We got a hold of some fresh suet from a fellow butchering beef a while back. It's been sitting in the freezer until we could get to it. Now that it's cool enough to use the wood stove and gardening/canning is done for the season, it seemed like a good time.
First we chopped it up fairly finely.
Then it went into a large pot with a bit of water to keep it from burning until the fat starts rendering out. The water cooks off as long as the pot is uncovered.
Then.... keep heating at a fairly low temp, stirring periodically. With the amount in our pot, it'll take most of the day.
This is what it looked like after a couple of hours.
After a while, we strained the tallow through a light cloth then threw the cracklings back into the pot and let the fat render some more. Eventually we ended up with a coffee can full plus enough to do a batch of soap. It's a pale yellow color when it's liquid and then turns white when it has cooled off and hardened.
To the right of the liquid tallow, you can see the crackling start to cool and the extra tallow turn white. We fed the cracklings to the chickens over the course of a week and they were happy birds indeed!
