03/05/2025
To Our Guests-
This post is long so please accept our apologies.
We believe it is necessary for everyone to know where we are at and give you a glimpse into our thought process on how we prepare our fried menu items.
Lately, restaurants and chains switching to beef tallow have made headlines on the news and on social media. While the reception has been generally positive on social media, we take an all-encompassing approach to evaluating items and processes that make up a good portion of our sales.
For around a month, we decided to test a commercial version of pourable beef tallow in a couple of our fryers to determine the pros and cons of making a switch. We used the brand that is widely available to restaurants who are changing over. We concluded the following- which is subjective- in other words, strictly from our opinion and experience.
Pros:
-Slightly more “beefy” flavor in fried items
-Items cooked up lighter and less oil was wasted during cooking
-Pourable beef tallow is less expensive than pure peanut oil which helps with operators margins
- Beef tallow is shown to be “healthier” than a variety of seed oils commonly used for frying (soybean and sunflower oil are the most common seed oils)
Cons:
-Too much flavor transfer over pure peanut oil
-Very difficult to dispose of due to viscosity
-Pourable beef tallow in restaurants is often the cheapest possible version of beef tallow (which is very expesive when rendered properly) and often times is not as high quality as guests are led to believe
- Food allergy issues (alpha gal among other meat allergies) seem worse than anything peanut-oil related.
After we trialed this and analyzed it, we made the determination that we will continue to stick with 100% pure peanut oil to fry with. This is the highest quality oil to use in our opinion, and our guests, who have been with us for decades deserve our best fried product.
Even though restaurants making the switch to pourable tallow will be viewed favorably in the short-term, we are committing to the product that “brought us to the dance” so to speak.
Lastly, our staff takes food allergies seriously, and even though we have lots of new faces, please do not hesitate to ask for a manager if you are allergic to any ingredients we use. We will always do our best to accomodate you. Even though this post was a bit long, I will promise to make future ones shorter and not take over your feed😆😆.
We are grateful for your understanding, and we appreciate your business!
From the family at Nick’s
