ZC to ZC Raw questions

[PaleoPhil]

Tallow that is truly rendered at 130 deg could be deficient in some of the fatty acids as some may not melt and render out of the tissues at that temperature.

Interesting, but wouldn't that be the case for totally raw suet as well?

It would also contain a good deal of moisture which would affect the keeping qualities - which may or may not concern you depending on how soon you consume it.

Correct, I make small batches that I consume quickly. It's also interesting that the Inuit and Chukchi eat fermented fat. So while spoiled fat may taste lousy to me currently, I'm not sure that it's necessarily unhealthy.

I've never had a problem with rendered fat, even when rendered at up to 240F.  In any case, I always render above 212F to drive out the moisture.

Yeah, I didn't have past problems with higher-heated fat either, so I suspect something went wrong. I don't know for sure whether I became less tolerant of higher-heated tallow or if it was a one-time fluke due to something going wrong. I should experiment with it again. Maybe the extra moisture that was on it made it more prone to burning or maybe I let the crock pot run too long. How long do you typically render for?

Danny has eaten my pemmican many times and never complained of any problems.  Maybe he was just too kind to mention them. ...

It was in one of his more recent blog posts that I replied with a comment to. I can look up the link if you're interested. His problem was with some tallow or pemmican he made, not any you sent him, as I recall. So your cooking skills are not in question.

[djr_81]

Interesting, but wouldn't that be the case for totally raw suet as well?

By render I'm sure Lex is assuming you're straining the fat while hot. In this case you're throwing away the solids which will still contain some of these fatty acids. If consuming either raw or fully rendered tallow you'd get these. You're possibly "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" I guess.

[lex_rooker]

Interesting, but wouldn't that be the case for totally raw suet as well?

Dan’s post was in line with what I was thinking.  Tallow / Rendering makes one think you are discarding the solid chunks and reserving the liquid fat.  If this is the case, and you haven’t heated the fat at a high enough temperature, then some of the more saturated fatty acids may not fully liquefy and you’ll be discarding them with the remaining tissues.  Of course if you are consuming the solid bits of tissue that you would normally discard as well as the liquid fat then you are getting everything there is to get, just as you would if consuming whole raw fat.

Correct, I make small batches that I consume quickly. It's also interesting that the Inuit and Chukchi eat fermented fat. So while spoiled fat may taste lousy to me currently, I'm not sure that it's necessarily unhealthy.

I actually like fermented meat – though not overly fermented.  I often leave my food in my warm car from early morning to mid afternoon on summer days and it does get a bit ‘bubbly” and sour tasting.  I suppose it is an acquired taste.  However, I’m not overly fond of slimy High Meat.  I guess I’m rather pedestrian in that I prefer beer over rock gut whisky so to speak.

Yeah, I didn't have past problems with higher-heated fat either, so I suspect something went wrong. I don't know for sure whether I became less tolerant of higher-heated tallow or if it was a one-time fluke due to something going wrong. I should experiment with it again. Maybe the extra moisture that was on it made it more prone to burning or maybe I let the crock pot run too long.

I never make a decision on one or two meals.  Way too many things going on to be able to determine if there is a true problem with such a small sample – unless of course I get violently ill and puke my guts out.  Stress at work or in a relationship can cause indigestion as can a passing bacterial or viral infection.  These things are usually very short lived and you’re back to normal (whatever that is) within a couple of days.

How long do you typically render for?

Depends on the temperature I’m rendering at.  If I’m in the mood to keep it low – around 220F, then I have to render for 8 to 10 hours, or maybe longer if it’s a big batch, to remove most of the water.  If rendering at 240F then usually 3 hours is enough.  I go by the look of the floating solids.  If they are barely “fizzing” then most of the water is gone.  You can see this in my Pemmican manual.  Also be aware that things will be barely fizzing at the lower temperature just because the heat is low and moisture is released more slowly so you have to just get the feel of it as you do it.  For pemmican or tallow that I’m going to store long term I will strain out the solids and then return to the heat at about 230F for another hour or so just to make sure all the water is gone.

It was in one of his more recent blog posts that I replied with a comment to. I can look up the link if you're interested. His problem was with some tallow or pemmican he made, not any you sent him, as I recall. So your cooking skills are not in question.

Never thought my cooking skills were at issue.  Just pointing out that I render at 240F and Danny has eaten my pemmican and never said anything about it causing indigestion.  So it was a reference to high temp rendering and not the over all process.

