A history, and a recipe. I disagree with this, though:
His cholesterol was over 300, comfortably in the danger zone for heart attacks. Lack of self-control aside, it was fatty foods that nearly killed him. Thus, when he emerged from the hospital, he did so on a one-man mission to fight Big Fat.
It was not the fat that nearly killed him. We now have abundant evidence that the problem with McDonald’s fries was not the tallow, but the potatoes themselves. I’ve long advocated that, given that the company is the largest cattle rancher in the world, it should go back to tallow, and get rid of the unhealthy seed oils.
What I don’t understand about the recipe is why it uses Crisco, with just a little tallow added, presumably for flavor. It would probably be much better, and certainly healthier, to simply fry them in pure tallow.
I’ve already gone out and bought some beef tallow, which is now a rather overpriced, “boutique” item at the grocery store, though Amazon sells it by the tub pretty cheap. Crisco is hydrogenated cottonseed oil (more here on how it became dominant) with a neutral flavor, so perhaps too much beef tallow makes the fries taste “beefy”.
Tallow is fat rendered from organ meat, and typically has a much more potent flavor than the fat rendered from muscle tissue. I make beef jerky, and its extension, pemmican (a mixture of pulverized beef jerky and rendered fat – a 3 ounce, 50/50 mix is the nutritional equivalent of a one pound steak). One attempt to make it using tallow resulted in an unpleasantly flavored product that was hard to swallow. (Lard works much better, but is getting harder to find.)
But the article notes that McDonald’s used a mixture of tallow and vegetable oil. I can see that working. Particularly with peanut oil, which I have in large quantities (having just fried a Thanksgiving turkey). I think I’ll give that a shot, using russets prepped as described in the article (with the “desert cure” performed in my food dehydrator).
I also remember a McDonald’s commercial from the 1960s, but can’t find on Algore’s amazing Internet. Here’s a 1970’s version of it having the same theme: “change back from your dollar.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErlAEWG7xE0
The version I vividly recall had the beleaguered father collect the food for his family of four, and as he was about to leave, was stopped by the counter jockey saying “Sir! Your change!” It was literally change from one dollar!
In the late 80’s I was stationed in Spain. When we took the kids out to McDonalds for the first time in Madrid, we commented on how much better the fries tasted than in the US. Turns out they were still using lard to cook them in. I’m sure that has long gone by the wayside.
Lard is easy to find in the Mexican stores because they still use it pretty heavily.
Pemmican is great, but to my knowledge hardly any stores sell it except perhaps Amazon or specialty outlets.