A Primal Primer: Animal Fats
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Animal fats have recently been implicated as the cause of heart disease, obesity and, in a roundabout convoluted stretch of logic, global warming. If you let health officials tell it, they’re pure evil. Reviled, shunned, and lambasted by the general public (thanks to less-then-sterling endorsements by health officials), animal fats have really gotten a bad rap.
It wasn’t always this way.
No, for hundreds of thousands of years, animal fats played a huge role in the human diet – whether it was Grok going straight for the fatty organs and tossing the lean muscle meat to the dogs, Prometheus making a meager sacrifice to the gods more appealing by draping it in swathes of fat, or Mom cooking with real butter instead of margarine. But you already knew that. I don’t have to sell you guys on the beauty of animal fat (after all, there was already quite a robust discussion taking place in the forums!), but the widespread societal backlash against animal fat means most of us don’t know everything we should about the stuff. For a lot of us, anything other than lard or butter is a mystery, and that’s a damn shame. There are tons of different varieties with many different uses, and we PBers need to be familiar with them all.
Lard
It has become part of the lexicon, used to describe the obese (“lard-ass,” “tub of lard,” “lard bucket,” etc. – we prefer “pail ‘o grains,” ourselves). For most people, merely mentioning it in a culinary context causes heart palpitations and shudders of revulsion. Fine by me: that just means more lard for us.
Lard is pig fat in both its rendered and unrendered form. The best lard is called leaf lard, and it comes from the fat deposits surrounding the kidneys and inside the loin. Leaf lard is “best” because it has little to no pork flavor, making it ideal for bakers (doesn’t really apply to us) and for general cooking. Next is fatback, which comes from the subcutaneous, thick fat deposits between the skin and the muscles of the pig. The cheapest is the soft membrane known as caul fat, which can be found wrapped around the internal organs. There’s also bacon grease, that delicious bacon-flavored lard that comes in handy when you’ve just fried up a platter of bacon and could really go for some eggs. If you’re not going to use it right away, don’t throw it out. Keep empty jars handy and just pour the hot grease in whenever you’re done. Store all your lard in the fridge, where it’ll avoid rancidity for months and be easily scoopable.
Whichever type of lard you choose, it can be used the same way you’d use butter. Stir fries, grilled steaks, fried eggs, and sautéed veggies are all delicious cooked in lard. Even if you don’t use leaf lard, the flavor is fairly mild, and the “porkiness” is minimal – if that sort of thing bothers you. Of course, the way you render your lard has an effect on the flavor. Dry-rendered lard (rendered without water, as if you were frying up bacon) tastes more porky, while wet-rendered lard (where the lard is rendered in water and skimmed off the top) is very mild.
The leaf lard from Flying Pigs Farm seems to get rave reviews online, and it can be shipped all over the country. Still, the farm’s located on the east coast, so unless you live nearby the shipping costs can get pretty prohibitive. You could just check out the local farmers’ market or the butcher shop. Pig fat is usually fairly cheap, and you can get a good amount of usable lard from a couple pounds of leaf or fatback. Don’t buy the cheap stuff in big tubs! It’s hydrogenated and full of trans-fats.
Lard is relatively stable, with good levels of saturated and monounsaturated fats.
Per 100 g (3.5 oz):
SFA: 39g
MUFA: 45g
PUFA: 11g
Poultry Fat
The holy trinity of poultry fats consists of chicken, duck, and goose. The concept of poultry fat is similar to lard; take the fatty portions of the bird and slowly render them until pure, unadulterated liquid fat is produced. Most foodies sing the praises of goose and duck fat, and for good reason: waterfowls, being relegated to the water, are generally loaded with fat for buoyancy and that makes for excellent eating. There’s more of it and what’s there is generally richer than fat rendered from a chicken. That said, there’s still a place in the kitchen for chicken fat. One popular iteration is schmaltz, which is poultry (usually chicken, but sometimes even pork) fat rendered with onions for flavor.
