#1674 - Clay Newcomb

Clay Newcomb (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

What's happening, brother, how are you?

Clay Newcomb (0:15)

I'm doing very well.

Joe Rogan (0:17)

It's always interesting to meet someone in person when you've heard them on a podcast. I've heard you, I don't know, a hundred times on The Meat Eater Podcast, so to see you in person.

And then to start listening to your podcast, which is Bear Grease, which is a hilarious name for a podcast, and if people don't know, Bear Grease rendered bear fat is actually a very valuable thing, and it's great to cook with, and it's, like, I'll never forget when I found out about bear hunting, about bears being good to eat, it was actually from Steve Rinella when he was explaining to me about blueberry bears, and then I watched that video that he put out of him hunting this bear in Alaska that had been eating nothing but blueberries, and so when he's breaking down the bear and taking the fat off, the fat is actually purple because this bear has been eating so many blueberries that it's in its flesh, and he said it is the most delicious meat you'll ever eat.

Clay Newcomb (1:18)

Yeah. Well, I mean, bear grease, bear fat is essentially whatever that bear's been eating. You know, it's flavored, whether it be by acorns or berries or whatever, so...

I've got some bear grease for you, Joe.

Joe Rogan (1:33)

Oh, exciting.

Clay Newcomb (1:34)

I come burying many gifts, if you would like. If you would like to see what I've got here.

Joe Rogan (1:38)

Tell me what you got there.

Clay Newcomb (1:40)

You know, talking about bear grease and trying to connect it to a podcast, I mean, at some point, I'll have to explain the metaphor of bear grease.

Joe Rogan (1:49)

What's it explaining now?

Clay Newcomb (1:50)

Well, so bear grease at one time was this highly valued commodity.

I mean, used as a unit of currency on the American frontier. And bear grease, bear oil would be the rendered fat of a bear that would turn into liquid, like this right here. This is for you.

Joe Rogan (2:09)

Thank you.

Clay Newcomb (2:10)

Have you ever had, I mean, I know you've bear hunted, but have you had bear grease before?

Joe Rogan (2:13)

No, I've only, I've eaten bear. I've never rendered bear fat or cooked anything in bear fat. I've only just taken the meat and cooked it.

Usually slow cooking.

Clay Newcomb (2:23)

So what you would do with that is you would cook with it, you would fry with it, you could make pastries with it. You can use it to condition leather.

Joe Rogan (2:31)

You can use it to condition- It's supposed to be amazing for pastries, right? For like pie crust.

Clay Newcomb (2:35)

Yep.

And so there was a time when bear grease, bear lard was super valuable on the frontier before refrigeration because bear fat didn't go rancid as quickly as pork lard. So like on it, you would have pork and bear would be essentially the places where you would get it. This lasted longer. That'll last on the shelf at your house, unrefrigerated, for over a year.

Joe Rogan (3:00)

Why does it last so much longer?

Clay Newcomb (3:02)

Just whatever the constituency of bear lard is, it just stays good for that long. So going back to this metaphor of the name of Bear Grease, in our podcast, we're exploring things, and even in the tagline of the podcast, we say that we're exploring things that are forgotten but relevant. And we're searching for insight in unlikely places. And so like this bear grease, I brought you some stuff that you can do with bear grease. This is some bear fat lye soap.

Have you ever used animal tallow soap?

Joe Rogan (3:41)

No.

Clay Newcomb (3:42)

Just for like bathing, washing your hands?

Man, that's incredible stuff. It really is. 100% all-natural. I mean, it's an ancient process of using lye and animal tallow.

Joe Rogan (3:54)

What is lye exactly?

Clay Newcomb (3:56)

Lye is, die gone if you hadn't asked me. I mean, it's a chemical. It's a caustic chemical that you can buy just about anywhere. But shoot, it's like H2 something something. They used to use ash.

They got the lye from ash.

Joe Rogan (4:22)

It's a metal hydroxide traditionally obtained by leaching wood ashes or a strong alkali which is highly soluble in water-producing caustic basic solutions.

Clay Newcomb (4:33)

Sodium hydroxide. That's what it is.

Joe Rogan (4:35)

So they would get it from like burning wood?

Clay Newcomb (4:38)

Yeah. So the real primitive method for making soap from animal tallow. And you could make animal tallow soap out of anything. But bare fat lye soap is our specialty.