It is rendered beef fat, whipped or set into a jar, and used as a moisturiser. That sentence puts people off. Here is why it keeps coming back anyway.
Tallow is rendered fat from cattle. Rendering means gently heating the raw fat until it separates, then straining out the proteins and connective tissue and letting the clean fat set. What you are left with is a firm, off-white to pale-yellow solid that is shelf-stable at room temperature without a preservative.
Tallow balm is that fat, usually softened with something to change the texture. In our case that is Australian beeswax to firm it up and Australian extra-virgin olive oil to soften it back down. Three things. That is the entire product.
It has been used on skin for as long as people have been rendering fat, which is a very long time. It fell out of favour in the mid-twentieth century, not because it stopped working, but because plant oils became dramatically cheaper to produce at industrial scale and mineral oil became cheaper still.
The usual explanation is that tallow's fatty-acid profile is close to human sebum, the oil your own skin produces. Both are dominated by oleic, palmitic and stearic acids in broadly similar proportions. No plant oil lines up as neatly, because plants are not making a lipid barrier for mammalian skin.
Practically, that shows up as absorption. A lot of plant-oil-based creams sit on the surface for a while before they soak in, or never quite do, which is where the greasy-film complaint comes from. Tallow tends to disappear faster because skin recognises the material.
The second thing is stability. Tallow is mostly saturated and monounsaturated fat, which means comparatively few double bonds, which means it does not oxidise readily. Polyunsaturated oils do the opposite. That is why a tallow balm does not need an antioxidant package or a preservative to sit on your bathroom shelf, and why it does not go rancid on your face.
This is the part almost nobody explains, and it is the difference between a tallow balm you will use and one you will put in a drawer.
Fat rendered fast and hot carries residual protein and connective tissue through into the finished product. Those compounds are what smell like a roast dinner. They also shorten the shelf life, because protein is the thing that spoils, not the fat.
Fat rendered low and slow, then strained repeatedly, comes out clean. We strain four to six times. It is slow, it is fiddly, and it is the single biggest cost difference between a cheap tallow balm and a good one. If you have tried tallow before and found it unpleasant, there is a reasonable chance you met a fast render.
Two methods are common. Dry rendering means heating the fat on its own until it melts and the solids fall out. Wet rendering means simmering it in water, letting it cool, and lifting the set fat off the top, sometimes several times over.
Wet rendering pulls more water-soluble impurities out with each pass, so it produces a cleaner, more neutral fat. It takes considerably longer. Most commercial tallow is dry-rendered because time is money. Most tallow that smells like nothing has been wet-rendered at least once.
Every cosmetic sold in Australia has to list ingredients in descending order of quantity. That rule does most of the work for you.
Being straight about this matters more than the sales pitch.
It is an animal product, so it is out if you are vegan or avoiding animal-derived ingredients for any other reason. Anyone with a known beef allergy should not use it. Some people simply do not like the feel of an occlusive balm on their face, particularly in a humid Australian summer, and no amount of explaining the fatty-acid profile fixes that.
It is also a cosmetic moisturiser, not a medicine, and it is not intended to treat, cure or prevent any skin condition. If you have a diagnosed condition, that conversation belongs with your GP or dermatologist, not a product page.
Less than you think. Scrape a pea-sized amount with a fingernail or a small spoon, warm it between your fingertips for a few seconds until it turns to oil, and press it into skin. Slightly damp skin, straight out of the shower, absorbs it best because you are sealing water in rather than trying to add it.
Once or twice a day is the whole routine. On hands, elbows and heels, last thing at night is when it does the most work, because you are not washing it off for eight hours.
Patch-test first on your inner forearm and leave it 24 hours, particularly if your skin has been reactive lately. That advice is boring and everyone skips it, and it is still the right advice.
AusTallow is a cosmetic moisturiser. It is not a therapeutic good and it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or skin condition. Information on this page is general in nature. If you have a diagnosed skin condition, speak to your GP or dermatologist.
100% Australian grass-fed tallow, Australian beeswax, Australian extra-virgin olive oil. Nothing else, and 60 days to change your mind.
See The Balm →