Where is suet from

The purer your suet, the longer it will last. Follow your nose and only keep what you need in the fridge!

Again, suet shines in meat pies. With that in mind, here are a few of our favorite recipes that use suet:. For those of you looking for a challenge, this is the recipe for you. This pudding takes a long time to prepare, but the rewards are well worth it. This is a slightly simpler pudding option that still gets you most of the way there.

Remember to use fresh herbs! Also, keep in mind that a lot of suet in supermarkets is actually dehydrated suet. Companies mix it with flour to help it keep longer and stay more stable at room temperature. This can mess with some recipes that call for pure suet. You can also buy authentic suet directly from grass-fed butchers like US Wellness Meats, which will give you the best results. Good luck, and happy cooking! Order our grass-fed beef suet to make sure your recipe comes out perfectly.

Nathan Phelps is a writer, ethical foodie, and outdoors-aficionado hailing from Nashville, TN. He splits his time between helping sustainable businesses find new customers and managing his ever-increasing list of hobbies, which include playing guitar, baking bread, and creating board games.

Now I know how to describe it to the butcher I can buy some but is it true, you have to render it before grating it? Thanks so much. Thanks for the comment and question. I did structure that post in a confusing way. I just corrected it. You definitely do not need to render suet before using it. You simple shred it. Instructions for that are right here:. Hey, thanks Joe. Ummmm beef stew and dumplings here I come! I am about to try a recipe for the crust of Jamaican beef patty.

It requires 3 cups beef suet. I live in Montreal and it is difficult to obtain this product. The recipe requires 4.

What can I use as a substitute for the beef suet and how much? The firmer fat from the back is what you want. But just about any butcher should be able to set you up with some beef fat. Good luck! Any chance you can get some from a butcher in a nearby town?

I know it can be ordered via Amazon if all else fails. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Joe Pastry… Search Categories.

Mix rendered suet with a little lye and a chemical reaction occurs that results in water-soluble sodium stearate — the primary ingredient in most hand soaps. Oh, one other thing: Just like beef muscle fat, pork lard is an unsatisfactory substitute for suet. Now in my previous post on 18th century Christmas pies , as well as in the accompanying video, we suggested using vegetable shortening as a suet substitute. What that means is this: when we shot the video, we had to freeze the vegetable shortening in order to grate it.

Then we had to keep it frozen until the very last second. But even then, the moment we added the grated vegetable shortening to the other ingredients, it lost its mass and acted like room-temperature butter, coating the other ingredients rather than retaining its particle shape. Now, if you live in the U. We had to go online to buy a box, which ended up going through customs to get here. From a historical-accuracy standpoint, the addition of flour may be perfectly legitimate.

The caveat I offer is that if you are already using flour in your 18th century recipe in addition to that used in processed suet, you may have to make a minor adjustment to the amount of flour in order to get accurate results. Modern recipes that call for suet, by the way, already accommodate this additional flour.

And finally, when shopping for suet, try to get the whitest suet you can find. This little tidbit is reiterated throughout the old cookbooks. Suet tends to turn a buttery yellow as it ages, and as it does, it also takes on a stronger flavor. Most beef offered for sale here in the States is aged. This may pose an additional challenge in finding fresh suet. A processor who actually slaughters the animal is probably your best bet for finding the freshest suet.

A light buttery colored yellow suet is still usable, but a clean white suet is preferred. I just bought this — thanks for the post. While it is advertised as beef suet, the actual packaging stated it was ground beef fat. The fat can be trimmed from all areas such as kidneys, loins and abdomen , but the highest percentage is the organ fats.

The customer service person said that most of their customers buy this product for Christmas pudding or to make their own sausages and have had no problems. As a Brit, I am excited to see how this will turn out. So lucky I found this site as I almost wasted a tonne of fruit on the pork fat that the Safeway butcher called Suet. Fingers crossed! Can you imagine? Just an update on my November post regarding Grassland beef suet. If you Google the recipe, you will find it is very heavy on the suet!

I do however have a crazy amount of the fat in the freezer as the smallest bag was huge! Best of luck with your puddings. I was taught tallow was differant from fat, being waxy and harder in texture. Only comes from one spot in the animal, true suet perhaps? PS- really love this blog! Hi Bruce. Thank you for your kind words! The traditional primary definition IS suet i. Thanks again! Thank you so much for the explanation.

Now I understand why my one attempt to make pemmican failed so miserably. I had ignorantly used rendered muscle fat from hamburger. Time to try again with actual suet. Pingback: Please Bring Back the Puddings! Savoring the Past. Excellent explanation, thank you! I do render my own beef fat for tallow, and keep the leaf lard separate when rendering our pig fat for lard. My tallow , from my grass-fed only cows which does make a difference, is very hard and firm though, but I will separate out the different fats in the future.

Love your blog! Thank you! I have found one or two references in the older cookbooks that suggested that sheep suet has a slightly milder taste, however, the two fats were considered interchangeable by many other authors. It seems the distinction was considered by most to be insignificant.

As an aside, the saturated fats in both beef and lamb suet, according to McLagan, consist primarily of stearic and palmitic acids, which are believed to lower LDL cholesterol.

Futhermore, your grass-fed animals develop higher levels of Omega-3 and conjugated linoleic acids, both believed to be beneficial to our health. I raise rare Milking Devon cattle on grass and vegetables and hay without grain or soy or urea or by-products whatever. It is easier to get a clean cook with the limited blood vessels and meat scraps in the leaf fat, and I think it has less odor. Generally the fat from the second harvesting has a mild odor that reminds me of deep-fat frying.

Some breeds of cattle Jersey is one naturally have yellow fat. The Devon fat is a creamy color. High temperature cooking frying burgers for example can cause some chemical break-down of the fat, The process to clean cooking fats to make soap is quite extensive.

Mutton tallow melts at a higher temperature than beef tallow and makes a more brittle soap bar, but is preferred for candles. I think mutton fat has a higher percentage of oleic acid but cannot find a reference at this time. Deer or goat fat should have similar properties to the sheep. I get it all the time for deep frying. Pingback: Mutton Tallow Face Salve grassfood. Suet is made from the fat that surrounds the kidneys of animals mostly cows and mutton.

The fat is removed from the meat, clarified, chopped, and then boiled in water, which removes any impurities. Upon cooling, the water and fat separate and the remaining fat is suet. What is Vegetable suet? Vegetable suet is a solid looking white fat made from refined vegetable oil.

Suet was first recorded in a recipe in the early 17th century, used in the English College Pudding and served to students at Oxford and Cambridge since However, the origins of the traditional Christmas Pudding can be traced back a further years to the s.