Lex

[William]

Tallow / Rendering makes one think you are discarding the solid chunks and reserving the liquid fat.  If this is the case, and you haven’t heated the fat at a high enough temperature, then some of the more saturated fatty acids may not fully liquefy and you’ll be discarding them with the remaining tissues.  Of course if you are consuming the solid bits of tissue that you would normally discard as well as the liquid fat then you are getting everything there is to get, just as you would if consuming whole raw fat.

If the solids are heated at no more than ~130F, they might be OK for those not too sensitive to cooked meat, but at my or Lex's usual rendering temp of >170°F the solids have the same effect on health as overcooked proteins.

Whether the usual rendering method would result in any deficiency would take a long-term study, (years) as the records don't show such a result.

[Paleo Donk]

Raw fat is about 35%  to 40% water and non-fatty tissue...

Its strange that the USDA nutrient data base for suet has it listed at 4% water, 1.5%, and 94% fat and a total of 8.5 calories per gram.

[PaleoPhil]

Dan’s post was in line with what I was thinking.  Tallow / Rendering makes one think you are discarding the solid chunks and reserving the liquid fat.  If this is the case, and you haven’t heated the fat at a high enough temperature, then some of the more saturated fatty acids may not fully liquefy and you’ll be discarding them with the remaining tissues.

OK, thanks for the warning, Lex. I won't bother with a rheostat then. So I'll have to decide whether I go back to higher-heated tallow or try to again to get used to raw suet. What do you think the minimum temp I can get away with on the tallow is?

I like air-dried meat (I sometimes leave my ground beef out so it gets an air-dried crust), but not yet fermented meat or fat. The Inuit reportedly think that if you haven't learned to love raw meat by age 3 you never will, so they would be shocked by us. They were shocked by an English man who visited them and acquired a taste for raw meat as an adult. Some day I would like to get a meat locker to age most of my meats, instead of refrigerating them, like the Paleo guy in NYC, but the only one on the Internet was very expensive, so I'll probably have to get lucky.

I never make a decision on one or two meals.

It was more meals then that, actually. It was one batch of tallow. But one batch is also not enough to go on. 

Stress at work or in a relationship ...

Do you still get that badly stressed? I can get stressed for a brief period now, but it passes quickly, even if the situating is very bad (like a physician screaming at me at the top of his lungs). It's a weird feeling to feel happy when things are bad. So different from the past when I would feel bad even when things were going good and there was no environmental stress. I tell my body, "Why are you feeling happy, you stupid body! Things are really bad right now, don't you know that?" LOL Now I know why the explorers reported that the first-contact Inuit and Bushmen laughed a lot, often for seemingly little or no reason. I noticed that in Inuit videos after the people eat seal, whale or caribou that they've hunted, they start smiling, laughing, dancing, singing, and even lifting their arms up in thanks to "the Creator." Especially the older folk (who benefited from traditional foods in their youth much more than the youth of today, unfortunately for the youths) I get this feeling after I eat good meat/fat too, and I feel like humming, singing and dancing. Many of the Inuit youth are committing suicide and I suspect that dramatic drop in D3 consumption as vs. the traditional diet is part of the reason (in addition to an increasingly desperate situation, etc.).

Depends on the temperature I’m rendering at.  If I’m in the mood to keep it low – around 220F, then I have to render for 8 to 10 hours, or maybe longer if it’s a big batch, to remove most of the water.  If rendering at 240F then usually 3 hours is enough.

Do you think that I could do 190F for a longer period, or is that too low?

[lex_rooker]

OK, thanks for the warning, Lex. I won't bother with a rheostat then. So I'll have to decide whether I go back to higher-heated tallow or try to again to get used to raw suet.

I try to keep things as simple as possible.  My thoughts are that the less processing the better.  I prefer raw when available, but do render fat when I have the opportunity to purchase a large quantity just to make storage easier.  I only eat pemmican when fresh is not available.  Way too much work to make and eat pemmican as my main diet.  I usually only make pemmican once or twice a year and then I make 80 to 100 lbs at a time.  Last year I sent out over 100 lbs just in samples all over the world.

It was more meals then that, actually. It was one batch of tallow. But one batch is also not enough to go on.

For me one batch would not be enough as there may be some unique issue with that batch.