The public typically celebrates these fats for their potato-enhancing qualities, but I personally love using poultry fat as an incestuous accompaniment to roasted poultry. A bit rubbed on the bird before tossing it into the oven makes for crispy, delicious, fatty skin. Or if I ever do splurge on a sweet potato, I’ll usually fry it up in some poultry fat. Apples and pears are also good roasted in poultry fat; I prefer goose, but anything with wings and feathers will do.
Poultry fat is easy enough to find. I’ll sometimes ask the butcher for any extra skin he might have, and it’s usually incredibly affordable, much more so than lard. If your meat market processes skinless breast and thighs in-house, chances are they’ll have piles of poultry skin lying around too. You can probably even get organic, free-range skin for next-to-nothing. Goose and duck trimmings are far more rare and coveted, so you’ll have to pay extra for those – but believe me, it’s well worth the effort. And be sure to save the fat that naturally renders in the bottom of the pan when roasting a bird.
Store your poultry fat in the fridge for up to two months. It’s less stable than lard, but it probably won’t last long enough for you to find out.
Per 3.5 oz:
Goose fat
SFA: 28g
MUFA: 57g
PUFA: 11g
Duck fat
SFA: 33g
MUFA: 49g
PUFA: 13g
Chicken fat
SFA: 20g
MUFA: 45g
PUFA: 31g
Tallow
Tallow refers to rendered beef (and sometimes lamb) fat. It comes from suet, which is the raw, hard raw fat of cows and sheep, usually surrounding the loins and kidneys. You don’t see tallow a whole lot; it’s high in saturated fat, which makes it easily demonized. In fact, McDonald’s used to fry their fries in real beef tallow until, in the name of “better health,” they were forced to use hydrogenated oils instead. We all know how that turned out.
To make really good tallow, you have to be patient. It’s a slow process, but it’s worth it. Good tallow is solid at room temperature and incredibly stable, so if you’re dead set on deep-frying something, you’ll want to use tallow. Tallow is relatively mild in flavor, so you can use it for just about any recipe that calls for fat. It’s particularly great for browning meat for stews, curries, and chili.
You may have to special order suet, simply because there isn’t much of a demand in most areas. Farmers’ markets are good options, as are butcher shops. Just go a few days in advance and place a special order to ensure it arrives in time. Eatwild is, of course, always a good source if you can’t find it locally.
Per 3.5 oz:
SFA: 50g
MUFA: 42g
PUFA: 4g (grass fed, remember, will have a better Omega-3 profile)
Ghee
Ghee is rendered butter with all milk proteins and solids removed. It is pure fat, and it can be treated like an oil when heated. Nuttier than butter, ghee is completely stable at room temperature, provided you keep it in an airtight container. Like butter, ghee is incredibly high in stable saturated fats, making it ideal for sautéed dishes and higher heats.
I use ghee to grill steaks and as a starter for my curries. Whole Foods sells a great ghee made from organic, free-range cow’s milk. It’s a little pricey, but you can reuse the container to store your other fats. Make sure the ghee you buy comes from pure butter, and butter alone; some brands combine vegetable oil with butter to make their ghee.
Per 3.5 oz:
SFA: 65g
MUFA: 32g
PUFA: 3g
Those are the basics – the ones most of us are going to be able to have on a regular basis. Animal fat has been unjustly demonized and there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Hopefully, this cleared things up and made it a bit more accessible and understandable.
I’m interested in hearing about other types of rendered animal fat, though. If you have access to rendered moose fatback or emu kidney leaf fat, let us know about it in the comments!
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
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Before I ever really understood how good fats can be I was always taught to drape chickens or turkeys with slices of bacon “to keep it from drying out.” I don’t know how much truth there is to that since I don’t do it anymore. It always felt like a waste of the bacon to cook it then have this bacon you have to eat right before you eat a giant meal, so instead one night I rubbed it with the bacon fat I had in the fridge. Talk about amazing! Even my husband raved about it. It makes it especially good for roasting other vegetables int he same pan since there’s more drippings to cook them in.
