do you save bacon grease for cooking?
 

i remember grandmas and older people do this. do you guys still do this?

it cannot be worse than cooking with butter right?

Yeap, I have a can of rendered bacon fat in my freezer...

scoop out a tablespoon, saute some potato and onion..

comfort food

Chip dip?


KT

No, not good for you and prefer a less obtrusive taste for general cooking.

Of course some stuff wants bacon fat but then its easy enough to cook some bacon and the recipe will often call for it.

I use olive oil for almost everything, and occasionally sesame oil.

Yes, I save bacon grease (even in one of those aluminum cans with a strainer that was hard to find) but more for seasoning than as a cooking medium. I put half a teaspoon in canned green beans for flavor. Or drizzle a bit on top of cornbread mix before popping it in the oven. Other than for deep frying (where I use cotton seed oil) I prefer a good olive oil.

I put it in a jar, rather than pouring it down the drain, and I dump it. Never thought about re-using it. just thinking.. potatoes, onions and green peppers with bacon grease, hmmm?

I also use a small amount (again more for flavoring than as a cooking grease/oil) in hash browns, sometimes a bit in baked BBQ beans cooked over the grill, etc. It tends to burn at a relatively low temperature.

I worked with a guy that used it to cook popcorn.

I tried it one time. It tasted pretty good going down. Not so good coming back up.

My parents used to do that, and I ate whatever was cooked. Not anymore. I'm with jyl, olive oil usually, sesame oil when appropriate, like Asian food.

I used to save and use bacon grease. Did for many years. Switched to olive oil a long time ago.
If it's good enough for Giada, it's good enough for me!

Best,
Tom

Bacon grease - can't cook real soul food w/o it.

And supposedly, it'll also power a diesel engine - supposedly...

We have some in the fridge. I think the only thing that we cook with it is eggs. We don't eat bacon very often, so we don't always have bacon grease around.

Eeeewwwww. Fried eggs need butter. Now croutons on the other hand . . .

Ian

Sounds like the ultimate health food! :D

Not anymore. But the ultimate 3am breakfast always featured sunnyside up eggs floating on about 1/4" of bacon drippins, so they would slide around in that old iron frying pan mmmmmm

wow, flood of memories. when I was a kid visiting my dad every few weeks, I can remember looking forward to eggs fried in bacon fat. I can remember the smell, even the sound of the eggs hitting the pan in 1/4" of hot fat. Haven't thought about that in YEARS. mmmm

as a complete aside, a couple years ago I got a bunch of bacon fat from my uncle's restaurant, then warmed it up and ran it in my VW diesel, just for kicks. Did it ever smell good!

You can also just buy lard - essentially the same thing, and it costs about a buck a pound (Snowcap is my personal favorite). About once a month, I make my great-grandmother's dinner rolls - they call for 1/8 cup of lard, and man, do they taste good. I just leave the lard in the refrigerator, and use to grease pans, in place of shortening, etc. In fact, now that they've taken trans fats out of shortenings like Crisco, it is nearly impossible to make a good pie crust without using lard.

For those interested, here's the recipe - best dinner rolls ever (it helps to have a KitchenAid mixer, as mixing by hand gets pretty tough):

Mix three packets of quick rise yeast with one tablespoon of sugar and 1/2 C of warm (115 degree water). Let sit until it starts to "bloom".

Beat three eggs.

Put 3 C of bread flour, 1/8 C lard, 2 C of warm (115 degree) water, 3/4 C sugar, and 1 tablespoon of salt into a mixer and beat.

Add yeast mixture until combined. Add eggs and combine. Stiffen with 5-6 cups of bread flour (until the dough is no longer sticky), let raise and beat down, then again raise and beat down. Form rolls (about the size of a racketball) on a greased pan. Let raise. Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes until brown on top. Should make 24-30 rolls, depending on how big you make them.

God I miss the ignorant days when we ate what was good instead of what was good for us.

My favorite spice is a ham hock.

yikes, I'd avoid it just because of the name!

