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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ต.ค. 2016
- Fats and oils are indispensable in leather dressing. Here is a basic tutorial on rendering fats for industrial uses such as dressing leather.
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Many types of oils are used in tanning leather, but most of them are animal fats. Rendering animal fats for tanning is easy. Rendering fats for consumption requires more care and will be covered in the future. Fat should be cut small for fast rendering and cooked at a moderate to low heat to prevent burning. once most of the fat is melted out of the pieces, it is strained and pressed to remove the liquid oil. The fat can be stored in jars for later use. The leftover pieces are called cracklin's.
If for whatever reason you want/need a cleaner fat (making soap, etc) water boil it. Half water, half fat put on medium heat and hold it at a GENTLY rolling boil for a few minutes, up to an hour or so. Let it cool and stick it in the fridge. The next day you'll have a brick of cold solidified fat on top of some very dirty water. Scrape any top scum off the fat, and scrape all the nasty sludge off the bottom. Discard the water & sludge. Same process as cleaning beeswax. Works on any fat/oil/wax, although the softer fats like from poultry never fully solidify from the cold.
Yes, I've done that before. Have to be careful to get all the water back out for edible fats though. Thanks.
SkillCult
Yep. I figured you'd already know. Just throwing it out there for passers-by
thanks. good idea. I probably should have mentioned it as an option.
a soap making video would be nice
Thank you for making these videos!!
Done this before but still learning thanks
if you've got the time and an oven, fat rendering gets even easier. if you set the oven well under the smoke point of the fat you can eliminate the risk of burning. I take it one step further when I want really neutral fat and use a metal steamer set above a pot. the liquid fat drips out of the steamer and into the pot so it isn't cooking away with the solids. it's a good method for soap making fat where you really don't want it to smell like cooking meat.
great stuff. Ive heard of using an oven before, but never tried it.
Makes sense. Isn't there more of a limit to how much fat you can get
out of it when steaming?
sorry, I was being unclear. I put the pot and steamer filled with minced up fat into the oven. the pot below the steamer is dry and empty and is just used to catch the rendered fat. every half hour or so I'll drain off whatever fat has collected. eventually liquid fat stops dripping quickly and I just finish the rendering the normal way keeping the the neutral fat and the meaty smelling fat separate for different purposes.
That sounds like a really great system. It is very challenging to render without getting any toasted protein flavor. I'm going to give that a try next time. I may start using a thermometer too. I hate being reliant on stuff like that, but I haven' really found any reliable cues to how hot fat is until it's too hot.
this may still require too high of a temperature to work, but you could always stick a sliver of green wood into the oil and observe the intensity of bubbling. a thin shaving with lots of surface area would probably show a reaction at a sub 300f temp.
Great vid Steve you touched on all the great important details, I can wait to see the vids of rendering fat for consumption and how to dress leather with the rendered fat.
I hope you’re feeling well lately.
Have a blessed Day
Anthony ✝️✌️❤️😊
So interesting and helpful. Love it!
Ive done this sort of thing many times myself. You kinda have to with domestic hogs; they are some fatty critters! :) (Or at least mine were.) But I did still learn from this video. The "fill to very top and seal hot" is a good example and an excellent tip. I'll be sure to bare it in mind next render I do.
Looking forward to that future video on fats. Of all the tanning process, this is one area I am more curious in than others.
There's going to be a lot of good tanning stuff in the axe strop series. I'm still dealing with lard from my hog last year. She was a lard hog though. Crazy amounts of fat.
Just thought I'd mention that I've found it doesn't matter if you fat has a little meat specks in it. I also like to just put it in a plug in roaster, put chopped fat in and fill water up till just covering the chunks. Then just put it at just above boiling. This way it never burns. If you chop it small like you did you can just leave it overnight simmering and just top off water before going to bed. Once all the pieces have completely shrunk down all you do is strain the chunks filling a pot with the liquified fat and water. Then put in fridge overnight. Then you can just take the disk of pure tallow off the top of the water and wipe it dry. All of the impurities will be in the waste water and a thin layer will be on the underside of the disk of tallow. I just fliip the disk over and scrape an eighth of an inch off the bottom to discard the debris, hair, meat specks etc. Then you can take that block of tallow melt it down without water and strain it directly into jars and you will have completely uncontaminated shelf stable tallow without needing to cook all the water out. Your yield might be a small fraction lower but not significant at all. Then you can use it for a wide range of things versus just leather and lubricant purposes. Anyway just thought I'd share. It's the simplest and most thorough way I've found so far. Love you videos man.
