French Fries made with beef tallow

This was the raw beef suet, from a cow we slaughtered on the family farm.

After rendering most of the fat, I put it through a sieve and filtered out all the burnt meat and connective tissue.

I only had russet potatoes on hand. I wish I'd had some Yukon Golds but I will try that next time. I also have a nice mandolin for easy fries cutting.

Since they are russets and I'm having steak with them, I decided to make them thick cut.

I rinsed off the excess starch...

Then I put them in the oven for a quick heat blast (my oven has convection modes) to dry them off. If they got mildly par-baked, no biggie.

Into the fryer! I use a standard cast iron dutch oven.

The thick cut required quite a bit of cook time, but they turned out well.

I used popcorn salt so it would stick better. If you don't have popcorn salt, you can crush table salt to a finer grain with a mortar and pestle. If you have neither then I can't help you. :-)

My 2 year old daughter really loved them. She basically ate nothing but french fries for dinner. They didn't taste like McDonald's simply because they were russet potatoes and I believe McDonald's uses Yukon Gold. They did taste exactly like "State Fair Fries" or Five Guys. They were certainly delicious, but I don't know how much better they were compared to using peanut oil (instead of beef tallow) because I didn't have a comparison. Next time I will have to make both and do the Pepsi challenge. The fries were certainly delicious and not much more trouble than peanut oil.

Update: Part 2 with changes based on comment suggestions: http://imgur.com/gallery/DvC0e