Do you still get that badly stressed? I can get stressed for a brief period now, but it passes quickly, even if the situating is very bad (like a physician screaming at me at the top of his lungs). It's a weird feeling to feel happy when things are bad. So different from the past when I would feel bad even when things were going good and there was no environmental stress. I tell my body, "Why are you feeling happy, you stupid body! Things are really bad right now, don't you know that?" LOL Now I know why the explorers reported that the first-contact Inuit and Bushmen laughed a lot, often for seemingly little or no reason. I noticed that in Inuit videos after the people eat seal, whale or caribou that they've hunted, they start smiling, laughing, dancing, singing, and even lifting their arms up in thanks to "the Creator." Especially the older folk (who benefited from traditional foods in their youth much more than the youth of today, unfortunately for the youths) I get this feeling after I eat good meat/fat too, and I feel like humming, singing and dancing. Many of the Inuit youth are committing suicide and I suspect that dramatic drop in D3 consumption as vs. the traditional diet is part of the reason (in addition to an increasingly desperate situation, etc.).

No, I don’t get stressed much anymore either.  Much of it probably has to do with my age as much as dietary change.  When you get to be over 50 you begin to realize that all that stuff you were stressing over when you were young wasn’t very important.

What do you think the minimum temp I can get away with on the tallow is? Do you think that I could do 190F for a longer period, or is that too low?

I don’t know what the fascination with super low temperature is when rendering fat.  I always render mine between 230F and 240F and never have any problems.  If you try to go lower than that then you are on your own as I have no experience with rendering at lower temperatures.

Lex

[lex_rooker]

Its strange that the USDA nutrient data base for suet has it listed at 4% water, 1.5%, and 94% fat and a total of 8.5 calories per gram.

All I can tell you is that my normal yield is between 65% and 75%.  If I start with 65 lbs of suet I end up with between 40 and 48 lbs of rendered tallow with an average of about 45 lbs.

Lex

[PaleoPhil]

For me one batch would not be enough as there may be some unique issue with that batch.

Yes, I agree. I was low-heating my tallow before that batch, so that one batch wasn't the reason I was doing low heating.

I don’t know what the fascination with super low temperature is when rendering fat.

You basically answered your own question here:

"I try to keep things as simple as possible.  My thoughts are that the less processing the better. ...."

So I figured the less heating the better. Plus, Tyler claims that any sort of heating above 40 degrees celsius is super-bad and the higher you go, the worse it is. I don't know who is right about cooked fats between you and Tyler, so I figured I would try both approaches and judge for myself. I tend towards underweight, so I'm trying to eat as raw as I can while at the same time keeping my foods sufficiently enjoyable to maintain and even add a little weight. Low-heated tallow was helping with that brilliantly, but your concern about missing fatty acids has caused me to seek other options. Last night and today I tried chopping and eating raw suet, but my enjoyment, and therefore my food intake, decreased--and it seemed a tad harder to digest. I'm thinking that either your grinder approach or the juicer approach that someone else used is going to be the way to go for me.

[William]

Tyler claims that any sort of heating above 40 degrees celsius is super-bad

Tyler's confusion of fat with tallow is evident, and his posts on that subject were irrational.

alphagruis pointed out that tallow is stable at Lex's rendering temperature, and practically everyone used it in their kitchens forever without problems until synthetic fats/oils were invented.

Last night and today I tried chopping and eating raw suet, but my enjoyment, and therefore my food intake, decreased--and it seemed a tad harder to digest.

I tried mincing and mixing raw grass-finished back fat with ground beef; it was good, but only when really fresh.
Mixing with feedlot fat was not so good, so I eat tallow with 3-hour jerky on the side.

People have tried spicing meat to get around the repulsive taste of raw (see Dr Harris' observation of an allergen in it - albumen IIRC), why not try spicing the tallow to do something about the blah taste?

[TylerDurden]

Tyler's confusion of fat with tallow is evident, and his posts on that subject were irrational

Given the numerous appallingly negative reactions to heated/rendered tallow from RPDers this is simply nonsense. As for tallow, please bear in mind that tallow was also used in the past to make soap and  candlewax and, nowadays, is used as a form of biodiesel (!) for vehicles - hardly a substance that can be remotely considered a health-food.

People have tried spicing meat to get around the repulsive taste of raw (see Dr Harris' observation of an allergen in it - albumen IIRC), why not try spicing the tallow to do something about the blah taste?

Adding spices just seems to actually worsen digestion re raw meats for most RVAFers.  And citing Dr Harris, a fraudulent wannabe guru who claims to be palaeo-oriented but isn't, is plainly ridiculous.

[carnivore]

alphagruis pointed out that tallow is stable at Lex's rendering temperature, and practically everyone used it in their kitchens forever without problems until synthetic fats/oils were invented.

If the saturate fat in tallow is quite stable at high temperature, what about the other fat (mono and PUFA) and fragile vitamins/minerals ?
And what about AGEs and ALEs created at high temperature especially in fat food (like butter and olive oil)  ?
And what about the testimonials of many rawfooders who react badly with heated tallow ?