That sounds great. I know some people use the oven, but I've always done it on stove top. I think for dressing leather it's way less critical what you do. I'm probably still stuck between making quality table fat, which I find I do need to be very careful with, and fat for industrial use, which certainly matters less. Thanks for sharing.
True. I did it like you for a long time because I was just making it for lubricant. Then started wanting more shelf stable stuff for soap, jar candles and cracked skin balm for me during harsh U.P. winters. The last few years I have been experimenting with collecting the organ caul fat and soft fat on the back and hind quarters to render seperately. It actually works really nice for cooking as long as you have fruit trees and acorns/nut trees around along with decent grass. I've found if you like a 80/20 beef burger you can use this particular type of fat in a ratio of between 5 and 10% with pure venison meat to make a delicious burger without the mouth feel. Rule of thumb for me is if it's unusually hard or chalky fat put in a container marked industrial use only LOL
Cool, we get very little fat in deer here and almost no abdominal fat except kidneys.
@@MrMcGillicuddy The hard or chalky fat as you described it is likely processed suet. Suet is an incredibly great ingredient in plum pudding, English puddings, real mincemeat pies, soda breads, etc. Just grate the block of cold processed suet into small pieces, about the size of No.8 bird shot and place back into the refrigerator. Mix the very cold or frozen grated suet into your other ingredients just before baking. The bread dough, pudding batter, or mincemeat pie filling will set up before the grated suet melts. When the suet melts the liquid fat is absorbed into the surrounding matrix and leaves tiny holes where it used to be. The baked item then seems very light, airy, and fluffy. Not great for your heart but boy it is great for your mouth!!😀
Thanks keep up the good work
Great video.
I've definitely screwed this up before when rendering tallow for pemmican.
It's so easy to overheat it. Water boils, but the only real indicator for fat that it's super hot seems to be smoke.
If you dip a wood chopstick it will bubble but not as too much water. So you know it’s hot
Hi!! Did you try tanning with mint? Like in Morroco. Thanks for sharing! Regards!!
been messing around with this quite a lot after seeing your video and getting some lamb fat in my possesion. Actually, I like to add water efter rendering the fat. I strain the whole thing as you do, but then I add boiling water on top. In this way I can extract virtually all liquified fat and the water makes it easier to control the temperature, plus lots of dirt and stuff you don't want will be more soluble in the water phase or will just sink to the bottom. After cooking, I let it cool, until the fats hardens and I throw away the liquid. With this step I can really refine the fat a lot and can be repeated as much as I want.
Thank you, that was really interesting. I look forward to the future videos. Hope you are doing well. E :)
I am doing much better than average and hoping to stay on an upward trajectory!
I got a little bit of fat off a pheasant, very yellow in color. i rendered it down and put it in a very small jar, right to the top. After sitting all night only half of the fat has solidified. I'm hoping the pheasant fat will be a light dressing for a softer, lighter leather. I've got two deer hides I plan on tanning and am looking forward to more videos from you, you seem to have provided some of the best/detailed information out there.
Fowl fats generally contain lots of unsaturated fatty acids and are soft at room temp. Sometimes fats seem to separate into different fatty acids, like portions that are solid and portions that aren't. And yeah, should be good for dressing soft leathers and just maintenance oiling.
SkillCult Sweet!!! Now all i need is to gather some more materials for tanning, not sure what I've got that will work best, I'm sure there is something around here with sufficient tannins. Not much trees in central North Dakota. Most ash, Boxelder, and a few elm. But we do have plenty of deer, ... if you can draw a tag.
Do you have any sumac? That is really good. There must be something. Willow, alder... Start really small. Squirrels are perfect to learn on and are always conveniently running in front of cars.!
