Our journey to tallow skincare begins with a personal story.

Our family was on a mission to find an effective skincare remedy for our daughter’s eczema.

After trying prescription medications, steroids, and what felt like every drugstore cream available, we were desperate for results and ready to try anything.

That’s when we learned about an ancestral skincare secret: tallow balm.

It’s made from rendered beef fat and was the skin balm of choice for our great-grandparents.

We heard that tallow balm was moisturizing and almost bioidentical to the skin. Plus, it’s full of the fat-soluble vitamins, fatty acids, and minerals that build healthy skin.

So we tried it. We asked a local farmer for leftover tallow and hand rendered it in our kitchen. We had no expectations, just a drive to find the right healing tools for our family.

What surprised us? Our tallow balm was so effective it made us rethink everything we knew about skincare.

 

The Benefits of Beef Tallow for Skin

When rendered, tallow turns a brilliant yellow color, thanks to the high levels of nutrients it contains. In the early days, our family called it “liquid gold,” both for the color and because the skincare results were so valuable to us.

Here are just a few benefits of using beef tallow for skincare:

 

• The Nutrients Are Extremely Bioavailable

Most drugstore skincare products are made in a lab. Not only do they contain microplastics and endocrine disruptors, but they also include vitamins and minerals that are manufactured, manipulated, and broken down.

These nutrients rarely provide the same benefits that we see in whole-food ingredients like beef tallow. Our skin responds well to tallow because it’s recognizable, bioavailable, and packed full of the exact nutrients our body craves.

 

• Tallow Balm Is Gentle on Sensitive Skin

If you have firsthand experience with eczema, redness, or sensitive skin, you know that finding a new moisturizer or cream is easier said than done. Since tallow is almost bioidentical to human skin, it’s extremely gentle.

Even our customers with sensitive skin find tallow balm so effective they won’t leave the house without it. While tallow balm is typically used as a face moisturizer, it’s also effective for your first-aid kit — soothing cuts, scrapes, and burns without irritation.

 

• You Don’t Need a Multi-Step Skincare Routine

Five-step skincare routines might be a scam. Even when you combine a drugstore moisturizer, eye cream, cleanser, toner, and serum, your skin is not getting the same amount of nutrients as those provided by a tallow moisturizer.

We personally love the added benefits and luxury of a full skincare routine. But we want women to know there are minimalist options that don’t require multiple steps or a bunch of expensive products. If the commitment to a multi-step skincare routine is holding you back from skincare altogether, we want tallow moisturizer to act as your all-in-one.

 

• Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA)

This is a powerful fatty acid that’s known for its anti-inflammatory effects. In studies, it’s shown to be anti-aging, cell regenerating, moisturizing, soothing, and protective of the skin barrier. In fact, the same study said that conjugated linoleic acid “outperformed current wound care standards” for wrinkle improvement and irritated skin. This fatty acid is a major reason why customers find tallow moisturizer so effective at calming irritated skin.

 

Why the Tallow Skincare Trend Is Here to Stay

To our surprise and delight, the world learned about tallow skincare last year on TikTok. Consumers began to show off their glowing and acne-free skin, all thanks to beef tallow skincare.

But unlike other product trends that come and go, tallow skincare is only growing in popularity. It seems like almost everyone has a jar of beef tallow in their bathroom.

Tallow skincare is here to stay because it works.

Because for years, we’ve been chasing skincare products that overpromise and underdeliver.

And we’re so ready to find a product that truly makes our skin — and our lives — better.

Our Mission: Keeping Tallow Skincare Nontoxic

Here’s the thing about natural skincare: it often gets hijacked.

We bet that just a few months from now, you’ll see tallow balms all over your Instagram feed and even in grocery store skincare aisles.

While this is exciting, it’s important to remember that not all tallow balms have the same benefits.

With popularity comes mass production. This means additives, cheap fillers, hormone disruptors, and questionable ingredients hidden under the “fragrance” label.

