A5 Wagyu beef fat, when melted, is a clear oil, packed with heart-healthy oleic acid.
By making this A5 Wagyu tallow at home and sharing it with your friends and family, your ordinary home cook status will instantly sky rocket to magical wizard hero chef status. Add a little to a pan, scramble in a couple of eggs with a pinch of salt and you're likely to blow people's minds. It's that good.
By carefully cutting the exterior fat off of your A5 Wagyu steaks and storing them in the freezer, you can collect enough that you may be able to render a full jar of A5 Wagyu tallow. Professional chefs know what I'm talking about.
It's also an incredibly adept cooking fat, with a high smoke point and packed with heart-healthy oleic acid, which gives it anti-inflamatory properties. In Japan, they have studied Wagyu fat's ability lower bad cholesterols in the body while protecting good cholesterols. Beef tallow in general can promote radiant skin and boost fat-burning, and it helps the body absorb more vitamin A, D, E and K, to boost the immune system. In short: you should be using more beef tallow!
If you're on a Keto diet, then you probably already know this. To render regular beef fat (AKA leaf fat) at home is easy — here's the recipe. For A5 Wagyu fat, read on...
Rendered A5 Wagyu fat, aka "liquid gold"
How to render A5 Wagyu fat (small quantities)
If you have 1 or 2 A5 Wagyu steaks, then you likely have enough trim fat to render a 1/4 to 1/2 cup of tallow. Here's how.
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Carefully cut any pure fat from the outside of a couple of your A5 steaks
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Chop the fat into small pieces
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Place in a small, dry cast iron or stainless steel pan
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Place on your stove on the lowest heat setting and wait 30 to 40 minutes
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Carefully pour the resulting clear, melted fat into a cup, leaving any unrendered bits of fat behind.
How to render A5 Wagyu fat (large quantities)
I happen to have 20 lbs of A5 Wagyu fat in my home fridge at the moment. The perks of working closely with farms in Japan and the Japanese government, I guess.
Here's how I rendered it:
- Thaw the fat to room temperature (although it can be easier to handle and slice when it's a little colder and more firm) and use a sharp knife to cut it into small chunks (about 1 inch cubes). Because A5 Wagyu fat is so clean, it washes easily off the hands even after handling a lot of it. As opposed to working with ground beef where the fats tend to stick to your fingers, requiring a ton of soap and scrubbing to get it off, with A5 wagyu fat you won't have this issue. Even though I worked with 5 lbs of it for 30 minutes, it washed off in seconds!! A5 Wagyu fat truly is magic.
- Place these in a large stainless steel pot and put in an oven at 200°F.
A5 Wagyu fat cut into small chunks for rendering
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Stir every 15 to 30 minutes for the first hour, and every hour thereafter.
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After about 3 to 12 hours*, remove the pot and, while still hot, strain through cheesecloth into a glass bowl.
*I rendered 5 pounds of A5 fat overnight for over 12 hours. Smaller quantities will take far less time.
I had to tape the cheesecloth to the pot to hold it in place.
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Use a funnel to pour the strained melted fat into glass jars with lids.
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Allow to cool, and then place in your refrigerator.
In the end I was able to strain a total of 3.1 lbs of usable tallow out of the 5.3 lbs of A5 Wagyu fat I started with. That's nearly 50 ounces of tallow! If I'd kept at it longer, or started by cutting the fat into smaller pieces, I probably could have yielded more.
Keep in mind, I started with 5 full pounds of A5 Wagyu fat for my first batch. You're not going to have that much, especially since it's impossible to purchase A5 Wagyu fat in the United States. However, you can purchase A5 Wagyu steaks from Crowd Cow and you may be able to collect enough extra fat trimmings to render one jar. And it will be worth it. Trust me.
On the right: what it looks like when it cools completely
Shopping list:
- 6oz Glass jars by Nakpunar
- Norpro Stainless Steel Funnels
- Cheesecloth (includes string)
- 12 quart pot
A5 Wagyu Tallow is magic in the kitchen.