One of the two deer hides I got was not skinned very well so I will cut that up into smaller pieces. Acquiring hides will be about the easiest thing for me to get, (with time being the hardest). I have already tanned some fish skins, (catfish, Pike, and walleye) and a beaver tail and they all turned out surprisingly well. Still lots of room for improvement, which is where your videos and quick responses have helped out. I have seen some sumac here and there, but the amount I would be able to easily acquire would be a small... enough for a just a small piece, which I still intend to do. If the sumac works out as well as you say, I will plant lots of it at my house, and on my parents farm for a more long term solution.
Almost every area has some kind of willow and I think most of them will probably make a good tan if you can get enough. The poplars are another one to look out for though I know less about them or their tannin content. I'll publish a list of materials sometime for reference.
Glad you brought up the chicken part. We raise the meat breed that only take about 6 weeks from chicks to adults. Last time i messed around with deer fat i just tossed it. Next time if i either find the fresh road kill or hunt the animal and save the fat i will not have to waist the crackling if we have chickens. Thanks for a good tip!
Chickens devour that stuff.
I bet. They sure love slugs i give them. Lol
can ur wax give pull up effect?
I would say a thermometer is almost an essential tool for this. You can use the point where the medium increases above waters boiling point as a cut off.
The energy input of the heat has to overcome the state change of the water to water vapour and that causes a plateau around 212 (100c). Once the water content is very low the temperature rises very quickly. You can take off the heat and the carry over will get the last of the water.
Rice cookers from the thrift store are really good for this because they work on a similar system to sense the liquid water content. Just huck it all in a rice cooker (pick one with fewer buttons, ideally 1) and it will switch to low as soon as the water is gone.
Lastly slow cookers, especially if you have a lot of fat the element can’t supply enough heat to start it on fire but will get all the water out.
you may be right. I'm always stubborn about not relying on measurements and measuring tools, but it seems to be nearly impossible so far to judge heat in liquid fat until it's already hazing up and that takes very careful observation. I'll try taking it off the heat as you say an see if that seems to do off the last water. That's a good idea. I'm always tempted to increase the heat to make sure there is no residual water crackling sounds. Then I know it's done for sure. not that it matters if fat for tanning goes a little rancid honestly. It doesn't seem to make a speck of difference. Thanks for the good comment.
The smoke point of lard (pork fat) is 370°F ! Which i render at about 300°F, well below the smoke point, but high enough to cook off any water! Use the thermometer doing the process then you don't have to guess!
I usually guess at everything. It's a somewhat odd preference, but it does mean that I come up with ways to do things that don't require tools and measurements.
I wonder how a crock pot slow cooker would work?
A crock pot works great. Add a little water at first, fill the pot with finely chopped fat, turn onto high (or low) and cook for about 12 hours. Cooking time is the down side of using a crock pot. See comments somewhere below regarding cleaning and canning fat.
If you simmer in water the fat will float, it will stay white. Then your pass it through a sieve. Let it cool some, Put the jar with still some water in inside your freezer. Then you can just peel off the top layer = pure fat. You can then use that pure fat any way you want.
Did you ever do the "properties of different fats" video? Im a bit curious about bear fat, beeswax, neatsfoot oil, birch tar and pine tars properties in dressing leather. 😊
No, I haven't. I would stay away from beeswax and pine tar. the birch tar is really a whole different thing. I don't know much about it, but it was widely used in Russia. Look up the wreck of the Metta Caterina. they dredgedup some leather. I think a couple hundred years old and still good. Treated with birch tar.
I've heard you can't beat bearfat for anything. It is the best.
Would this work for preserving and maintaining leather especially hats and boots?
Yes for sure. Tallows are good for boots, warm the leather and oil so it soaks in.
Very interesting to see using natural fat to condition leather. Can I use the finished tallow in supermarket instead. That can save me a lot effort. In Germany, I can find cow, pig and goose tallow in jar or packed like butter. I wonder if any preservative should be added, since tallow is kinds of food. If it goes bad, it will destroy the leather.
I think it should be fine. I would use it.
Hallo, can you please tell me how do you use rendered tallow to tan a skin? I have tons of sheep tallow and sheepskins. Im thinking about sulfutating process, how to turn tallow to fatliquor. But it seems quite complicated and lots of chemicals are needed.
