6 Chain Restaurants That Use Beef Tallow In Their Cooking

Talk about fast food French fries long enough, and it's only a matter of time before beef tallow comes up. In fact, most potato dishes agree with the animal fat ( beef tallow definitely produces professional-quality roasted potatoes ). Tallow is fat rendered from beef and used for frying.

Foods fried in tallow are generally thought of to have an extra umami kick; something more savory than outright beefiness. For French fries in particular, the exterior gets crispier while the interior stays fluffy. Sounds like a good deal to us.



Well, if it's so life-changingly delicious, then why isn't this stuff in every restaurant? Turns out, just like most things in life, there are pros and cons to frying with beef tallow . For one, it's less readily available than something like canola oil. That means beef tallow can potentially mean higher prices for your French fries and onion rings.

Beef tallow also automatically makes your dish incompatible with vegetarian and vegan diets. Many restaurants aren't in a position to cut a huge portion of their customer base off from something as popular as French fries. Then again, tallow fries taste really, really good.

Here are six chains that give their fried foods a dunk in beef. 1. Steak 'n Shake Steak 'n Shake fully switched to beef tallow fries in 2025.

When it did, the chain got a special shout-out from Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for its commitment to remove seed oils from their restaurants.

It's not just the fries, either: onion rings and chicken tenders are also now cooked in 100% beef tallow. When people talk about seed oils, they're talking about the source of the oil. In the past, people cooked more with fats like beef tallow or lard.

The increased availability of canola oil, peanut oil, and sunflower oil — just a few types of seed oils — in the latter half of the 20th century meant people using animal fat less. Now, not all vegetable oils are necessarily seed oils, but all seed oils fall under the vegetable umbrella. The proliferation of these in recent decades is why even Steak 'n Shake, for all its gung-ho enthusiasm about tallow, says that completely eliminating seed oils will take some time.

If it's any consolation, seed oils are not as unhealthy as some would have you believe. Rebecca Kerber, a clinical dietitian who is also a certified diabetes care and education specialist, told UCHealth that seed oils have been getting a bum rap in recent years. Different cooking fats have different pros and cons, as far as health benefits go.

Your body needs both Omega-3s, which animal fat is high in, and Omega-6s, which seed oils are high in. 2. Outback Steakhouse Steaks, of course, are not typically fried.

Classic steakhouse sides, like baked potatoes or roasted veggies, don't get fried, either. Still, what would a trip to Outback Steakhouse be without at least a Bloomin' Onion? And that's not to mention the delectable fries and chicken wings. Well, the Bloomin' Onion, fries, and wings are all fried in beef tallow.

If a big steak isn't enough of a beefy meal for you, rest assured that you can totally get some apps and sides with a hint of beef. The benefit of hindsight is a funny trick that the human brain plays. If you've tasted any of the items from any of the restaurants in this article, it might be easy to think: "Oh yeah, that makes sense.

" Something about Outback, though, really seems like this would be an obvious restaurant for using tallow in its fryer. Maybe it's the fact that Outback is a steakhouse. Maybe it's the signature crisp that the Bloomin' Onion gets coupled with the soft, sweet onions.

Whatever the reasoning, Bloomin' Onions are awesome, and it's at least partially due to the beef tallow in the frying oil. 3. Popeyes Popeyes' chicken is not merely good.

When you bite into a wing or a thigh, words fail. That's fine, because talking with your mouth full is rude. When The Daily Meal ranked fast food fried chicken joints according to both crunch and flavor, Popeyes came out on top.

Maybe that's a spoiler for our ranking article, but come on. You already know that Popeyes is the champion of fast food fried chicken. Who knew the secret to great chicken might be beef? Popeyes uses tallow for all of their fried products.

If you've ever tasted their Cajun fries, maybe this makes sense. Those fries are wonderfully crispy while maintaining a delightful creaminess in the middle. This also means Popeyes' Shrimp Tackle Boxes are not necessarily safe for Catholics to eat during Lent, like many other fast food fish options, such as Chick-fil-A's seasonal fish sandwich .

Of course, you can always simply go to confession. Maybe it's because we're professional food writers who view Popeyes as practically a sacrament, but the priest has absolved you, right? 4. Fry The Coop A fried chicken joint located in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, Fry The Coop specializes in chicken breast sandwiches.

All of this local chain's chicken products get double-fried in beef tallow. The end result is a juicy, succulent, and crispy chicken breast. That's a famously difficult meat to cook without drying it out completely, but frying helps keep chicken breasts juicy .

A method like double-frying, which Fry The Coop uses, is a great way to ensure an extra crispy outside. If you ever find yourself in the Chicagoland area, try to make sure you stop for one of these impressive chicken sandwiches. The pickles are thickly cut, with a nice acidity and the right structural integrity to stand up to the succulent fried chicken.

The homemade coleslaw and Coop sauce are excellent, lending both a different crunch and extra savoriness. A flavorful brioche bun holds everything together. Underneath all of that, though? The secret to this chicken is beef.

5. Smashburger Smashburger uses a blend of beef tallow and canola oil in its fryers. That means the fries and tots here will have that extra beefy kick.

It's a great complementary side to the Smashburger burger, which is juicy and cheesy. These fries may not be fried in 100% tallow, like some others on this list, but they're still very memorable fries. The way that smashburgers — as in the food, not the restaurant — emerged as a trend in the late 2010s and early 2020s was something of a return to form for the food.

The earliest burgers in chains were not big, thick tavern burgers. Think White Castle, think OG McDonald's hamburgers. That means that having a smashburger and fries cooked in beef tallow is a pretty throwback meal, even if the company making it was founded in 2007.

Maybe we're food nerds, but it's pretty cool to see the pendulum of history swing back around like this. 6. Portillo's The chain most known for hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches puts a meaty twist on their sides, too.

Both the crinkle-cut fries and onion rings at Portillo's take a bath in beef fat. That's right, there's a chance every item in your Portillo's order has some manner of cow in it — provided you grab one of the famous milkshakes instead of a soda. The chain may have come a long way from its origins as a humble shack , but the frying methods remain old school.

Perhaps the most famous chain to come out of Chicago, it would almost be surprising if Portillo's didn't use tallow. Chicago is a city that got rich off of cattle stockyards and was once described by the poet Carl Sandburg as the "hog butcher of the world." Portillo's frying their sides in beef tallow is simply carrying on local tradition.

Sure, Chicago has plenty of restaurants good for vegetarians and vegans — but Portillo's is not one of them..