I’ll have to try it with the duck fat I have in the fridge next time!
I always keep my bacon fat – usually for baked brussel sprouts. Just melt the fat, toss the brussel sprouts in it with some salt and pepper, and bake in the oven until soft and browned. You’ll never go back to boiled brussel sprouts again!
I love fatty cuts of meat, especially beef. Rib steaks are one of my favorites.
People need to start realizing that saturated fat is essential to good health and that heart disease doesn’t result from it simply circulating in the blood stream.
I personally prefer the taste of coconut oil over ghee, but use both. Ghee is an excellent butter replacement for people who are sensitive to dairy (even though butter is relatively safe anyway).
To show my total Primal naivete, I always tossed the fats from cooking bacon…turkey…anything really. But no way! Not any more! Not gonna happen! Thanks for the enlightenment Mark!
Great post! I knew all this anyway, having read Mary Enig’s Eat Fat, Lose Fat, but like any great story, it bears repeating. I love the fluffiness of eggs scrambled in Ghee (I use that brand from Whole Foods Mark mentioned). I also save my bacon fat each week (from the non-nitrate, non-cured bacon sold at Whole Foods) and use it for many things, including roast chicken. I’ll have to try baking Brussels sprouts as suggested by gcb. That sounds yummy! I also save the fat from my chicken and beef bone stocks. Coconut oil also gets heavy play in my kitchen.
Mark,
Does the PUFA content of chicken fat concern you?
A favourite of mine since I was a teen is liver and onions cooked in bacon fat.
A trick I learned recently from a chef I work with: when grilling very lean pieces of meat, such as elk, a pat of butter (or ghee) on top helps keep the meat from getting too dry and causes the flames to pop up & sear the outside of the meat. Delish!
Mark,
You didn’t mention it, but aren’t you referring to fats from animals not raised in a CAFO? Or do you not see a problem with using the fat from those animals?
For those who are interested, making your own ghee from organic butter might be more cost-efficient than buying organic ghee [I don't know what the price of the latter is, just that my mother makes ghee at home in large batches instead of buying it]
Also, if you go to an Indian grocery, certain Indian brands that are imported are organic and free range, since a lot of them still do it the good ol’ fashioned way there. For example, Amul brand gets all of its milk from local farmers. They make butter, cheese, and ghee.
After reading the the article, I just had one question. Although we know that Grok’s diet involved consuming large quantities of meat, the meat was much different than what we eat today. It actually had more protein than fat, and a larger proportion of its fat was polyunsaturated. Am I correct to assume that while grok ate a lot of meat, his overall fat intake was lower than the average American today?
No. Grok tossed the lean meats to the dogs, while eating the fat where he could find it. Grok was also known to hunt the fatter animals.
The fat balance is different. However I don’t think it is significant.
Just a minor detail –
you write that “Grok [was] going straight for the fatty organs and tossing the lean muscle meat to the dogs”.
I just remembered Vilhjalmur Stefanssons Adventures in Diet (Harper’s, 1936) where he writes
“We divided up the caribou Eskimo style, so the dogs got organs and entrails, hams, shoulders, and tenderloin, while the invalids, and we hunters got heads, briskets, ribs, pelvis and the marrow from the bones.”
But I think this is in line with your main argument.
Fantastic post, Mark. I was just making my ‘primal fat shopping list’ yesterday and chuckling at the fact that two years ago I would have recoiled in horror at the idea of buying bags of beef suet.
A word of caution, though: I’d be careful about purchasing lard from Flying Farms if you consume it regularly; I recently asked them about the specifics of their pigs’ diets and was told that they’re fed primarily on conventionally-raised (read: GMO) corn and soy. Corn in moderate quantities can be alright for a pig’s digestive system since they’re monogastric, but soy’s still a metabolic disaster, not to mention the toxins the animal is ingesting from both… and most likely storing in its fat.