Fat is only for lubricating and conditioning the skin. Tanning is separate. There is an oil tanning process, but it uses certain types of oils, like fish oil, which oxidizes in the skin creating chemical compounds that tan it. Tallow cannot do that. I don't do any chemical tanning, so I can't help with that. There are other videos on my channel about tanning and one on fatliquoring. th-cam.com/play/PL60FnyEY-eJA7D2FJhI5AvWVx7oqjb4xX.html
Can highly saturated vegetable oils be used instead of animal fats on leathers? For instance coconut oil?
I imagine so. However, coconut oil is not as stiff as tallows at room temp, so take that into account.
so you take all the flesh from when you fleshed the hide chop it up(removing as much meat as possible) and cook it to make tallow
I usually get the fat off the carcass, but some off the hide. Try not to get too much meat and blood, though for oiling leather, it doesn't matter so much.
I’ve rendered deer tallow before. I’ve used it on shoots I cut for arrow shafts
that tend to check (swamp rose, Rosa palustris, for one), as part of my pine
pitch mastic for attaching stone arrow points (pitch, charcoal, a bit of finely
chopped dogbane fiber and plus a few drops of deer tallow), and mixed 50/50
with beeswax as a muzzleloader bullet lube (it does really well for that). A
friend of mine gave me a couple of jars of rendered bear fat which I used in
pie crusts, biscuits, etc. It was really great stuff- clear at room temperature
and pure white when refrigerated (I had to refrigerate it to get it to work
properly in biscuits and pie crusts). I believe my friend pressure canned it
after rendering it- do you think that’s necessary if the fat is going to be
used for culinary purposes? Great video, BTW.
Canning might exhaust all of the air/oxygen, which should help slow or prevent oxidation and therefore rancidity. Pretty sure that would help, though that should happen at a lower heat than is achieved in pressure canning, like a steam or waterbath. I usually just top the jars all the way up with hot fat and seal them so there is really no air in the jar, and it will vacuum seal as it cools off. I'd still recommend storing in a cool area or even the fridge. Bear fat, like lard which is similar, is very unsaturated ( liquid at room temp) and therefore very unstable. It can't really be kept for very long before it starts oxidizing. Probably best used in 6 months, even stored in a cool area. Sealed in a jar in the fridge it will last longer. I just pulled out a jar from the fridge form a long time back and it is still pretty good.
Thanks, Steven. I think his thinking was that an animal product ought to be pressure canned, just in case. I refrigerated the stuff he gave me before after I opened it, and I don't think any of it stayed at room temperature for more than the couple of months it took me to use it.
Assuming the fat is well rendered and all the water is cooked out, it shouldn't matter.
As mentioned above, rendered bear fat is almost the same as lard, which comes from rendered pig fat. As with any fat, if you "wash" it by using 50/50 rendered fat/water, bring to a boil, cool to room temperature, and place in your refrigerator over night. The next day, remove the fat cap and repeat as many time as necessary to remove all protein, which is the main cause of spoiling, heat the cleaned fat to 250°F to remove all water and then can the hot fat at about 220°F. You don't have to fill the canning jars all the way to the top if you invert the canned fat for a couple of minutes after you place the lid and ring on the jar. The 250°F fat will thoroughly sterilize the already clean jar and greatly reduce spoilage. Just remember, any fat that is soft or liquid at room temperature will eventually become rancid even if frozen. Any fat that is solid or hard at room temperature such as beef kidney suet if properly processed as per above, can be stored at room temperature for several years without spoiling. Processed suet is one of the main ingredients in pemican, some of which has been found to be eatable after 50 years!
You are crazy and I love you:)))
Thank you, thank you, I try.
I know this video is pretty old, but I'm hoping you'll (or someone in general) can help
How well would skunk fat work? I skinned one and I'd like to use it since I got a lot off. I know it'll smell at first since I handled it while skinning but I'm going to cook it over a fire outside so the people I live with don't kill me lol
Sure, as a light oil. It is very soft at room temperature I'd skip it if it smells bad though. Fats are very good at absorbing smells. One way fragrance is collected for perfume is hanging cloths soaked in fat in greenhouses full of flowers.
