.
As the human race has evolved we have become selective- we make the kill just for the prime cuts of meat because we no longer make our own clothes, shoes, candles or sometimes even bone broth.
But to me, and to you, raising animals in small batches, getting back to our roots, returning to slow food is where we are headed.
Honoring the whole animal’s life, it’s sacrifice, and believing it’s such a gift to us…is where we are headed.
So little by little I am trying to find many uses for every part of the animal.
Today I’m sharing with you how to make beef tallow candles.
Tallow is the excess fat from around the kidneys or under the skin that is not attached to any cut of meat and isn’t needed in the ground beef.
health benefits
Most of the benefits you associate with grass-fed and finished beef like:
Conjugated Linoleic Acid
Omega 3’s
and Vitamin E
are ONLY found in the fat! Isn’t that amazing!
other uses
Beef tallow is a great cooking fat. You can use it for deep frying, seasoning cast iron skillets and making body butter.
Seasoning a skillet and making body butter also get into your body, even though you may think you’re not eating it.
The skin is your largest organ, so you will be absorbing the tallow into your body when you lotion up your hands.
And as you cook in your cast iron pan, seasoned with tallow, it will mix with your food and you’ll eat it that way.
WHY TALLOW CANDLES
Back to candles…
I gave up scented candles many years ago when I completely revamped my home into a toxin free environment. Traditional candles are made from either paraffin wax or the more recently popular option - soy.
Both are really bad for you.
“Most candles today are made of paraffin wax which creates highly toxic benzene and toluene when burned (both are known carcinogens). In fact, the toxins released from paraffin candles are the same as those found in diesel fuel fumes and are linked to asthma and lung cancer.” - Melanie Rousselet of ARTISANE-NYC blog
Soy candles are usually not 100% soy, but have some paraffin in them too. We keep soy out of our animal feeds and I keep it out of my home pantry because of its estrogenic similarities. I don’t need any help raising my estrogen levels, most women are estrogen dominant as it is. It’s usually chemically extruded and grown with a lot of pesticides as well.
One last benefit to this DIY candle is that you can control the fragrance. Most synthetic fragrances used in any store bought candle are so bad for you. I once read that burning a traditional candle and breathing in it’s fake fragrances is equal to smoking a pack of cigarettes.
I used Young Living Essential Oils in my tallow candles, and I completely trust their purity. Let me know if you want help getting some too.
local & sustainable
Making beef tallow candles means you can keep it local
Grab the tallow from us and do it yourself at home.
Having a few candles on hand is important for emergency preparedness. If the power goes out for a long period of time candle light can be great.
I also love to burn these candles in the bath when I want to relax and unwind.
We have a candle-lit dinner every year on the winter solstice as we celebrate the returning of the light.
They make great gifts too!
I learned how to make these candles for our school group this year.
Here’s the recipe so you can do it too!
We have tallow in the farm store.
You can choose unrendered chunks if you want the whole experience or some that I have already rendered for you if you want to skip a step.
INSTRUCTIONS
STEP 1:
Come by our farm store and get some beef tallow. Partially thaw it then chop finely or use a meat grinder. The smaller the pieces the better it will melt. Add it to a slow cooker on low and watch it closely. You want it to just melt, not boil.
STEP 2:
Strain the liquid from the bits of meat into a glass jar. I have a glass pyrex measuring cup with a pour spout that worked great. You can eat the bits of meat. Try adding them to spaghetti or meatloaf. You can also feed them to chickens or dogs in small batches as a nice treat.
STEP 3:
Prepare your jars. I used a few jars from the recycling and removed the label. This was a mustard jar, but any glass condiment, pickle, olive or honey jar would work great. If you have extra sticky stubborn glue on the jar try using lemon oil! Works great, just rub a drop on the glue and wipe it off with a paper towel. I used cotton, lead-free wicks that I found on Amazon, but you can also try just cotton twine. Find a way to tape the wick to the bottom of the jar. Then using a popsicle stick with a hole drilled in it, feed the wick up through. This will hold it in place while the tallow cools and hardens.
STEP 4:
Carefully pour in your hot liquid tallow. Pour around the popsicle stick to avoid spills.
STEP 5:
You can add in essential oils for the smell, but it’s optional.
I made these for the holidays in the month of December. I used Young Livings Christmas Spirit in one and Vanilla Pine in the other. Please don’t use grocery store oils, reach out to me if you want help ordering some high quality health giving oils.
I used about 15 drops of oils total. The smell was very subtle. I was pleasantly surprised at how neutral the tallow smelled, not beefy at all. When burning the candle there was no smell of tallow either.
STEP 6:
Once the tallow cools it changes color to a creamy white and gets very hard. Remove the popsicle stick, trim the wick and you can decorate the candle jars if you like. Add a twine, some greenery or dried flowers as embellishments. You can tip the candle completely upside down and it won’t move.
Enjoy a relaxing candle-lit bath, tuck them away for emergencies or gift them to friends.
Enjoy being crafty!
I can’t wait to see your creations!