I’ve noticed the same thing with beef fat. The cracklings just don’t seem to crisp up the way pork cracklings do.
@kaclp I was talking about rendering the tallow out of the raw fat, in order to use the tallow for cooking with. Eating tallow is not particularly pleasant, because it’s just greasy beef fat, without much flavour. Great for cooking with, however! For eating, you want the fat cooked with the meat, as @Ilana_Rose writes.
Something to bear in mind, while I’m thinking about it, is that while a lot of people find that fat in the diet is more satisfying than protein, there are people who need a bit more protein and a bit less fat to satisfy their hunger. You may have to experiment a bit to find what works best for you. One of the things I really like about this way of eating is how it encourages us to listen to our bodies—so much of our modern culture tends to make us think that we know better than two million years of evolutionary adaptation.
I can get hunks of pork fat (pork belly or pork trimmings) that will sear nicely and I can eat whole, or I can get hunks of beef fat that will rend out if I cook at too high of heat. Do I have this right?
I have done some experimenting with this. It doesn’t matter if I eat high protein and mod fat or high fat and mod protein, as long as carbs are low I get satiated. However, I only lose weight if I eat high fat and mod protein and in general feel better eating this way. A little unfortunate, bc I would prefer it the other way around. But anyway this is why I’m looking for hunks of fat I can eat whole… Thanks for your help everyone.
I don’t eat pork fat except what comes with the pork meat that I buy from time to time. I eat beef fat every day. It doesn’t sear well. I just warm it gently and eat it essentially raw alongside my meat. It’s actually very good.
I’m exactly the same as you. High fat, moderate protein for both wellbeing and weight loss/maintenance. Also, I’m in way deeper ketosis which feels so much better to me in a number of ways.
I do believe its been proven beyond an epidemiological doubt by Harvard researchers, working in conjunction with the nurses, that the pathogens in animal fat are airborne and have a really long gestation. SO, even if you seem to be improving your health, you are really killing yourself unless you start eating statins by the handful and wash it down with an organic whole wheat oatmeal sandwich, dressed with brown rice fiber and sweetened with all-natural beet sugar. And if it sticks in your craw a little, drink organic juice, ideally cranberry (anti oxidant rich) to allow it to slide down your gullet.
A bit off topic, but your mention of juice reminded me of something that happened several years ago.
A friend of mine had diabetes and was in the hospital and I was visiting her. The nurse came in and did a fingerstick and said “Your blood sugar is quite high, I need to give you some medication. Do you want a glass of orange juice or Ginger ale to take it?” So many years of bad info on how to manage her diabetes. And it ended up killing her.
I wrote a post in another thread this morning that touched on this subject. However, I don’t generally talk about eating hunks of fat since most people aren’t interested in doing this. But I’ll add some thoughts here on why I think it really helps with satiation.
First, here is the post:
Eating unrendered meat fat offers two major benefits over any liquid fat (butter included as it is liquid at body temperature).
First, it is encased in a cellular structure. One ounce of unrendered beef fat has 19 grams of fat and 3 grams of protein. It’s also very nutrient rich compared to rendered fats.
This cellular matrix offers two big benefits with respect to satiation. First, it does activate satiation via engagement of gut stretch receptors. Secondly, the digestion is slowed by the protein matrix in the same way that meat protein from muscle meats slow digestion. Thus the fat is not free to rush quickly into your bloodstream and leptin release happens over a much more extended time frame.
I think for many people the rush of fats to the bloodstream, from lots of oils on a high fat diet, are responsible for that nauseated feeling that excess fat can give. I’ve yet to experience this a single time from unrendered meat fat.
This is how we evolved to consume fats. Oils and dairy are recent additions to our diet that we are not particularly well adapted to. Some people tolerate them better than others but that doesn’t mean that they are optimal nutritionally.
Pork belly from my local butcher is much more satiating than oils and butter. It is also delicious, and no queasiness. I’m going to make it a regular part of my diet for quite a while. It has the cellular structure you talk about and good amount of protein.
On Monday, I asked one of the butchers if I could get big chunks of fat. I felt kind of silly asking, but he was so nice. He said he’d save me pork fat but the beef fat gets ground up for processing game. He told me to come back Friday for the pork.
Went to pick it up today and two other butchers there and didn’t know what I was talking about. The butcher from Monday ended up coming out and said he saved me beef fat too. He said he saved the best cuts of fat for me! I felt touched by his kindness.
Then I got in line to pay for it, 6 men deep (hunting season), and they all insisted I cut in line and let me pay first. Again, so nice!
Anyways I’m very excited. Ten lbs of pork fat and ten of beef. Both in big chunks like I wanted!
Looks like the pork fat has skin left on it. I won’t eat it, so I’m wondering how to give it to my dogs…
No, I think they taste bad and they gross me out. Though, I have used it for breading and that wasn’t so bad. So maybe I can save some skin for that, but I’ll still have a lot left over.
Aren’t butchers awesome! They love to talk about their meats too. I’ve learned a lot from them. They really get tickled at the idea of skinny looking girls hunting for fat to chow down on too.
I can see they gave you a good price too. I’ve got three butchers here willing to sell me fat and I’m so grateful for the one who’s just giving it to me because the other two want to charge over $3 a pound which feels like gouging for something they normally toss out. At the price you got I’d happily pay anywhere.
Let me know if you find any specific way you like to eat the beef fat. I don’t do pork fat myself as pork in general isn’t as easy on my health issues as beef so I only eat it rarely.
You mean for suet? I tested eating suet. Bought some frozen suet and thawed it. Took it to work with my normal “meat” lunch. Suet is – chewy. And sometimes has “silver skin”, which is almost impossible to chew.
I didn’t mind eating suet, but it might take a bit of eating to get used to it.
If you do anything else to it, the “tallow” part starts coming out. For instance, before I tried to eat thawed suet, I tried cooking suet. You lose a lot of the tallow, so a lot of the “oil” (or more likely, liquid fat). You end up with something that’s not quite suet. All the “hard” stuff (protein?) stays in there.
It’s still edible, but I thought just eating raw suet was better and faster.
Somebody said here , Rendered fats like butter, oils, tallow and lard are much less satiating than solid meat fat that’s still bound up to it protein cellular structure and still contains all of the nutrition
So I did try that today. The rendered tallow has a different texture and taste than what I already have from a purchase on the website.
Not sure if there are directions going forward that have to do with the difference.
I’ll try what somebody said in another post:
Bake suet at 150 F for 1.5 - 2 hours. Eat.
When I make tallow, I cut it into chunks, run those through the food processor until they are small, then put in a crock pot. But to show you how “hard” they are, you have to do small amounts in the food processor, and even then you’ll get binding.
If you cook it down to make tallow, it won’t be the same at all. Tallow is basically “oil”. Suet is oil + protein, collagen, connective tissue, etc.
I’ve rendered tallow from beef fat. It doesn’t have much taste. Nor does lard, for that matter, especially compared with bacon grease. But many people apparently find that they don’t like the taste of tallow, or of lard, so they must have a taste. Come to think of it, I find the coconut taste of unrefined coconut oil to be a bit off-putting in certain contexts. To each his own, I guess.