@@SkillCult Thank you so much! And it doesn't smell absolutely awful, just a faint scent
@@tansybean1854 Good luck :)
I am hungry after watching this is that weird? =) So this also made me think of this show Alone, on History that I was watching last night. Not sure if you know much about it but you can find out some basics fairly easily. If you've followed the show up until this season(6 - still ongoing, survivors are in the arctic area of Canada), no one has gotten any big game until now. Well this guy Jordan gets a moose with a bow a few episodes back and the crazy thing is he is you would think he is set for food but he is still losing a pound a day (they do med checks randomly). I guess Moose meat is so lean and most of the excess fat on the animal he had carved off and stored in a separate container because he knew he was going to need it. Well that fat was stolen by a wolverine. 1 lb of it apparently containing 35,000 calories. Since you know so much about subjects like this and the indigenous people of California I was curious if you had insight into this and the importance of fat and carbohydrates in regards to a survival or even living off the land type of situation. I obviously knew nothing about this before watching this show last night and prompting myself to a do a little research.
I haven't seen that show yet, but planning to because Woniya is a colleague and student of mine from way back and part of my extended primitive skills family. She started a youtube channel this year too. If a person wanted to live on primarily fat for calories here now, they would be hard pressed. Some smaller animals, like raccoons, possums sometimes, skunks are sometimes fat. The deer are nearly always lean. The biggest source in the old days was probably dried salmon. Some acorns contain quite a bit. The idea that all hunter gatherers were living on fatty meats is just not true. People are opportunists and can do well on varied diets. In many areas that means eating carb heavy diets, in others there is more meat and more fat animals, but if both were available, people very likely ate the same diverse spread of macro-nutrients that most traditional cuisines gravitate toward. People also ate seasonally a lot and the more nomadic, the more seasonal you have to eat, because you can't carry around hundreds of pounds of food. Another factor is size of people. Modern large people need a lot of food. Alone is a bizarre idea. Take a social animal that is possibly barely skilled enough to survive for a while, let alone thrive and stick them in an extreme climate they aren't familiar with, in a totally unknown place, at a horrible time of year. Now 5 or 6 people with reasonable skills working together, starting at a time when they might have a chance to get it together seems much more interesting.
You mentioned acorns as a source of fat. Acorns are also a great source of protein and carbohydrates. I read one source that said acorns were the main food gathered by Native Americans in most cases making up 50% of their yearly food supply and in some western tribes as much as 70%. The biggest draw back is that all acorns are very high in tannin, which in high concentrations can be toxic to humans so the tannin must be removed before eating. White oak acorns are supposed to lowest in tannin but much less productive than red oaks. In any case, the shells must be removed, the acorn meat chopped into a course dice, placed in a mesh bag or basket, and then rinsed ideally in flowing cold water e.g. a flowing spring, for several days or at least several changes of a cold water bath. Then thoroughly dried or slightly roasted and finally ground into a flour, which can be made into ash or pan cakes, added to stews or soups, or mixed with ground fresh or dried meat or pemican to make meat loaves.
2 legged bacon or pine cones?
Mmmm 🥓 🥓 🥓
brainssssssss
brains rock. The cool thing about brains is that they also emulsify other fats.
could you use bacon fat for this purpose? XD
I don't know any way to take the bacon smell out. Lard is okay though. Everything would want to eat your leather... bears, children, racoons, dogs, hipsters...
My sides.
I'd you take the effort to "wash" the bacon fat at least twice using the 50/50 fat/water and refrigerate each time. You can remove the fat cap off the top of the dirty wash water and then heat one more time to remove all water before canning.
dont you guys eat blood anyway? like in bloodwurst and stuff? why all the fuss about blood in fat?
For tanning, not as big a deal, but in fat for eating, it can affect the flavor
Centigrade please
lol. Dressing like bear's meat. Everybody's worst nightmare. The whiter the finished product the purer the fat. Yellowed solid product still has proteins in it and still smells like food to animals even if odorless to humans. Rule of Thumb: Frostier the color, the less likely to be bothered by critters over it when waterproofing boots or gear.