From French fries to face cream, beef tallow is the health elixir of the moment—and fresh, pure jars of it are being made right here in the Hudson Valley.
As a professionally trained chef and veteran restaurateur, Franz Brendle thinks a lot about the ingredients he uses in his kitchens, and he always comes back to this: “Cooking with highly processed seed oils [derived from soybeans, corn, canola, and sunflower seeds] is detrimental to people’s health.”
The Orange County resident, who runs Goshen’s Pharmacy Kitchen & Bar and Franzel, a modern German restaurant (formerly Craft 47), knew he wanted to switch to tallow, which is rendered beef fat, but he discovered that not only is it much pricier than seed oil, the commercially available stuff contains chemical stabilizers. So, he decided to make his own.
“There’s definitely a different flavor,” Brendle says. “Fries taste better.”
The first step, describes Brendle, was finding a local source of beef fat. Over the course of 2024, he visited cattle farms throughout the Hudson Valley, following the trail of grass-fed animals to the places where he could purchase their fat. When he found what he was looking for, he brought the bovine bounty back to his restaurant kitchens where he ground it up and rendered it by cooking it, low and slow, for 24 to 36 hours. And then, he prepared a meal with it.
“There’s definitely a different flavor,” Brendle says. “Fries taste better.”
Just as important to him as taste, tallow is “beneficial for metabolism and digestion,” Brendle says, and contains vitamins, such as A, D, E, and K, plus minerals that are not found in seed oil. Although it is a saturated fat, tallow is safe when consumed in moderation. And with a smoke point of around 400°F, it’s more stable than many seed oils when cooked at high temperatures.
Shortly after perfecting his first batch, Brendle began jarring his tallow for sale in his restaurants and on their corresponding websites, effectively launching The Beef Tallow Company. The 14-ounce mason jars are now also available on Amazon.
Brendle continues to render about 600 pounds of beef fat per month, and aside from what he uses in his restaurants and puts into jars, some of it finds its way into his Jolly Cow Chips, which are made with potatoes grown in the rich black dirt of the Hudson Valley, plus pure, grass-fed, small-batch tallow.
Related: 3 Hudson Valley Women Making an Impact in the Meat Industry
