Pear Tallow Balm: I Tried Beef Fat on My Face So You Don't Have To Be Weirded Out

Look, I saw this thing online. Whipped tallow balm. Pear scent. I was scrolling, probably at like 11 PM, one beer in, and my knuckles were cracking from the winter air. The heat in my apartment is either a sauna or the arctic, no in-between. So my skin was just… mad. I saw this jar of stuff and the description said it was made from grass-fed beef tallow. Beef fat. For your face. My first thought was, obviously, “what the actual hell.” It sounded like something you’d render in a cast iron skillet, not smooth onto your cheeks. But the little Etsy shop had a million good reviews, and I was desperate, and my fancy $60 cream from the mall wasn’t cutting it. So I clicked buy. I figured, worst case, I’d have a very confusing conversation with my mailman.

It arrived last Tuesday, I think. Maybe Wednesday. The jar was smaller than I pictured. Cute, though. I opened it in my kitchen, under that weird fluorescent light that makes everything look sick. I braced myself for a meat locker smell. But it didn’t smell like beef. It smelled like… a pear. But not a candy pear. More like you walked past a pear tree. A subtle sweetness, I guess. Gentle. It was a light and fresh smell, which was the last thing I expected next to the words “beef tallow.” The texture was weird. Not bad weird. It was solid in the jar but then it just… melted. Like, immediately. I put a tiny bit on the back of my hand and it was gone. No greasy film. Just gone. My skin drank it. I stood there for a second, holding the jar, listening to my neighbor’s dog bark. I was confused. Intrigued.

How I Ended Up Putting Beef Tallow on My Face

So, why did I even consider this? After the initial “ew” factor wore off, I got curious. I fell down a Google hole. I was supposed to be working, but instead I was reading about sebum. That’s the oil our skin makes. Apparently, the fat from grass-fed cows—the suet they use to make this whipped tallow balm—is really similar to it. Like, structurally. Our skin recognizes it. So it absorbs deep instead of just sitting on top like a lot of lotions do. It’s not a new idea, either. My grandma, if I really think about it, always talked about using “simple things.” Lard for hands in winter. That kind of grandma wisdom. This is just a cleaner, fancier version of that old-school logic. Made in France, which feels fancy, but it’s really just taking a traditional thing and not messing it up.

I read it’s good for fine lines and super sensitive skin. Even psoriasis. I don’t have that, but my skin gets angry and red if you look at it wrong. Especially in winter. The air gets dry and my face just… protests. It feels tight. It looks dull. I’d been using that expensive cream in the heavy glass jar, the one that smells like a perfume counter. It did nothing. Zero. My skin was still tight and flaky around my nose. So I was out of options. And here was this jar of whipped beef tallow, sitting on my counter next to a pile of mail. I figured, what’s the worst that could happen? I already looked like a dried-up apple. Can’t get much worse.

What This Pear-Scented Stuff Actually Does

Okay, so the first night I used it, I was cautious. I washed my face, patted it dry, and took the tiniest scoop. Like, half a pea. I rubbed it between my fingers to warm it up and then just… patted it on. My cheeks, my forehead, around my eyes. It felt cool for a second, then it was just gone. Absorbed. My face didn’t feel greasy. It felt… quiet. That’s the only word. Not tight, not slick. Just calm. I went to bed expecting to wake up a giant pore or something.

I didn’t. I woke up and my face was still quiet. And soft. Not “baby soft” or any of that weird marketing talk. Just normal-people soft. The kind of soft your skin is supposed to be. The flaky patches by my nose were smoother. Not gone, but better. I kept using it. Morning and night. After a week, the flakiness was just… gone. My skin stopped feeling like it was screaming for moisture all the time. It just felt hydrated. Like it had finally had a drink of water after being in the desert.

The pear scent is nice. It’s not strong. It’s not like you walk around smelling like fruit salad. It’s just a light, fresh thing that happens when you put it on and then it fades. It’s sophisticated in a very simple way. It doesn’t fight with my perfume or anything. It’s just there, and then it’s not. I started using it on my hands, too. My knuckles were a disaster. Red, cracked, painful. I’d put a little of this tallow balm on them before bed. Within a few days, the cracks started to heal. No sting. Just… healing. I told my sister about it and she was horrified until I made her try it. Now she’s asking me for the link.

I got mine from this little Etsy shop that just does tallow stuff. They seem to know what they’re doing. All natural ingredients, which I usually roll my eyes at, but in this case, it’s literally one main thing: that grass-fed beef tallow, whipped into this airy texture. Sometimes the simplest things work. I’m on my second jar now. I keep one by my bed and one in my bag. It’s my winter skin cheat code.

My Skin Now vs. Before

Before this, my skincare was a graveyard of half-used bottles. Things that promised radiance but delivered glitter. Things that promised deep hydration but left a film. My bathroom shelf was a monument to failed experiments. Now? It’s pretty simple. Cleanser, this tallow balm, sunscreen. That’s it. The benefits of tallow skincare, for me, weren’t some magical transformation. It was a return to baseline. My skin just… works now. It doesn’t freak out. It doesn’t get that tight, itchy feeling when the wind blows.

I don’t have a dramatic before-and-after photo. It’s more subtle than that. It’s that my foundation doesn’t cling to dry patches anymore. It’s that I can go outside without my face immediately feeling like parchment. It’s that my husband poked my cheek the other day and said “your skin feels nice” which is the highest compliment because he never notices anything. The tallow balm mimics our skin’s sebum so well that it just helps everything balance out. It’s like giving your skin a familiar building block instead of a bunch of synthetic stuff it doesn’t know what to do with.

Would I buy it again? I already did. I’m probably gonna order another one soon because I’m paranoid about running out. My elbows haven’t been this smooth since… I don’t know when. Maybe high school? It’s that effective. For the price of a takeout meal, it’s fixed about three different skin issues I had. That’s a win in my book.

Quick Questions I Get Asked

Is beef tallow good for your face? Yeah, it sounds nuts, but it actually is. The science-y reason is that the fat from grass-fed cows is really close to the oils our own skin produces. So your skin knows how to use it. It absorbs deep and helps repair your skin barrier. It’s not just sitting on top. It’s old-school medicine, basically.

Does tallow balm clog pores? I was worried about this too. My skin clogs if I think about oil too hard. But this hasn’t clogged anything. Because it’s so similar to our own sebum, it absorbs cleanly. It doesn’t just sit in your pores like some waxy lotions can. My pores actually look smaller, if anything. Probably because they’re not freaking out and overproducing oil anymore.

What does the pear tallow balm smell like? It smells like a real pear, but quiet. Not like pear candy. It’s a light, fresh, fruity smell. It’s not strong at all. You smell it when you open the jar and for a minute after you put it on, and then it fades. It’s nice. It makes the whole “beef fat” thing way less weird.

Anyway. If your skin is being difficult, especially in this dry winter air, this might be worth a shot. I was super skeptical, but now I’m just a person with a jar of tallow on the nightstand. It just works. I don’t know what else to say.