And as we know, eating large amounts of soy and other grains skew the animal’s EFAs heavily towards Omega 6 and away from that 3 we’re all trying to get more of. It also increases the PUFA/MUFA percentage and makes the fat less stable and more prone to oxidation.
If you’re going to jump for some mail-order lard, I’d highly suggest ordering from West Wind Farms, where the pork is all pastured and organic. Also, Craig over at Footsteps Farm is beginning to test-run his shipping system for selling pastured lard and it should be made available on his website soon.
The Lard Lovers community is also a great place to stay on the lookout for producers/sellers of organic and/or pastured lard.
Thanks for this great post, Mark. I have some suet and pork fat that need rendering in my freezer. Hopefully I can get to that task this weekend!
I’m not sure what I’ll do with the beef tallow as I don’t do a lot of deep frying. (I got the fat for free) Anyone have more suggestions for beef tallow uses?
Tallow candles? Soap?
candles – that could be cool!
When I started the strict paleo diet it took my bod a good while to totally switch over to fat/oil burning. I’d warn anyone not totally “switched over” not to go heavy on fats. For me at least, it took weeks to achieve “Grok-dom.” As I’ve heard, anyone who is doing big carbs, daily stress, and big fat is asking for big trouble. All in all, stay clear of saturated animal grease until you’re really a certified Grok fat/oil burner.
Fat malabsorption is typically a symptom of something else, like Celiac disease.
But why do you say “big carbs” AND “big fat”? I mean, if you’re switching, isn’t the focus high protein, low carbs, no grains, plus fat for satiety?
So a person who does big carbs AND big fat is just kidding themselves and looking for an excuse to gorge on bacon… a person who is going primal would cut out a huge amount of carbs at the same time they’d start eating more fat, right?
And of course it would take a good while to totally switch over if you’re still eating “big carbs”… am I missing part of your comment?
I grew up in the South. My grandparents and parents all had a big jar that they’d pour off the grease from cooking breakfast in the morning to be used for the dinner or frying whatever. I guess the only change is I’ll store mine in the fridge instead of next to the stove now!
That helps a lot Mark! I cook with most of these, and yet I didn’t know exactly what lard was (aside from “pork fat” that comes in a tub from the market that is super handy in the kitchen) and I actually knew the least about tallow.
To echo what Olwe said, be careful about your fat intake if you’re not switched completely over to Primal or Paleo. This is a good article about adding good fat to a bad diet.
http://www.cbass.com/BADDIET.HTM
As I’ve been told, good animals that have been raised on good, natural diets have the proper balance of Omega 3, 6, and 9. Factory ag animals typically do not and have way too much “bad fat.” Still, unless you’re switched over to paleo-primal and have gotten totally efficient at fat burning, I’d stay clear of all animal fats. I’m sure saturated animal fat that isn’t being utilized by a “switched over” body is eventually bad and leads to arteriosclerosis — just like the medical world has been saying. What they haven’t figured out (or don’t want to figure out) is that carbs that don’t get immediately used go straight to bad cholesterol and are stored as flab.
As far as what I mean by “switched over,” it took me “a while” (two weeks or more?) of being “intentional” carb-free (besides “incidental” carbs) to be able to run on fats and oils efficiently. At least for me, I could not cheat without confusing my burner on what exactly we were using for fuel. My bod (maybe you’re different) could not be “mixed fueled.”
How could you tell that your body was “confused” about the type of fuel it was burning?
Very simple: I’d have started the paleo-primal diet … and I’d be totally without energy, barely able to move! Obviously, my bod was not used to using fat; it was still calibrated to use carbs and wondered where they’d gone. At least for me, I had to be very purist about paleo-primal for my “burner” to switch over and work properly. I couldn’t “misfuel” (back and forth, on-off carbs) and expect my bod to use fat-oil as its main source.
There is no snack more delicious than chicken skins fried to a crisp then salted. (Thanks to Dana Carpender for this suggestion.)
