Whether you are searing a steak or baking a pie, fat is a crucial component of the preparation process. You need fat to help develop complex flavors, prevent food from sticking to cooking surfaces, and play a crucial role in achieving your desired texture. Everything from a perfectly crispy exterior on a pan-fried piece of meat to a delightfully flaky pastry crust depend on this versatile ingredient. While you’ve likely cooked with butter or vegetable oils, there’s a delicious fat you may not have considered: wagyu beef tallow. To learn more about how to cook with it, Food Republic spoke to Dennis Littley, chef and recipe expert at Ask Chef Dennis.
This high-quality tallow is made from the fat of wagyu beef, the Japanese breed of cattle known for its marbled texture and rich taste. While you can buy wagyu steak at retailers like Costco, many people are unfamiliar with its tallow, the rendered fat with a high smoke point that seriously level up your home cooking. “What makes it stand out is its rich, savory depth of flavor,” Littley explained. “[It’s] naturally more buttery and umami-forward than standard beef fat because Wagyu cattle have a higher concentration of intramuscular fat.” The expert also shared that the rich, marbled texture of the wagyu beef carries over into the tallow, “giving it a silky texture and a clean, almost nutty richness that can bring both savory and baked dishes to life.” In this way, wagyu beef tallow is very similar to butter, “with a bit more punch and a deeper finish,” according to Littley.
How to cook with wagyu beef tallow
In addition to adding a buttery, umami taste to anything you make, wagyu beef tallow works exceptionally well in cooking scenarios that require high heat, like frying, roasting, and searing. Whereas butter burns quickly, “[wagyu] tallow has a high smoke point (around 400°F), so it won’t break down quickly under heat,” Dennis Littley informed. According to the expert, this ingredient will also add more flavor to your dishes than the typical canola oil, which has a similar smoke point, but offers a comparatively bland taste.
So, how should you cook with wagyu beef tallow? “I use it instead of butter or oil when roasting vegetables, searing steaks, or making hash browns,” the expert shared. For example, adding some beef tallow to your frying pan is another unexpected way to upgrade fried eggs. According to users on Reddit, it also tastes terrific when used to make crispy, homemade French fries or incorporated into your favorite Yorkshire pudding recipe. Not to mention, wagyu beef tallow works wonders in baking. For developing layers of flavor in your baked goods, Littley suggested, “You can try swapping it in for shortening or part of the butter in a savory biscuit or crust; it brings a subtle richness that’s hard to beat.”
