Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

Why the mugful of bacon grease in my fridge is pure magic

Cooking pro tip: Why you should keep your bacon fat

Lindsay Parrill
By

Bacon grease, bacon fat, magical flavor balm from the gods — they all mean exactly the same thing. If you’re from the south, chances are you already have a container of some sort in your fridge that houses this thing of pure beauty. If you aren’t from the south, or a family member of mine, you may need a bit more explanation.

When I was a single 20-something living in San Francisco, I’d recently moved in with a few other girls I’d met through a Craigslist ad. True to roommate custom, we all had a shelf in the refrigerator to call our own. It didn’t take long for my mug-o-bacon-fat to make an appearance on my shelf. A day or two after it did, I opened the fridge to find a post-it-note from one of my new roommates, stuck directly on top of my bacon fat mug. It simply read, “Lindsay…what the hell?” After a pretty big laugh, I explained my magic mug to my skeptical roommate. I can proudly tell you that that girl and I are still friends, and she now has a magic mug of her own. I like to think of it as God’s work I’m doing.

Bacon of the Month Club
Image used with permission by copyright holder

What is bacon grease good for?

So many glorious old-fashioned southern recipes call for bacon grease, from cornbread to collard greens to popcorn. And if the recipe is old enough and clever enough to actually call for bacon grease, you’d better snatch that one up quick, because it’s likely a fantastic one. While most of these recipes are in out-of-print, vintage cookbooks, you can still find them in thrift stores and on the shelves of your nearest mother or grandmother. So get hunting!

Recommended Videos

The good news, though, is even without a recipe, you can substitute bacon grease in nearly any recipe that calls for a fat. It’s the flavorfully fatty answer to any number of culinary conundrums. Boring sauteed vegetables? Bacon fat. Flapjacks falling flat? Fry them in bacon fat. Lacking a brilliant start to your biscuit gravy? Do we need to even say it?

Related

Bacon is popular because it’s delicious, so of course, its hot sizzly drippings are going to be nothing short of liquid gold. Cooking with bacon fat adds beautifully savory, flirtatiously and subtly meaty, salty and heavenly notes to your dishes. We’re not overselling this.

Is bacon fat a healthy fat?

Alright look, if we tried to sell you on the idea that bacon fat is right up there with avocados and almonds in the world of healthy fats, you’d (hopefully) know we were lying. But, while bacon fat isn’t exactly what we’d classify as a health food, it is lower in saturated fat than butter. Shockingly, it’s also lower in sodium than salted butter. We’ll go ahead and call that a win. We’ll take what we can get, okay?

Image used with permission by copyright holder

How long does bacon grease last?

While some people keep their bacon grease at room temperature, this is a food safety no-no. It could attract pests (who can blame them?) or go rancid without you realizing it. It’s best to store your bacon grease in the refrigerator. Properly covered, it will stay good for up to six months. If you want to freeze it, it will keep in the freezer for about a year.

What is the best container to store bacon grease?

This might be a touchy subject for those who love this ingredient as much as I do. For in the (few) houses I’ve visited that share this peculiar refrigerator tenant, the bacon fat container is sacrosanct. For me, it’s an old Les Miserables mug, humble and holy. I’ve come across coffee cans and pickle jars. I’ve seen Cool Whip containers, and even an ice cube tray.

But from a food safety perspective, experts recommend storing bacon grease in a glass jar with a tightly fitting lid. Don’t shoot the messenger.

Do be sure to strain out any bacon solids from your grease before storing. You can do this by putting a small strainer or sieve over your storage container and pouring the fat right through.

If you aren’t going to save your bacon grease (how dare you), do at least be sure to dispose of it properly. Of course, never pour bacon grease down the sink as it will clog your pipes. It’s best to wait for it to cool, then dispose of it in the trash. But dear god, please don’t.

Bacon fat potatoes recipe

Image used with permission by copyright holder

This recipe is for potatoes, but will work for almost any vegetable you can imagine. If your bacon fat is cool and solid, melting it in a small saucepan before mixing it with the potatoes is the easiest way to go about it.