I also love cooking with deer/elk tallow or even beaver tallow for certain things (they have a definitely flavor that works great in tomato type dishes, the best chili EVER is made with beaver meat and tallow) as well.
Mark, that’s interesting what you say about throwing the meat to the dogs and going straight for the organs. This is exactly how Weston Price describes the practices of modern natives (well, modern in the 1920s) in the Canadian Rockies in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
I’m still not sure where one would choose animal fat over olive or coconut oil for cooking. I’m not baking anything, so I’m just thinking about sauteing or frying meat and veg. What sort of dish would you chose animal fat over olive or coconut oil for?
Hey Mark. Am enjoying becoming more regular visits to your blog after keeping you in the nether-regions of Google Reader for the past year or so!
Just wondering what your thoughts are on organic vs conventional fats? I’m pretty careful to stay away from conventional animal fat due to the high toxicity that is inherent, and the fact that I don’t want those toxins filling up my fat cells!
When it comes to organic meats and fats, bring it on .. I guess it just means a bit of censorship on those occasions when out for dinner.
Would be interested to know your take on this.
Oh! I should have said organic, AND grass-fed
Be very careful pouring hot grease into jars, got a nasty burn like that once. Also the jar can break if the grease is too hot.
Hi, everyone I just rendered my own cooking fat from honeycomb fat (tallow from the kidneys) of a grass-fed, grass-finished cow (via my kocal greenmarket here in NYC). It’s awesome!
Local; not kocal.
I also cooked eggs in duck fat for the first time this week. Also awesome. I’ll never go back to veggie oils. I quit those a while ago, actually. Trying to decide if I’ll continue using the leftover macadamia nut oil I still have. (It’s a good cooking oil and tolerant of high temps.)
Rahsaan, use that macadamia nut oil on your skin. Your skin will love you!
Ah, thanks for clearing up the idfferences between fats. I pretty much understood them, but now they’re really clear. I definitely feel that it’s important to include meat fats in the diet, and do so with great relish (thanking the animal, of course).
Iris,
Thanks for the recommendation. I added the mac nut oil to my total body (haed to toe) moisturizer mix that I make myself (unrefined shea butter, unrefined cocoa butter, jojoba oli, coconut oil and sweet almond oil). the mac nut went in perfectly.
From now on though, I’ll be cooking exclusively with animal fats!
As far as I understand saturated fats indirectly can lead to heart disease. LDL consists of proteins which carry cholesterol and fat because Lipids are insoluble in water which is what most of the blood is made up of. When a person its lots of saturated fats the LDL cholesterol concentration increases in the blood stream. LDL carries cholesterol away (emphasis on “away”) from the liver.
When there is too much LDl in the blood stream then too much cholesterol is taken from the liver and then the receptors around the body which recieve the cholesterol descrease in activity.
This decrease in activity from the recepetors means that LDL remains in the blood stream and is eventually deposited in the artery walls. this leads to the formation of artheromas and ergo heart disease.
thats was from memory because i can’t be arsed to go and find my books.
anyway. My point was that eating too many (emphasis on “too many”) animal fats, which have a high concentration of cholesterol, can inadvertently lead to heart disease.
Therefore it is safe to eat a high ammount of animal fats only if there is a factor of the diet which increases the ammount HDL concentration in the blood (to take cholesterol to the liver to be broken down).
This post was mainly to help my biology.
george
George is technically correct WITHIN the context of a high carbohydrate intake. Without that high carb input and the high insulin levels needed to deal with it, and the high level of triglycerides, saturated fat is metabolised differently. More of it goes towards HDL, and although the LDL may well also increase the particle size is larger and the particle numbers smaller, hence less lipoprotein (a).
This is only one of a bunch of factors that change, and alter the danger of the LDL.
This paper is currently being touted as another reason to avoid sat fats
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/djp168
it costs to see the details, but here’s an earlier study which is free to access
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/155/9/783
spot Table 3, these guys were eating around 300g carbs a day so obviously when they got pancreatic cancer it had to be the fats.
