Someone asked us last week what we fry in. We told them: beef tallow. They paused. Then they smiled. Then they said, "I knew it tasted different." That's the whole story, really. But since you're here, we'll give you the longer version.
Most donuts are fried in seed oils. Ours aren't. Canola oil. Soybean oil. Vegetable shortening blends. That's what most donut shops — including every major chain — fry in. It's cheap, it's stable, and it's been the industry default for decades. But here's the thing about seed oils: they weren't always how we cooked. They became how we cooked around the mid-20th century, when industrially processed plant oils got marketed as the healthier, more modern alternative to animal fats. The science on that has gotten... complicated. We're not going to pretend to be nutritionists. But we do have a belief we'll stand behind: we think beef tallow is the healthier choice. A natural fat that humans have cooked with for centuries, with no industrial processing, no chemical refinement, no list of additives on the back of the container. Just rendered beef fat, the way it's always been. We're not the only ones coming to that conclusion. But we'll let you do your own research. When we were building Duffers, we asked ourselves a simple question: what's the best fat to fry a donut in? The answer, it turns out, is the same one your great-grandmother would have given you.
Beef tallow makes a genuinely better donut. That's the part we want to talk about first, because everything else is secondary. When you fry a yeast-raised donut in beef tallow, the exterior sets differently. Lighter. Almost crisp, but not in a way that fights the soft interior. The glaze absorbs into the surface instead of sitting on top of it. And the flavor — there's a depth there that vegetable oil just can't replicate. We noticed it the first time we tested. We haven't used anything else since. It's the difference between a donut you eat and a donut you remember.
It costs more. We do it anyway. Beef tallow isn't the economical choice. It costs more than canola oil, it requires more attention in the fryer, and it has to be managed carefully to stay fresh throughout service. We monitor our fryers all morning, every morning. We're fine with that. Because the whole point of Duffers is that we don't cut corners. We use real butter. Fresh eggs. We make our dough from scratch every day. The fat in our fryers isn't an afterthought — it's part of the recipe. Some things are worth paying more for. This is one of them.
So — no seed oils. Ever. Not canola. Not soybean. Not anything with the word "refined" in front of it. Just beef tallow, the way people fried things for hundreds of years before food processing made the cheap stuff the default. If you've already had one of our donuts, you tasted the difference. You might not have known what made it different. Now you do.
Come see us. We're at 1118 Park West Blvd in Mount Pleasant — open Monday through Friday from 6 to 11 AM, and Saturday and Sunday from 6 AM to 2 PM. Everything is made fresh that morning. When it's gone, it's gone. We'll see you soon.
