For most of the twentieth century, a lot of fried food in America was cooked in animal fat. Then, over roughly a decade, it wasn’t. The potato chip aisle today is almost entirely sunflower, canola, safflower and soybean oil, and most people have never eaten a chip fried the old way.
A handful of small companies are bringing it back with beef tallow chips. I’ve been buying their chips for a while, so this piece is two things at once: what actually changes when you fry in beef tallow, and two brands I’ve paid for with my own money and would buy again.
How chips lost the tallow
The best-known version of the story is McDonald’s. Its fries were cooked in a beef-tallow blend for decades, and in the summer of 1990 the company switched to 100% vegetable oil. The push came largely from Phil Sokolof, a Nebraska businessman who survived a heart attack and spent his fortune on full-page newspaper ads attacking saturated fat in fast food. McDonald’s credited “ongoing research.” The rest of the industry was already heading the same way.
The health argument was saturated fat. The economic argument was quieter and just as strong: industrial seed oils got very cheap. I wrote about the money side of that in How Money Broke Food. When the cheapest calorie wins, the fryer fills with whatever costs least per gallon, and that hasn’t been tallow for a long time.
What is actually in the fat
This is the part most arguments skip. Here is the fat profile of beef tallow next to soybean oil, the most common cooking oil in the US, per 100 grams, from USDA FoodData Central:
| Fat type | Beef tallow | Soybean oil |
|---|---|---|
| Saturated | 49.8 g | 15.7 g |
| Monounsaturated | 41.8 g | 22.8 g |
| Polyunsaturated | 4.0 g | 57.7 g |
Two things stand out. Tallow is about half saturated fat, which is exactly why it was pushed out. And soybean oil is more than half polyunsaturated fat, while tallow is barely any.
That second number matters in a fryer. Polyunsaturated fats are the least stable under heat: they break down and oxidize faster at frying temperatures than saturated or monounsaturated fats do. A fat that is mostly saturated and monounsaturated holds up better in hot oil. That’s a big part of why tallow fries crisp and taste the way they do, and why old-school cooks liked it.
The debate, stated plainly
I’m not going to tell you tallow chips are health food. They’re chips.
The mainstream position, from the American Heart Association, is still that you should keep saturated fat under 6% of your calories and replace it with unsaturated fats, and it names canola, soybean and olive oil as examples. A growing number of doctors, researchers and a lot of people in the real-food world disagree, or think the picture is more complicated, especially for heavily processed oils heated over and over. That argument isn’t settled, and anyone who tells you it is, in either direction, is selling something.
What I can say without overreaching: a chip with three ingredients you recognize is a different product from a chip with a seed-oil blend and a flavoring panel. If you’re going to eat chips anyway, and most of us do, the fat they’re fried in is a reasonable thing to choose on purpose. If the meat labels in What Meat Labels Actually Mean taught me anything, it’s that the back of the bag tells you more than the front.
How to read a tallow chip label
The good ones are short. Potatoes, beef tallow, salt. That’s the whole list.
Things to watch for:
- “Tallow and/or sunflower oil” or similar. “And/or” means the maker can switch between fats depending on cost, and you can’t tell which bag you got.
- A tallow claim on the front and a blend in the ingredients. The ingredient list is the legally binding part.
- Where the tallow comes from. Most brands don’t say. Grass-fed tallow has a somewhat different fat profile from conventional tallow, and if a brand sources from grass-fed or local ranches, it will usually tell you. If it doesn’t, assume conventional.
Two brands I’ve actually bought
No one paid for this section, there are no affiliate links, and I paid for every bag below.
Rancher’s Chips
I’ve ordered from Rancher’s three or four times. The chips are kettle-cooked in 100% beef tallow with potatoes and sea salt, and that’s the full ingredient list. Shipping has been quick every time, and the couple of times I’ve needed customer service, they’ve been good to deal with.
Rancher’s isn’t a California company. Its story starts in Ontario, and it ships free to both the US and Canada, usually within two business days. Bags are 4 ounces (113 grams), sold in 6-, 12- and 18-packs, with a subscribe-and-save option at 25% off. For a shipped specialty chip, I’ve found them modestly priced.
They don’t say where their tallow comes from.
FAT Chips
FAT Chips is made right here in San Diego by co-founders Chris and Erik. I first bought a few bags from them in person after the Pacific Beach 5K last year. Same three ingredients: potatoes, beef tallow and salt, with no seed oils, preservatives or artificial flavors.
Being local, FAT is easier to find on a shelf than in a shipping box. They’re in dozens of San Diego shops, including Frazier Farms, Valley Farm Market and Fox Point Farms in Encinitas, and they sell online with a recurring “Chipscription.” We’ve added them to the directory: FAT Chips on The Real Yield.
Like Rancher’s, FAT doesn’t say where its tallow comes from.
Where this fits
The Real Yield is mostly about farms, ranches and markets, not packaged snacks. These two earned a page because they’re a small, honest example of the larger idea: a product made the old way, with fewer ingredients, by people you can actually reach. For more of that, start with the Producers directory.
FAQ
Are beef tallow chips healthier than regular chips?
They’re still chips. The difference is the frying fat: tallow is mostly saturated and monounsaturated fat and very low in polyunsaturated fat, which makes it more stable at frying temperatures. Whether that makes them healthier is still argued about. What’s not in question is that the good ones have three ingredients.
Do tallow chips taste like beef?
Not really. They taste richer and a little more savory than chips fried in vegetable oil, and they’re usually crunchier.
Is beef tallow the same as lard?
No. Tallow is rendered beef fat. Lard is rendered pork fat.
Where can I buy tallow chips in San Diego?
FAT Chips is made in San Diego and stocked in dozens of local shops, including Frazier Farms and Valley Farm Market. Rancher’s ships to the US and Canada.
Sources
- >USDA FoodData Central: Fat, beef tallow (FDC 171400) and Oil, soybean, salad or cooking (FDC 171411)
- Food Republic, >”The Greasy, Glorious History Of The McDonald’s Fry” (1990 switch from tallow, Phil Sokolof campaign)
- American Heart Association, >Saturated Fat
- >Rancher’s Chips: ingredients, pack sizes, shipping terms, origin story (checked October 12, 2026)
- >FAT Chips: ingredients, founders, store locations (checked October 12, 2026)