Fast-food chain Steak ‘n Shake announced on Thursday that it will be cooking its shoestring fries in 100% beef tallow by the end of Feb. 2025.
“Our fries will now be cooked in an authentic way, 100% beef tallow, in order to achieve the highest quality and best taste,” Chris Ward, chief supply chain officer for Steak ‘n Shake, said in a statement.
By the end of February, all Steak ‘n Shake restaurants will have shifted from frying in vegetable oil to frying in “100% all-natural beef tallow.”
“The consumer wants the best and deserves the best,” Kristen Briede, the Indiana-based chain’s chief global development officer, said in a statement.
The switch to beef tallow will ensure that Shake ‘n Shake “is delivering the best fries possible,” she said.
Earlier on Thursday, the official Steak ‘n Shake account on X posted, “Steak n Shake to Use 100% Beef Tallow. No Cap.”
“No cap” is a slang term meaning “no lie” or “for real.”
The chain followed that post with another post saying, “By the end of February 2025, all locations will use 100% all-natural beef tallow. If veg oil broke your heart, our tallow will make you fall in love again.”
Beef tallow is the fat that surrounds a cow’s kidney.
Steak ‘n Shake had earlier teased the transition to beef tallow on its X account.
Three days before the announcement, Steak ‘n Shake posted a poll asking, “Cook Fries in 100% Beef Tallow?”
More than 90% of respondents voted “yes,” but it was unclear how long the poll was open.
Steak ‘n Shake has 436 locations throughout the United States, primarily in the South and Midwest. The chain was founded in 1934 and is known for its Steakburgers.
In recent years, the use of “seed oils” in cooking has drawn much controversy.
In October, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lambasted their use in fast-food restaurants and called for a return to using beef tallow.
“Did you know that McDonald’s used to use beef tallow to make their fries from 1940 until phasing it out in favor of seed oils in 1990?” Kennedy wrote in an Oct. 21 post.
“This switch was made because saturated animal fats were thought to be unhealthy, but we have since discovered that seed oils are one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic.”
Obesity rates, he said, “began to drastically rise around the same time fast-food restaurants switched from beef tallow to seed oils in their fryers.”
“People who enjoy a burger with fries on a night out aren’t to blame, and Americans should have every right to eat out at a restaurant without being unknowingly poisoned by heavily subsidized seed oils,” Kennedy said.
Fox News Digital reached out to Steak ‘n Shake for additional comment.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