Seriously guys, regularly consuming that kind of saturated fat is not a terrific idea.

It's a core ingredient for real hot bacon dressing... Pennsylvania Dutch REPRESENT! :)

mcqueen gets it in his supper mixed with the kibble. he eats that shat up, good for his coat too.

A guy I know who owns a gourmet restaurant says goose fat drippings are the ultimate cooking fat.

In germany there's an appetizer with bacon bits in lard that they put on toast.. REALLY good, you can feel your arteries clogging in real time...
NOTHING better than pancakes fried in bacon grease!

I save all grease in a can that remains in the refrigerator until I accumulate enough to throw a full can into the trash. I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that is is not only good for a person to consume, but it also not good for your pipes in your house either.

One of my favorites is pork fat from a mexican place I go to once in a while. They cook their carnitas in a big pot and after the meat is cooked they put the excess fat in tubs for sale. It has the little bits of carnitas left in it and is great for all your frying needs. The only problem is it comes in a 3 lb. tub so it lasts a long time.
Jerry

How else would you make sawmill gravy for biscuits?

Agreed.

We do a large goose each year at Christmas. The rendered fat is about 4 cups. I use this for cooking until it runs out, which is usually sometime mid to late spring.

Great flavour.

We are very health conscious but this is one of those luxuries we think is worth it.

During the summer I go thru 35 cases (@500lbs) of bacon in a week. After using the fat to cook 1000 lbs of eggs and 700lbs of potatoes my breakfast cooks take the rest home in 2gallon buckets for their amigo's and family. I don't go near it.

you would have loved my Polish grandmother.hog hocks and sauerkraut. those were good days!!!

looks like another crock pot dish coming up, after the goat curry that is.

My grandmother does it. After it has cooled and hardened, she spreads it on bread (relatively thick, I might add, not like a thin butter layer) and eats it straight. Apparently common for old Germans. She's a very healthy 94 years old, so I guess I can't argue.

Slightly off topic, but probably relevant to many of you lard-lovers, is olive oil indeed the healthiest oil? Or is that just good marketing? What about sesame oil?

Yes, it adds great flavor to black beans and for frying taquitos, not for everyday use but the jar is in the fridge right now!

Try bear oil! (Rendered fat from a black bear).

George

Olive oil is a healthy oil, but probably not superior to certain other oils. Olive oil is high in mono-unsaturated fat, which does tend to lower LDL and MAY raise HDL, but that's a matter of some debate.

Sesame oil is likewise healthy, although not popular in US for cooking as much as flavoring. If you are cooking with sesame oil, important to use the light variety which has a higher smoke point -- the dark stuff will burn.

The bad stuff is palm oil, palm kernel oil, coconut oil, butter, margarine, shortening, lard, bacon fat, etc.

Depending on the dish, I typically use olive, canola or peanut oils. Olive and peanut where their flavors complement the dish (European and Asian, respectively) and canola where I need a neutral flavor or when cooking with high heat (very high smokepoint).

I have never had luck with duck or goose. What is the key to cooking these web footed wonders?

I had some grape oil given to me as a gift and really liked it. Believe it or not I experimented with a vegan sour dough bread (for some friends). Substituted olive oil, which worked but was very bland in flavor (as in add sugar). But that darn grape oil gave a very nice flavor, not quite a butter substitute, but far more than the olive oil.

Went to get some more of that stuff, grape oil, whoooooo is it expensive.

Don't know goose, have done it but long time ago. I remember how much fat a roast goose produces, never thought to save it.

Duck we cook often enough. I take the bird apart, brine, score skin, steam to render off some fat, brown on stovetop (oil and high heat), then finish in oven. Carcass makes great stock.

For (more) affordable duck, buy at your local Chinese grocery.

+1, I think the Chinese are in possesion of some sort of duck-roasting trade secrets.

I do not cook with left over bacon drippings. That being said I do love the pork fat in some of my cooking it is just not left over.

My mother used to tell a story of going to a friends house, and they fried fish in the bacon grease.