Do I need to render my "tallow"?

[jeniB]

"Tallow" is in quotes because I'm not quite sure if that's what I have! Over the past 36 hours or so I made my first bone broth (yay!) with beef marrow bones. I followed the basic recipe from ISWF and let it simmer for about 24 hours. I ended up with a little over 3 quarts of broth which I strained into glass jars. After just a few minutes I could see a clear delineation between the broth and the fat that rose to the top. This morning I pulled it out of the fridge and there's a good inch and a half of pure white, solid creamy-looking fat at the top of each jar. The broth underneath is completely liquid, not gelatinous at all. I searched the forums and read that the fat can be rendered into tallow for cooking. The thing is, the fat in my jars already looks exactly like the rendered tallow pics I found online. So my question is, can I use this "tallow" as-is, or do I need to put it through the rendering process first. Photo attached for your inspection.

[Tom Denham]

I think you can cook with the tallow as is. It looks like the beef tallow I made by cooking down several pounds of beef fat once upon a time. I am cooking with some lard that was rendered by a friend of mine currently and it looks the same too. 

[Vian]

Suet is raw beef, lamb, or pig fat. It's how the fat comes off the animal - full of connective tissue, veins, and small bits of meat. When you render, you melt the fat to separate it from all the connective tissue and other impurities, then strain it off so that it's purified. What you have at the top of your broth is already rendered. However, be careful about mold. What you may want to do is rinse any remaining broth off the solid cold fat, then put it in a pan and melt it on low heat until any remaining moisture evaporates, then pour it into a separate jar or container that is clean and dry. If there is any moisture with the fat, it will mold very rapidly.

[jeniB]

Thank you both for the info and advice. I melted the fat again and hopefully got the moisture out. It looks and smells a lot cleaner now. It smelled very much like carrots before!