Beef dripping is no longer old-fashioned – here’s how top chefs are cooking with it

From cocktails to ‘chips bravas’, British restaurants are getting creative with animal fats

Beef dripping is as British as milky tea. Present in many of our traditional dishes, including a proper fish and chips supper, it’s the reason Yorkshire puddings exist. 
Most of us, however, won’t have a jar at home – cooking with animal fats might extend to goose fat roast potatoes or some grated suet in the mincemeat at Christmas. And lard has fallen out of favour these days. Plant oils, particularly olive, have long been considered healthier and more sophisticated. 
But top chefs are returning to beef fat, and the reasons are manifold: its rich flavour, mouth-coating texture and high smoke point makes it a great option for deep frying and roasting. For some, it’s a cheaper option than olive oil, while others cite minimising waste – with the economic benefits that brings – as a draw. Even Jamie Oliver’s new range of frozen foods includes beef dripping chips. 
At one of London’s buzziest new restaurants, Tollington’s, there are lengthy queues for Iberian-influenced dishes including “chips bravas” in which the potatoes are fried in beef fat and served with a spicy sauce and aioli. They’re rich, delicious, and, according to one critic, “hands down the greatest chips I’ve eaten”. It’s fitting, then, that Tollington’s occupies a former chippy. 
Tollington’s isn’t the only London spot turning to dripping. Camille in Borough Market butchers whole animals and the fat is too valuable to bin. It’s used in surprising dishes such as a chocolate, star anise and beef-fat caramel pudding. Rogue Sarnies, a trendy sandwich spot in Hackney, is equally motivated by using up large cuts of beef like topside, which it uses to make sandwiches like a wagyu beef dip. Chicken for its Cluck Parm Delight is fried in rendered beef fat. “We’re no waste where possible for environmental reasons, but cost is a big factor,” says co-founder Zac Whittle. In a tough economic environment throwing fat away would be criminal; using it means operators buy less oil. 
Chefs also praise beef fat’s versatility. At Uisce in Cardiff, Tommy Heaney uses it in everything from scallops to hollandaise. He even makes a beef-fat and miso-fudge old fashioned. “It’s such a well-rounded cocktail with all the flavour elements: salty, sweet, savoury and a touch of umami,” says Heaney. In Manchester, beef fat is smeared on the now legendary flatbreads at Erst.  
At the Black Bull in Cumbria, chef-owner Nina Matsunaga has gone further than most by almost entirely replacing vegetable oils, save for a few vegetarian dishes. She uses it for frying lamb bonbons, to emulsify a red wine jus, even in a hollandaise. Beef fat has long been popular in the North, and northern chefs are at the forefront of the resurgence. Bread and dripping is served at Restaurant Story, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in London, a nod to one of chef patron Tom Sellers’ favourite childhood dishes. 
In Sheffield, Luke French, who runs Jöro, uses beef fat across his tasting menus from snacks to desserts, “and everything in between”. French sources large cuts, and there is always an abundance of fat. “It is a very cost-effective way of getting lots of flavour into dishes, vegetables especially,” he explains. French is also resurrecting long-standing British traditions by preserving meat in beef fat. “We coat entire sides of beef in aged, roasted beef fat and then age them again in our salt chamber to enhance the deep, rich flavours and textures.” 
In London it is rare to find a chippy frying with beef fat – The Fryer’s Delight in Holborn is a notable outlier. It is still common in parts of the North, including Yorkshire – especially in former mining areas, says Andrew Crook, president of the National Federation of Fish Friers. Crook recently took over the fish shop Oh My Cod in Chorley, Lancashire, where he opted for dripping over vegetable oil, noting a general move back to animal fats. “I was taking a risk as it’s not what customers are used to in my area, but I’m on week three and getting great feedback. I have a separate pan with vegetable oil but very few ask for it. They seem to love the dripping.” Animal fats were long vilified, but if Britain’s restaurants and chippies are anything to go by, they’re firmly back in vogue. 
Beef fat has “earthy flavours that take on any flavour well,” says Matsunaga, who often infuses it with spices and chilli, or pours it over rice to top with beef or tuna, and says it can be used in place of butter. It’s ideal for frying root vegetables, and makes a tasty spread, too, when set. Karl Green, head chef at Suffolk gastropub The Unruly Pig, says one of his guilty pleasures is whipped beef dripping with sea salt smeared on toasted sourdough or focaccia. 
Roberto Costa, who founded the Italian steakhouse group Macellaio RC in London, recommends using beef fat when frying a steak, rather than a vegetable oil. If making a traditional beef roast, says Liam McKay, head chef at Chef’s Table in Chester, beef fat is the way to go. It can be used on the beef, for the vegetables and, of course, to make the perfect Yorkshire puddings – there’s practically no need to use another source of fat. Not everything would work, however, says French. “It’s weird with fruit. Except bananas and citrus.”