The tallow craze represents a return to our culinary roots.

Erik Chalhoub here, having heard more about tallow in the past few weeks than I have, well, ever.

In early January, as we were deciding on stories for this year’s Health & Fitness issue, staff writer Katie Rodriguez mentioned how she discovered the tallow craze on social media, buying a jar for herself at a local store.

The rendered beef fat is used for a variety of skincare uses. Rodriguez pitched a story on the boom of these products, and if there were any health benefits of using them.

But wait, said features editor Dave Faries—tallow has been around in cooking since essentially the beginning of humanity. An article on the health benefits and dangers for this issue would work great for the eat and drink section.

You can read the resulting article in this week’s edition of the Weekly, a story as varied as the ingredient itself.

Rodriguez notes tallow has become popular across a spectrum of people. It’s not just the stereotypical hippies that are using the stuff.

“Instead of throwing this stuff away, there’s now a market for it, which is great,” Jorge Casas, co-founder of Casas de Humo Barbeque in Salinas, told Rodriguez. Casas said tallow is a staple in his family’s cooking, with his wife even going through about 32 ounces of it a week.

Tallow has been at the top of many conversations in our office in recent weeks—supplies that ended up here for the taking were quickly snatched up.