Fast food and beef tallow: Why this old frying fat is back in the spotlight

The fat your fries are cooked in just became a culture-war flashpoint and a marketing pitch. Beef tallow — the rendered cattle fat that built the modern french fry before vegetable oils took over — is back on fast food menus, and chains are racing to tell you about it.

Steak ‘n Shake’s 2025 switch to 100% beef tallow fries put the ingredient back in headlines, but the chain is far from alone. Popeyes, Smashburger and Outback Steakhouse have all been frying with tallow, even as nutritionists debate whether the return is a culinary upgrade or a step backward.

Why fast food chains used beef tallow in the first place

Tallow wasn’t a gimmick when chains first adopted it. It earned its place in the fryer for practical reasons:

• A high smoke point that holds up to deep frying
• Stability under repeated heat cycles
• Crispier fries with a more consistent texture batch to batch
• A savory, umami flavor that vegetable oils can’t replicate
• Less tendency to burn than butter

That combination is what made tallow-fried products distinctive — and what built a generation of loyalty around chains that used it.

Why chains moved away from beef tallow

The shift away from tallow wasn’t driven by taste. Health concerns around saturated fat, pressure from nutrition advocacy groups and growing consumer demand for “healthier” oils pushed chains toward vegetable alternatives. Industrial food production also rewarded the change: vegetable oils were cheaper, easier to scale and easier to standardize across thousands of locations.

For decades, that math held. The flavor trade-off was the cost of going mainstream.

Why Beef Tallow Is Making a Comeback in Home Cooking—and When It Actually Works Better Than Butter

Which fast food chains use beef tallow now

A handful of chains never fully let go — and a few are leaning back in:

Steak ‘n Shake moved its entire fry program to 100% beef tallow in 2025 and has marketed the change aggressively as a return to “classic” frying methods.

Popeyes fries its products in tallow, too. Writing for The Daily Meal, Chris Corlew put it this way: “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.”

Smashburger uses a blend of beef tallow and canola oil. “That means the fries and tots here will have that extra beefy kick,” Corlew wrote. “These fries may not be fried in 100% tallow, like some others on this list, but they’re still very memorable fries.”

Outback Steakhouse relies on tallow for its Bloomin’ Onion — a dish that, according to the chain, accounts for one in every four appetizers ordered, more than 8 million a year. Writing for Tasting Table, Jen Peng noted that “one of the secrets to the Bloomin’ Onion’s success comes from being fried in beef tallow. McDonald’s originally used tallow to make its iconic french fries, with many claiming that was the reason they were so good.”

Why beef tallow matters now

The return of tallow sits at the intersection of nostalgia marketing, social media food discourse and a broader rethinking of which fats Americans should fear. Chains are betting that customers care more about taste and “classic” preparation than about decades-old warnings on saturated fat — and they’re putting the word “tallow” on menus and ads to prove it.

Whether that bet holds depends on the next round of consumers deciding what counts as a better fry.

This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.