Suet and tallow are new buzzwords. People still think bad of them but after gaining some knowledge you would come to know that Suet is a delicious and excellent healthy cooking oil. Plus, it’s a nature-made and the health-friendly way to complement dietary fat.
Suet had been used historically not just as a cooking staple but as a medicinal cream for skin rashes. It was also used to make lamp oils, candles, biodiesel, intertrigo, soaps, engine lubricants, aviation fuel, and leather treatments.
Suet Explained
The dry and crumbly beef fat present around the kidneys and loins is known as Suet. Its commonly used in baking and cooking. It melts around 113 °F to 122 °F and possesses an extreme smoke point: 400-450 °F. It’s good for deep frying and makes pastries soft because of the high smoke point.
How Suet is made?
It is mostly made by using the fat surrounding the kidneys of cows and sometimes mutton. Workers in butcher houses first remove the fat around the flesh, then clarify and slice it into pieces. Afterward, it boiled in water to further purify it. When cooled, the fat got separated from the water and that’s Suet.
Rendered Suet
When suet is heated until it melts, it becomes rendered suet. It is then transformed into tallow and added into some foods. Tallow is also used in bird food and soap.
You can directly apply suet on your skin or consume it. Research suggests that Stearic Acid and CLA both speed up the healing of damaged skin. If you wish to apply suet on the skin, you can warm it cooktop, apply on skin, and remove excess after cooling. Or add some coconut oil or any softer oil in the suet, mix them to get a creamy texture, and then brush up on the skin.
Four Vitamins Present in Suet
Suet contains these fat-soluble vitamins that are essential for overall physical and mental health.
Essential vitamins | Vitamin A | Vitamin D | Vitamin E | Vitamin K |
Their benefits | Plays a vital part in the functioning of the immune system and our skin and eye health. | Essential for the proper working of the immune system and calcium absorption | An extremely beneficial antioxidant and its lower intake may cause Alzheimer’s | Helps in reducing the risk of heart diseases and works as a calcium-binding cofactor that aids in stopping calcification arteries. |
Suet Contains Essential Fatty Acids
Suet is loaded with essential fatty acids, especially stearic acid. These produce and regulate hormones, regulate blood pressure, develop the nervous system and brain, forms healthy cell membranes, improve adrenal, thyroid, and liver function, enhance Immune and Inflammatory response, regulate blood clotting, break down cholesterol and makes hair and skin healthy.
Benefits of Suet
Suet makes your skin look radiant
Suet nourishes the components of our cell membranes as human skin cell membranes consist of fatty acids just like the makeup of suet. Due to its high-fat ratio, it may also lessen inflammation and insulin, thereby making your skin glow.
Suet helps in fat loss
According to some researches, essential fatty acids in suet (particularly Conjugated Linoleic acid and Stearic Acids) might help you burn more fat since those fatty acids influence how some hormones control how we stock nutrients and adjust blood glucose levels.
The hormones are insulin and glucagon. Insulin stores nutrients and glucagon mobilize them.
Suet is allergen free
Many people can’t consume cream or butter because they are allergic to dairy/histamine/casein. Most vegetable and seed oils found in supermarkets are derived from GMO sources. Suet is a boon for those people as they can savor healthy fats without having any allergic symptoms.
Suet’s High Smoke Point Makes It a Healthy Option
It has happened to all of us. We poured oil in a pan over a high flame and got busy with something else until we smell the awful odor and found oil in the pan billowing with smoke. What happened is the oil reached its smoke point.
But, what the heck is a smoke point? It’s the temperature at which fat starts smoking. Lard, butter, or oil, all cooking fats have a smoke point.
Oil producers employ refinement processes that include filtering, bleaching, high-temperature heating to draw out and remove compounds present naturally in the fat that burn at high temperatures and produce smoke. These processes give them oil with a bland taste, lengthier shelf life, and a high smoke point.
What’s wrong with these refined oils is that they are exposed to extremely high heat that oxidizes unsaturated fatty acids, forming byproducts that are injurious to human health. Then they are treated with a solvent derived from petroleum, often hexane, to maximize the extraction.
Afterward, these oils are deodorized with chemicals having a very pungent odor once extracted. This procedure forms trans fats which are harmful to health.
Suet is a far better option than these oils since it doesn’t require this processing and chemical conflict to reach a high smoke point ideal for grilling meats, frying potatoes, and browning vegetables.
It doesn’t corrode when exposed to high temperatures. It will endure the cooking process without needing any harmful processing.
Nutritional value of Suet
These nutrients are present in an ounce of suet (28 g).
| Value | Amount |
| Calories- | 242 g |
| Calories from fat | 240 gm |
| Total fat | 27 gm |
| Saturated fat | 15 gm |
| Polyunsaturated Fat | 0.9 gm |
| Monounsaturated Fat | 8.9 gm |
| Cholesterol | 19 mg |
| Sodium | 2 mg |
| Potassium | 4.5 mg |
| Total Carbohydrates | 0 gm |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 gm |
| Sugars | 0 gm |
| Protein | 0.4 gm |
Suet in Baking
Suet gives an enhanced flavor to every dish without changing the real taste of the dish itself. Its widely used in baking cakes, pastries, muffins, and bread. Suet’s benefits far overweigh the benefits of olive oil as it’s a better option for cooking and deep-frying. In the same way, there are more uses of suet than the uses of coconut oil.
When added to flour, suet makes the dumpling incredibly light because it confines air in the dough while melting. Don’t mix suet completely into the dough but rather mix it to a grainy consistency. Over-mixed suet batter produces a highly dense final product than the desired fluffy and soft dumplings. Another good way to avoid making the final product denser is to add suet in your batter in the last.
Suet swaps substitute fats, like butter, when cooking. It makes the fluffiest batter due to its higher melting point. You can easily use it as an alternative to nearly any dish that involves butter. Make sure that you use the same quantity of suet as the quantity of butter required in the recipe.
To use suet in baking, buy it then grate it and coat it in flour. In this way, it will mix easily and will not create a mess while you are baking.
Conclusion
Suet is a healthy saturated fat widely used in conventional English cuisine like pastry, sweet mincemeat, and steamed puddings. Suet derived from meat gives a dark and rich taste to meat pies and other meat-based dishes while suet derived from vegetables adds a lighter flavor to dishes.
Keep suet in the fridge and consume in 2 to 3 days, otherwise, pack it in freezer bags and refrigerate it to preserve it for many months. Rendered suet can be kept for many months at room temperature.