You can't honestly ignore all these facts.

[William]

If the saturate fat in tallow is quite stable at high temperature, what about the other fat (mono and PUFA) and fragile vitamins/minerals ?
And what about AGEs and ALEs created at high temperature especially in fat food (like butter and olive oil)  ?
And what about the testimonials of many rawfooders who react badly with heated tallow ?

You can't honestly ignore all these facts.

These have already been answered, see the archives - the subject was about coconut something, and got hijacked.

Try a different view, such as: why do pemmicaneers not get sick from this allegedly evil stuff, and instead report miraculous healing?

[wodgina]

These have already been answered, see the archives - the subject was about coconut something, and got hijacked.

Try a different view, such as: why do pemmicaneers not get sick from this allegedly evil stuff, and instead report miraculous healing?

Because it's a thousand times better than SAD.

[wodgina]

I agree it is quite possible paleo man wasted thousands of hours of their time with boring pemmican making instead of doing fun stuff like hunting, chasing women and fighting this is a raw paleo forum.

[William]

I agree it is quite possible paleo man wasted thousands of hours of their time with boring pemmican making instead of doing fun stuff like hunting, chasing women and fighting this is a raw paleo forum.

Quite so, and pemmican is made of raw meat and raw EFAs.
Didn't need to chase women, partly because there weren't any, partly because there were no missionaries to tell females that they would burn in hell if they loved a man.

[PaleoPhil]

Given the numerous appallingly negative reactions to heated/rendered tallow from RPDers this is simply nonsense. As for tallow, please bear in mind that tallow was also used in the past to make soap and  candlewax and, nowadays, is used as a form of biodiesel (!) for vehicles - hardly a substance that can be remotely considered a health-food.

So if fruit were used in making soap, shampoo, biodesel, or other products then fruit would not be remotely considered a health food?

[Paleo Donk]

And citing Dr Harris, a fraudulent wannabe guru who claims to be palaeo-oriented but isn't, is plainly ridiculous.

By your definition of fraud, I can safely say that everyone on this board is one.

[wodgina]

Quite so, and pemmican is made of raw meat and raw EFAs.

Fantasy.

[William]

Fantasy.

Care to explain?

[carnivore]

These have already been answered, see the archives - the subject was about coconut something, and got hijacked.

Try a different view, such as: why do pemmicaneers not get sick from this allegedly evil stuff, and instead report miraculous healing?

Never see any miraculous healings with pemmican. Where are the testimonials (mentioning their previous diet which was probably even worst than cooked pemmican) ?
Many raw fooders get sick with pemmican. Only people who eat cooked food can stand pemmican (like on the ZC forum).

[TylerDurden]

Never see any miraculous healings with pemmican. Where are the testimonials (mentioning their previous diet which was probably even worst than cooked pemmican) ?
Many raw fooders get sick with pemmican. Only people who eat cooked food can stand pemmican (like on the ZC forum).

  Precisely.

[TylerDurden]

So if fruit were used in making soap, shampoo, biodesel, or other products then fruit would not be remotely considered a health food?

  Fruit is just used re soap for fruit-essence(ie scent). By itself, it is not useful for making biodiesel or soap, whereas tallow is the key ingredient for some types of soap/biodiesel etc.

[TylerDurden]

By your definition of fraud, I can safely say that everyone on this board is one.

  Absolute rubbish. I pointed out previously that Dr Harris had pretended that heat-created toxins weren't dangerous - and then there's the fact that he calls his website/diet "paleonu" despite the fact that he advocates dairy-consumption. The vast majority of scientists at least admit that heavy cooking of foods creates lots of problematic heat-created toxins, unlike Dr Harris.  And the only member of this forum who could be considered fraudulent under those definitions would be William who keeps on insisting, against the facts, that pemmican is 100% raw.

[lex_rooker]

  Fruit is just used re soap for fruit-essence(ie scent). By itself, it is not useful for making biodiesel or soap, whereas tallow is the key ingredient for some types of soap/biodiesel etc.

Ah, but fruit makes drinkable alcohol which is a wonderful degreaser to remove the arterial sludge caused by eating that tallow biodiesel stuff while improving your mood at the same time.  And if there is any left over you can degrease the engine in your car or use it as paint remover.  Very versatile stuff.  Let's hear it for the wonderful benefits of fruit!

BTW, has anyone found a Paleolithic automobile to put that tallow biodiesel in?

Lex