Thu 11 Dec 2008
Make Your Own Suet
Posted by Nicole under Fun and Games
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I remember when my husband and I first started dating, I lived in Falls Church and was just starting to learn about birds. I had just one feeder hanging off my deck and kept the bag of sunflower seeds in the kitchen pantry since mice had been getting into the storage closet off the deck. One day, I got home a little after my (now) husband and saw him there with a handful of sunflower seeds for a snack. I asked him where he got those and he said the pantry…….we laughed (or mostly I laughed) and he agreed not to eat the birdseed anymore.
A few years later, we moved to Waterford and my backyard birdfeeding went into full swing. I decided to try 
my hand at making my own suet and made a big batch that I stored in the freezer. Needless to say, my husband thought it was delicious (now I label the baggies in the freezer). Here’s the recipe that I’ve been using but there are lots of variations out there:
2 cups of crunchy peanut butter
4 cups old fashioned oats
2 cups lard (or shortening)
4 cups cornmeal
2 cups white flour
1 cup sugar
raisins (chopped up)
sunflower chips
Melt the peanut butter and lard/shortening in a large pot over a low heat and then add the rest of the ingredients. Next, you can either put the mixture into a square pan (and later cut it into cakes) or form it into balls. Either way, put it into the freezer for a few hours so that it sets. You can either put it into a suet cage or crumble it and put it on a platform feeder.
Do you have a suet recipe that you enjoy making? Share it here so we can try it out too!
