Lets See Your Suet Recipes!!

Hi Everyone,
How about if we all share our different Suet recipes for the birds in this thread!

Can't wait to read the recipes! Unfortunately, I buy mine from the local Wild Bird shop.

I buy mine, too. I do have some good sounding reciepes from Birds and Blooms magazine last summer. I keep meaning to try them out but haven't so far. Great topic!
Deb

I don't have my own recipe but there are a few that interest me from the Sialis site.

Heres one:

All Season Peanut Butter Pudding (Katherine Smith)
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
2 cups quick oats
2 cups yellow cornmeal
1 cup lard (no substitutes)
1 cup white/wheat flour
1/3 cup sugar

Melt lard and peanut butter. Add remaining ingredients. Pour into plastic freezer containers or forms (use previously purchased plastic suet containers). Freeze or refrigerate until use (if use is intended within a week - otherwise freeze). You can also add various dried fruit and sunflower "meats" to this basic recipe during winter months for woodpeckers, finches, and other grosbeaks of all varieties. Expect squirrel problems with this nutty, intoxicating stuff...hang the pudding in an "upside down" feeder, or location you can provide some squirrel patrol. Double or triple the receipt, but don't forget to use heavy duty utensils, this stuff is thick and heavy.

Another recipe:

Janie May's Recipe
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1 cup of lard (melt both for about 1 minutes in microwave).
Add

1 cup of yellow corn meal
1 cup of sugar
2 cups of instant regular flavor oatmeal (comes in packets and takes 6 packets).
Throw in some extra peanuts if you want.
When stirring this, it should get very thick and hard to stir....that means it's right! You can form it into suet blocks and feed it in suet feeders or put it in a bowl inside a bluebird feeder. I refrigerate mine and it will last forever. I usually make two batches at a time. The sugar is a good energy source for winter suet feeding.

And this one looks very easy.

GOURMET Bird DELIGHT (Dottie)
Crunchy peanut butter
Oatmeal
Corn meal
Lard
Raisins
You can also add currants, cranberries, sunflower seeds or anything you think the birds would like to eat. Dump in as much as you want of each ingredient (get the cheapest brands), using enough oatmeal and cornmeal to make it stick together well. Mix everything together. Put big balls of the mixture into plastic grocery bags and freeze. Then put a ball or two on yourfeeder tray. You could also make it to fit a wire suet feeder. Bluebirds and woodpeckers love it.

I think this last one would be the one I would like to try first because it looks so easy.

Mine is basically the same as your first but I dont measure. I start with a cube of Lard and then add the remainder until the consistentcy I prefer. I don't use forms. I do all the heating in metal coffe cans. Normally make 2 three pound cans each time. We just keep it cool. We have 3 suet limbs drilled with 1 inch holes and fill all the holes daily. Well not daily at the moment as the suet gets so hard it takes them a while.
Doug

The K. Smith recipe or one just like it was in Birds and Blooms. I used shortening instead of lard and the birds don't seem to mind one bit. I got 4 cakes out of that recipe. I did add some sunflower seeds to it. I've seen downy's and red-bellied woodpeckers at the one in front of the house. The one by my office window has only gotten chick-a-dees, titmice and carolina wrens so far. They all use the BOSS window feeder too, which is right next to where I hang the suet. Its only been up 2 days there. I need to get DH to make me some suet limbs. We have enough big branches waiting for the chipper to get fixed. Sounds like a better use for them than just mulch.

Thanks Pelle, This will certainly be interesting.
I don't really measure things. I put about
2 cups (each) peanut butter and lard melt this together,
about 1/2 cup cornmeal
2 -1/2 cups flour,( last time I use the multi grain type just to get rid of it.)
a good 2 cups of cheap mix of seeds, (corn and millet and sunflower seeds)
1 cup sunflowers or more to make consistency I want. Which is fairly thick.
Press this in an aluminum 8x8 pan, and I also use some to fill holes drilled in a log for WP and there is usually some left for a cake for the the WPecker feeder
The one hardened in the pan, I cut in half, and put on 2 different flat surface for ground feeding birds.
Made some 3 days ago, and Starling ate everything. Didn't leave any for their friends.
Thanks for the new recipes, I will try them.

This message was edited Dec 18, 2007 8:38 PM

This is not a suet recipe, it's made with gelatin. Should attract , Mockingbirds, Cedar Waxwings, Carolina wrens. To be use in cold season. Recipe from (The Backyard Bird Feeder's Bible.)

Bird treat Balls
1 quart walnut piecs
1quart chopped peanuts
1 to 2 cups dries cherries (Optional)
wire for hanging
1 packet of unflavored gelatine

Step 1. Mix the unflavored gelatine according to the label.
In another bowl, combine walnut pieces, chopped peanuts, and dried cherries (if desired)
Step 2. Spread the nut mixture onto a cookie sheet.
Step 3. Fill a squirt bottle with liquid gelatine, and spritz the nut mixture liberally. Stir the mixture with your hands, and mold into a 3" diameter balls.
Step 4. Push a length of wire through each balls.
Step 5. Place balls in the freezer to solidify them; store in cool conditions until use.

Burn,

LOL! I was just looking at that recipe 'Bird treat Balls' in that book tonight! ;-)

Marilyn

Burn - sounds like a neat recipe. I'll have to look for that book. Sounds like a "must have." Becky

There's quit a bit of recipes in there. and ways to make all kinds of feeders.
Marilyn we must be on the same wave length Beclu, It's a neat book, many ideas in it to attract birds.

Here it is at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Backyard-Bird-Feeders-Bible-Gardening/dp/0875968341

yeah Pelle, that's the one.

Pelle,

I either got mine at:

Borders
or
Barnes & Noble

I've had it awhile too.

Marilyn

I ordered the hardcover today "used" thru the Amazon Marketplace for $4.47 + 3.99 shipping. It's either supposed to be "Like New" or "Very Good", can't remember now. I guess I'll know in a week or 2, I've never ordered a used book before.

I went to B&N tonight, but they didn't have it. Got the National Geographic Birding Essentials though. No recipes but some good info. I'll wait until after the holidays to order the "bible." Too much going on right now.