Tallow

Tallow is a rendered form of beef, pork or mutton suet, made up primarily of triglycerides, produced by rendering, a process that extracts the fat from animal tissue and leaves behind a solid byproduct called cracklings or greaves, historically repurposed as animal feed. Beef tallow is entirely fat, roughly 50 percent saturated, 42 percent monounsaturated and 4 percent polyunsaturated, and provides about 902 calories per 100 grams with no water, protein or carbohydrate. It has long served as a cooking shortening and deep frying fat; McDonald's, for instance, fried its French fries in a mixture of 93 percent beef tallow and 7 percent cottonseed oil until switching to vegetable oil in 1990, and beyond food it is used in soap making, biodiesel and aviation biofuel production, machinery lubrication, candle making and textiles.