Not only are ingredients important when making healthy and wholesome skincare but so is the way you process it.

With water or high-heat processing, the tallow may become contaminated and get stripped of essential nutrients. If you find one tallow skincare brand to be more effective than another even though they have the same ingredients, it’s likely because of the processing methods.

 

Dry-Rendered vs. Wet-Rendered Tallow Skincare

The goal of rendering tallow is to separate the beef fat from potential impurities (like connective tissue). It also gives us a more luxurious skincare product that doesn’t smell like beef. There are two preferred ways of rendering tallow skincare:

 

• Wet Rendering. This method uses both water and tallow — boiling them multiple times to separate the beef fat from any impurities. It will likely be the preferred method for grocery store tallow balms because it removes the beef odor entirely and doesn’t burn as easily.

 

There are some concerns with the wet rendering method. For one, the beef tallow may become contaminated with water. and it tends to mold or go bad faster than dry-rendered tallow. The other concern is that extremely high temperatures can disrupt the amino acid and fat-soluble vitamin profile of the tallow balm.

 

If you’ve tried tallow balm before and found it ineffective, this may be due to a wet-rendered batch.

 

• Dry Rendering. This is our preferred method for rendering tallow skincare. It involves melting the tallow down without water or any additives. This method does require more care and attention to detail, but the benefits are worth the effort.

 

Dry-rendered tallow tends to last longer on shelves and shouldn’t require any preservatives. Better yet, the vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids (like conjugated linoleic acid) remain intact and bioactive — ready to improve your skin barrier.

 

Our Tallow Skincare Standard

Beef tallow is becoming the skincare standard. The truth is, there are few products or moisturizers with the efficacy and versatility that tallow moisturizer provides.

But with more popularity comes more saturation. Let’s set our standards high so that poorly rendered tallow doesn’t change how we experience this product.

 

• Dry Rendered at Low Heat

Always make sure your tallow moisturizer is dry rendered at low heat. This ensures the vital nutrients (vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids) remain intact and ready to soothe your skin.

 

• Grass-Fed and Grass-Finished Tallow from Local Farms

Any time we use beef fat, we have to make sure the cows are fed with a high-quality diet. The reason for this is because both toxins and nutrients are stored in fat cells. So a cow fed with genetically modified corn is going to produce much lower quality tallow than a cow fed with a natural grass diet.

 

• No Additives, Chemicals, or Fillers

Tallow moisturizer is extremely effective on its own — without additives or fillers. It naturally has a long shelf life, too, so preservatives aren’t needed. Check the ingredient label of your tallow moisturizer carefully. Make sure “grass-fed tallow” is the first ingredient and that everything else is recognizable.

 

• Tallow Skincare Should Be Odorless

Yes, even if you dry render tallow moisturizer, it can still be odorless. It just takes intention and experience. Your tallow balm should never smell like beef, and it definitely shouldn’t contain synthetic fragrances to “drown out the smell.”

If you’re unsure about your tallow brand’s odor, order an unscented tallow balm and see how it performs (and smells) once applied.

 

• Intentional Ingredients to Enhance Your Tallow Moisturizer

Chemical additives and intentionally curated natural ingredients are two different things. It’s completely possible to enhance the effectiveness of your tallow moisturizer with natural ingredients — like cold-pressed olive oil, raw honey, essential oils, blue algae, emu oil, and raw beeswax. Our only caution is to make sure these ingredients are used to upgrade (not cheapen) the product.

 

High-Quality Tallow Balm Is a Skincare Staple That’s Here to Stay

Quality tallow moisturizer is here to stay.

You reached for it because you’re tired of compromising your health with chemical ingredients. And you’re ready to see real results in your skincare routine.

As tallow moisturizer grows in popularity, it’s our job to preserve its quality and efficacy. We can do this by educating ourselves, supporting the right brands, and creating higher standards for skincare.