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It doesn’t get any better than this. Mind-blowingly delicious French fries, fried in healthy tallow that nourishes you. You won’t believe how easy it is to make perfect, guilt-free fries at home!
Recipe moderator note – learn how to render traditional fats such as tallow and lard. Here is another comprehensive article “Rendering Animal Fats, Made Easy” we published on the topic as well.
Ingredients
Tallow (or lard)
Potatoes
Salt
Instructions
Traditionally, peeled russet potatoes are used for French fries, but I personally prefer to use unpeeled Yukon gold potatoes, I find that they have a better flavor.
If desired, peel your potatoes. Cut them into whatever shape you would like for French fries. Soak them in a bowl of cold water for an hour.
In a pot on the stove (I use my Dutch oven), heat your tallow on medium heat to 350°F. You should have 1-3 inches of tallow in the pot.
If you don’t have a thermometer (I don’t), use this easy method: drop one piece of potato in when you are heating the tallow. When it sizzles and floats, your tallow is ready.
Take one batch of potato pieces out from the water and dry with a dish towel. Your batch should be small enough so that it doesn’t crowd your pot.
Drop the dried potato pieces into the oil. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from oil and place in a sieve to drain for 5 minutes. Then, put them back in the tallow and cook until they are browned and crispy. This took 2 minutes for my fries, but will take longer if yours are thicker.
Place the fries on a plate lined with paper towels. Sprinkle liberally with salt, serve immediately, and enjoy! Continue frying batches until all potatoes are cooked and all bellies are full.
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I LOVE making fries this way. The one question I do have is: can/should you reuse the tallow or lard for this purpose again?
Also would love to know please
You can, but I don’t know how many times. I usually do one big deep frying marathon and fry up all sorts of things, and then dump it.
I’m really interested to know the benefits of soaking potatoes in cold water?
I would love to know this too as this is how you lose all water soluble vitamins. I make mine similar but never ever presoak ???
My grandma always swore it made them fry up nice and crispy.
It removes a lot of the starch, it tasted better fried that way.
Can I use lard purchased in my meat section at the grocery for this?
Yes I think that would work well. It’s probably not from pastured pork, but it would still be way better than using vegetable oil, and will taste great.
I found in a book from the 1970’s that if you put the potatoes in the room temperature fat and then turn the heat on, you just fry them once till golden colored and crispy , they actually taste even better
Is beef tallow the same fat i get when i cook ground beef? Should i be saving the beef grease? And if i buy regular grocery store beef is the fat too toxic to use. Thanks.
That is rendered beef fat, yes, but it’s probably going to have quite a strong flavor. You can definitely save that for sauteing, like you would bacon grease, but I wouldn’t use it for deep frying.
Hi there.
I rendered tallow from the leaf fat of a cow that I bought for the freezer. It was my first time. It’s a large clean white piece of fat with the exception of the kidneys, which you have to remove. When you render it, it’s pure white. I would not save hamburger grease to cook with.