I started Erda about two years ago after getting tired of rubbing Epic cooking tallow straight out of the container onto my skin. It worked surprisingly well, but I knew there had to be a better way. Growing up outside, swimming in lakes, building things with my hands, I always gravitated toward simple and natural. When it came to skincare, I wanted the same thing. That search eventually led me to make my first batch of tallow balm with my wife, and Erda was born.

But before we get into that story, let me answer the question I get most often: what actually is tallow?

What Tallow Is

Tallow is beef fat that has been rendered, meaning slowly heated to separate the pure fat from connective tissue, water, and impurities. The result is a stable, creamy fat that humans have used for thousands of years. Before the 20th century petrochemical revolution made mineral oil cheap and synthetic moisturizers the norm, tallow was one of the primary ingredients in salves, balms, and skin preparations across nearly every culture. It kept skin soft through harsh winters, helped heal wounds, and protected against the elements.

The tallow we use at Erda is grass-fed and finished, which means the cattle ate grass their entire lives. That distinction matters more than most people realize, and we will get into why.

How It Is Made

Rendering is a clean and simple process. Raw suet, the hard fat found around the kidneys and loin of the animal, is slowly melted at low temperatures, then strained to remove any solids. The resulting fat is cooled and filtered into the pale yellow substance you find in a jar of our Tallow Body Balm or Face Balm. Nothing complicated. Nothing added. Just clean fat from a well-raised animal.

Why It Works So Well on Skin

This is the part that surprised me when I first started researching it. Human sebum, the oil your skin naturally produces, shares a remarkably similar fatty acid profile with tallow. Both are rich in oleic acid, palmitic acid, and stearic acid. When you put tallow on your skin, your skin recognizes it. It absorbs in a way that most synthetic moisturizers simply cannot replicate, because those products are built from compounds your skin has never encountered in nature.

Grass-fed tallow is also rich in fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, each of which plays a real role in skin health. Vitamin A supports cell turnover. Vitamin D supports immune function in skin cells. Vitamin E protects against oxidative damage. Vitamin K supports healing. These are not added synthetically. They are naturally present in the fat of a healthy, well-raised animal.

Not All Tallow Is the Same

Grain-fed tallow exists, and it has a noticeably lower nutritional profile. The vitamins, the conjugated linoleic acid, the favorable fatty acid ratios that make grass-fed tallow so good for skin, these all depend on what the animal ate. We source grass-fed and finished specifically because we believe the quality of what you put on your skin matters just as much as the quality of what you eat. Those principles are not separate for us. They are the same principle applied in two different directions.

The Bottom Line

Tallow is not a trend. It is a return to something that worked long before synthetic skincare existed, and now we have the science to explain why. If you want to try it, our Tallow Body Balm is a great place to start. Four simple ingredients. Nothing you cannot pronounce. Just real skin food from real animals raised the right way.