Does anyone have a tallow pie crust recipe? I’ve just rendered a heap of tallow and would love to work it into pastry.
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You can use any decent pie crust recipe. Substitute the tallow 1:1 for whatever fat is called for in the recipe. I’ve done it with leaf lard in place of vegetable shortening and it works perfectly. Keep in mind that, if you’re substituting for butter, you may need to add a tiny bit more water to the recipe to get the correct consistency as butter has considerable water content and tallow should have almost none.
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Agree completely with Alan. I like the recipe in The Gift of Southern Cooking by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock (p 242) as it uses both butter and lard, so you get the buttery flavour but the flaky lightness of lard.
But if this is beef tallow and you have a lot of it, chips/French fries are the way to go. Double fry – par cook in oil, cool, then fry again, hot and fast. So good! Especially if you have a nice bottle of Amontillado sherry, or of course sparkling wine …
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I didn’t even think about the water content in butter vs tallow. Thank you Alan! Tara, I will try fries at some point but…frying is such a mess that I have to work to get myself exited about it.
Two tips: get an electric fryer (much less messy! I love my FryDaddy) or, if you have a patio/outdoor space with access to an electrical socket, get an induction burner and plug it in outside. They are super responsive, so it’s fairly easy to control the heat, and if you fry outdoors your place won’t smell like chips for two days.
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