Now I may be wrong but I strongly suspect, as with so many other conditions. in the absence of such toxic levels of carbs the sat fats would not be a factor. Otherwise Grok would have died out generations ago instead of waiting until the 20th Century
“Therefore it is safe to eat a high ammount of animal fats only if there is a factor of the diet which increases the ammount HDL concentration in the blood (to take cholesterol to the liver to be broken down)”
That factor is an anatomically correct quantity of carbs
What about meat increasing the risk of cancer and say wholemeal bread, carbohydrate, which lowers the risk of cancer?
In Britain (I don’t the figures elsewhere)35% of people are getting too much of their daily energy intake from fat. (Cancer Research UK.
Studies have linked higher intakes of animal fat with an increased risk of breast cancer.
Red and processed meats have also been strongly linked with an increased risk of bowel cancer.
“Red and processed meats have also been strongly linked with an increased risk of bowel cancer.”
That’s old conventional wisdom based on anecdotal evidence rather than pure science. The latest findings show vegetarians have the highest rates of colon cancer.
doesn’t sound too good for me being a vegetarian.
now before people start lecturing me about meat (I realise this is probably the worst place to say I’m vegetarian), I am vegetarian for slightly peculiar reasons.
Don’t worry about being a vegetarian, George! I, & many others who frequent this blog/site have made “the switch”. I was vegetarian for over 10 yrs. But everything here that I’ve read just makes too much sense. So I “eased” back in to omnivourism. You may or may not choose to eat meat, but whatever you decide try & stay away from fake food. You will thank yourself sooner than you think! Stay away from fake dairy, fake meat, fat-free, hard-to-pronounce ingredients, etc. None of us here are out to lecture you or anyone else – we are here to help, inform, share with, encourage, & befriend each other.
I’m personally a vegetarian because of the way in which animals are bred for slaughter.
I certainly think that having chickens in cages and machines that kill them is not primal.
My vegetarian policy is that if you catch it yourself then you can eat it.
Thanks for your reply. I’m considering farming my own animals but lack the land and the money. Why should I avoid the fake meats like Quorn and Tofu etc.?
I LOVED Quorn, especially in the UK where there are way more flavours available. search this site for “soy”, etc & read about “fake meat”. Plus read the ingredients of what you’re eating. I found out that alot of what I was eating was wheat gluten.
I agree whole-heartedly with your reasons for obstaining from meat as they are very similar to mine. I tend to stick to wild-caught fish, local eggs, & small-farm fowl & meat. I’ll next be looking in to cow-sharing (or something like that). I am fortunate that even though I live in a small town, we have a local produce farmer & she has started a farmer’s market in the summers. A nearby bison farmer sells his products there & I have started to buy from him.
Keep researching! and keep questioning…
Again there’s a world of difference between meat from animals stuffed with grain, with lousy lipids and poor fats, and shot full of hormones and antibiotics, and meat from free living grass fed animals which need minimal medical intervention, and once again the “research” takes little notice of the high level of carbs and the quality of diet as a whole.
Processed meatlike substances may be an indicator of a diet with toxic levels of carbs and chemical flavourings and a lack of vegetables. Real Meat may be an indicator of a diet containing high levels of nutritious foods, yet the “research” makes no distinction.
I agree about the “factory farming” fortunately so does my butcher, I can actually see the animals I’m about to eat in their natural habitat since he will tell me which farms he sources from.
Thanks for all of your replies.
I think I will continue to be a vegetarian for the reasons I mentioned and for environmental reasons too.
However I have started eating more eggs.
what do you think?
G
i managed to get a huge slab (3 kgs! – which I had to lug back on the train home along with a couple of kilos meat and raw milk) of WATER BUFFALO FAT. Most is in the freezer, but i rendered some today. It has a unique flavour – much tastier than beef fat which i find tasteless