About the writer
King Tallow is the site I wanted to find in 2023 when I started looking into beef tallow and could only locate scattered Reddit posts and a few defensive nutrition blogs. Every guide here is something I have personally rendered, eaten, cooked with, or put on my face. The recipes work because they have failed first.
How I got here
My first batch of tallow happened in October 2023. I bought a couple of pounds of suet from a local butcher to season a new cast iron pan and ended up with twice as much rendered fat as I needed. I left the extra in a mason jar on the counter, used it for a week of cooking, and noticed two things. My pan stopped sticking after one seasoning. My hands stopped cracking from washing it under cold water.
I started reading. Most of what I found online about tallow either treated it as a forgotten miracle or wrote it off as artery-clogging fat. The middle ground (what tallow actually is, how its fatty acid profile compares to other cooking fats, why it suits some uses better than others) was scattered across food science papers, old farm bulletins, and a handful of forum threads. I kept notes on what was solid, what was hand-wavy, and what nobody had bothered to test.
By mid-2024 I had a folder of test batches. Rendering methods, balm formulations, comparisons against ghee and lard, a soap that came out chalky on the first try and great on the third. King Tallow went live in September 2024 as a place to put all of it in one URL so I could stop linking my friends to the same Google Doc.
What lives on the site today
Plus eight wild-game tallow profiles, sixteen use-case guides, and a small library of rendering tutorials.
Methodology
Different kinds of content get tested differently. Here is what each type goes through before it ends up on the site.
Each recipe runs through at least eight batches before it gets published. I vary one parameter at a time (ratio, temperature, cure time, ingredient source) so I know which change caused which result. The published version is the one that survived all eight runs without splitting, going rancid, or causing skin reaction in a forearm patch test. Failure modes get documented in the troubleshooting section so you can avoid repeating them.
I buy every product I review. Full price, on Amazon or the brand's direct store, never sent free. I use each one daily for at least 14 days before writing the review. The photographs on review pages are of the actual jar I bought. Reviews are revisited 90 days later and revised if the formula has changed or my opinion has shifted.
Side by side cooking tests use the same pan, the same protein, the same heat setting, on the same day. For nutrition comparisons I cite USDA FoodData Central by entry. For health claims I cite peer-reviewed sources where they exist and I say so when they do not.
Skin-condition pages carry a visible medical disclaimer at the top. Tallow can support a healthy lipid barrier. Tallow is not a treatment for medical conditions. When I describe what tallow does for acne, eczema, or razor burn, that description sits on documented fatty acid chemistry plus my own experience, never on claims I cannot back up.
Timeline
First batch. Two pounds of suet from a butcher in town, rendered for cast iron seasoning. Ended up with a jar of extra fat and started cooking eggs in it.
First skincare batch. A simple 4:1 tallow and jojoba face cream that I rebuilt seven times before it stopped feeling greasy.
First soap. The first attempt came out chalky and lye-heavy. The third attempt is the recipe that sits at /make/soap today.
kingtallow.com goes live with the first 20 posts.
"Top 10 Beef Tallow Balms of 2026" published. Each product on that list was bought, used for 14 days, and photographed.
Site sits at 116 long-form posts, 15 deep DIY guides, 18 cooking fat comparisons, and 130+ logged test batches.
Editorial standards
These are the rules I hold the site to. If you spot something on the site that breaks one of them, email me and I will fix it.
Email contact@kingtallow.com with a typo, factual error, or outdated info and I fix it within two business days. The post adds a dated correction note at the bottom.
Every product review and comparison gets revisited in April and October. Prices, availability, formula changes, and my own opinion after another six months of use all get folded back in.
NIH, PubMed, USDA, or peer-reviewed journals. If a claim has no good source I either drop it or label it "anecdotal, my experience only" so you can weigh it correctly.
I earn a commission on qualifying Amazon purchases. That commission does not steer the recommendations, because every product was reviewed before the link was added. Any post that contains an affiliate link declares it at the top.
No sponsored posts. No paid placements. No brand can pay to be added to a list or removed from one. If that ever changes, this paragraph changes first.
Honest limits
Veterinary use of tallow. Some readers ask about tallow for pet skin, dog paws, or cat coats. I have never tested any of that and have no business writing about it.
Dermatology cases that need a clinician. If you have an open wound, a suspected skin infection, or a chronic condition that is being treated, please see your doctor before you take advice from a website.
Anything that would require a license I do not have. I am a self-taught home cook and a careful one, not a registered dietitian, not a dermatologist, not a chemist. Where those credentials matter, I link out to people who hold them.
Affiliate disclosure
King Tallow earns a commission on qualifying purchases through Amazon Associates and a small number of direct brand partnerships. Affiliate links are marked with rel="sponsored" in the page source so search engines and ad blockers can identify them. Commissions cover hosting and the cost of the products I buy to test. They do not steer the recommendations: every product on the site was reviewed before the affiliate link was added, and a product can be dropped from a list at any time if the brand changes the formula or the quality slips. A separate page at /affiliate-disclosure spells the long version out.
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