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Hot take: I used to toss beef fat trimmings in the bin, then a guy in Cleveland set me straight
For years I ran my shop on the idea that fat was waste. If it wasn't going in the sausage, it went in the trash, and I figured that was just the cost of doing business. Then last month a guy named Ray came in, maybe 70 years old, said he'd been cutting meat in Cleveland since he was 15, and watched me scrape a whole pile of clean fat off a strip loin into the bin. He didn't get loud or anything, just asked me what I thought tallow cost per pound at the restaurant supply place down the street, and when I guessed low he laughed and said I was throwing away 10 to 12 bucks of product every single day. He told me his old shop rendered everything down on Fridays and sold it to a taco place and a soap maker, and that it paid his electric bill. I sat with that for a week, then ran a small test batch myself and got almost three quarts off scraps I'd have dumped. I'm not saying everyone has the time or the setup, and food safety rules matter, so take this with a grain of salt. Anybody here rendering on a small scale, and what do you do with it once it's done?
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