I like using tallow for cooking and for making lotion. Since a lot of people covered the cooking part above, I'll mention my (experimental) process for making a whipped tallow butter.
***It's most important to source high quality suet!! What I mean is suet from animals that lived a healthy life. I prefer suet from biodynamic beef but the suet I just used (that you'll see in the below photos) came from my friend's goat herd (specifically a goat named scroto baggins) and I know how well they treat and care for their goats. Your sourcing options and access will be different from mine but I don't recommend using the suet unless you KNOW how that animal lived. A lot of toxins are stored in fat.
1) I cut up the suet into small pieces, add it to a pot of boiling water and boil the suet until the tallow separates from the rinds. I separate the solids from the liquids and then let the liquids cool down in a bowl with tapered sides. I do this in the morning to allow the liquids to slowly cool throughout the day. Just before bed, I put the bowl in the fridge. If it's cold outside then the hot-cold cycles can be hastened.
2) In the morning, I'll remove the hardened disc of tallow from the bowl and skim the bottom of it. It's now been clarified once and will still have a meaty-smell.
This batch was so large I had to alternate the cycles and use two large, tapered bowls.
3) I then repeat the boiling process of tallow and water, then cool down and scrape. I do this at least 8 times or until there's nothing visible to scrape off.
When I know I've finished clarifying the tallow:
For the whipped tallow butter part:
option 1) whip the tallow until it has stiff peaks and the color is very white. simple and done.
option 2) add essential oils for (mostly) aromatic qualities. Then finish with option 1.
I use an aromatherapy book to provide guidance on blending top, medium, and low aromatic notes (my friend is pictured below doing the blending).
option 3) infuse a carrier oil (like EVOO) with herbs, like calendula, chamomile, plantain, etc that have skin healing qualities. After straining the herbs out of the hot infusion (bake at 180degF for 12hrs). I blend ~25% carrier oil to ~75% tallow by weight. Then finish with option 1.
option 4) do option 3, then option 2, then option 1. My preference to optimize the healing qualities.
I personally like adding rose hip SEED oil to tighten the skin. This
anti-aging serum by BioMed Balance made a really fantastic batch without needing to figure out the aromatic profile.
I then store the whipped tallow balm in the fridge until I gift it (there's no way I can use all of this in a year!!). I don't use anything else on my skin (besides my homemade salves) and it's become very popular amongst my friends and family.
My daughter, friend, and I recently made our own batches and these are the numbers we used:
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