Ingredients:

  • 4 tablespoons bacon fat
  • 2 pounds potatoes, skins on, cubed
  • 1/2 yellow onion, diced
  • Kosher salt and black pepper to taste

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 425F.
  2. In a large pot filled with salted water, bring potatoes to a boil, then simmer until fork-tender.
  3. Drain potatoes and transfer to a large bowl. Mix with onions, salt, and bacon fat until potatoes and onions are evenly coated.
  4. Spread potato and onion mixture onto baking sheet in a single layer.
  5. Cook potatoes for 20-25 minutes, flipping potatoes halfway through their cooking time.

Editors' Recommendations

Lindsay Parrill
Lindsay Parrill
Contributor
Lindsay is a graduate of California Culinary Academy, Le Cordon Bleu, San Francisco, from where she holds a degree in…
Chamomile tea only gets healthier when you add lavender — here’s why
Lavender chamomile tea benefits: What you need to know
single tea bag, white background

Searching the tea aisle at your local grocery store can get overwhelming with so many different varieties and purposes for herbal teas. One of the most popular herbal teas used for a variety of health purposes is chamomile tea. Chamomile tea benefits are quite diverse, supporting important aspects of health like digestive health and heart health.

One specific variety of chamomile tea, lavender chamomile tea, pairs two medicinal plants into one tea to offer more health benefits in each cup. Lavender chamomile tea is described as having a light, floral, and earthy taste and can be enjoyed on its own or with a drop of honey, stevia, or other sweetener. While this tea is more commonly consumed as a warm herbal tea, it can also be steeped in cold water and ice to be enjoyed as a cold tea.

Read more
Why you can (and should) add bourbon right to your banana bread batter without cooking it first
Bourbon alcohol cooks out as banana bread bakes - genius!
Banana bread

Cooking with booze is one of the best ways to achieve a robust and delicious complexity of flavor. For any number of dishes, we braise, poach, deglaze, and sauce with everything in the liquor cabinet, from wine to tequila to rum, and our food is better for it. And while you may have incorporated beer into your cupcakes or poached pear in a simmering pool of red wine, you may not yet fully appreciate the flavor spirits can bring to baked goods. Banana bread is one of the most delicious, comforting, feels-like-home treats there is, and it's hard to imagine it getting any better than it already is in its mildly sweet, toasty perfection. Enter bourbon.

It turns out that splashing a bit of bourbon into banana bread batter can take Grandma's recipe and elevate it to something one might find in an upscale restaurant. Here's why.

Read more
You need to start adding beer to your waffle batter – here’s why
Add beer to your waffle recipe (it's delicious!)
Waffles on a plate

Belgium is something of a headliner when it comes to cuisine. So many of the most glorious foods we love to indulge in originate from this beautiful little European country. Some of the world's best chocolate and most exquisite beers come from Belgium, making it one of our favorite countries. But then you throw french fries and waffles into the mix, and Belgium very quickly becomes the mecca of the most adored foods world. While we can go around for days about which of these culinary contributions we love most, there's room to adore them all. But on a lazy Sunday morning, there just isn't anything better than a perfectly golden, light, fluffy, crispy, buttery Belgian waffle.
True Belgian waffles are unique in a few ways. Firstly, they usually call for the added step of beating egg whites separately, then folding them into the batter in lieu of simply mixing whole eggs in all at once. This incorporates air into the batter and gives Belgian waffles their signature light and airy texture. They also tend to have a bit more sugar than other waffles, making them slightly sweeter. But our very favorite mark of an authentic Belgian waffle is that they're yeasted, often with Belgium's favorite beverage - beer.
Using beer in waffle batter is a stroke of genius for a few reasons. The bubbles in the carbonation, much like the beaten egg whites, will create a heavenly light fluffiness. The yeast in the beer will give the waffles a much more complex flavor and gorgeous texture.
This is our very favorite Belgian waffle recipe.

Beer waffle recipe
Every waffle iron is different, but these waffles are meant to be perfectly crisp and beautifully brown, so be sure to cook them long enough to see those golden edges.
Ingredients

Read more