I usually wait until the grease cools somewhat, but before it solidifies (usually by the time I’ve finished Sunday breakfast and the second cup of coffee), then put a couple of bunched paper towels in the pan. They absorb the grease, I wipe the pan out with them, throw them away and wash the pan.
Now, if you’re cooking up a couple POUNDS of bacon at a time (your OP leads me to wonder), this would not be adequate. But it serves my needs.
When I was young, everyone I knew had a canister like Johnny L.A. described. I even got one when I moved out. I think you can still find them at five and dimes - if you can find a five and dime.
pluto - I put a paper towel or two in the cups whenever I need to throw out hot grease - the towel absorb some of the grease and slows the rest of the grease down enough to start cooling before it hits the bottom.
I’m a bacon grease saver.
I don’t cook up bacon all too often, but I always strain the grease, and store it in an old coffee can in the fridge.
I use it when I’m cooking hashbrowns, or onions, or for whenever I’m sauteeing mirepoix (for jambalaya and the like)–it just adds a great flavor that plain old vegetable oil doesn’t have.
Just don’t get me started on duck fat. That’s even better (even though it’s highly unlikely I’d be frying up a duck for Sunday breakfast).
I just gotta mention that bacon grease is a must for real southern style cornbread. Plop a spoonful or two in a big ol’ cast iron skillet and let it heat up in the oven whilst you whip up the cornbread batter. Pour said batter into the hot skillet and aahh… the sizzle, the aroma! Back in the oven and wait for nirvana.
For those of you running short of the grease of the gods, please run out and pick up a package of Bacon-Grease-In-A-Tube®!!
Available at finer truck stops nationwide.
A desperate reiteration of all those who have been warning about hot grease cans:
Two and a half weeks ago, I was making some beautiful bacon (fresh from the butcher, not that thin, clapped-out stuff from Oscar Mayer - nice, thick pieces, they were) which left me with what must have been a third of an inch of standing grease.
Adding that much hot grease to any can will get that sucker nice and hot. Result? spilled can, 2nd and 3rd degree burns. It’s finally healing nicely, but is still visible at a dozen paces . . .
Thank God it was my left hand.
(Feel free to insert your own masturbatory reference here, you sick, sick people.)
As I say to the world at large, PLEASE, PLEASE learn from my mistakes.
HMMMMM Bacon Grease ------------Masturbation?
No this time I’ll let you put your own foot in your own mouth. But that’s a whole other fetish!
http://www.ilovebacon.com/vehicles/112900c.shtml
This url and this thread seem to be headed in the same direction! and for those easily offended, I am truly sorry but the coincidence of finding both within 30 minutes of each other was too much to resist. So I guess I’m easily excitable.
Jus’ lookin’ Round,
Never be ashamed of your excitement over bacon.
I use an old coffee can with a lid- pour in grease, let sit until cool, then put the lid on and store under the sink. Voila! No mess, no stink, available for use if you want to fry something in it.
As a side note, another meaty favorite of mine is fried pepperoni. Buy a pack of pepperoni, deep fry 'em in grease and drain well. Yum! (Of course, that’s why my diet now consists of Lean Cuisine and fruit- holy fat ass, Batman!)
Zette
Count me in as someone who pours bacon grease into an empty can, then tosses it. Unless, of course, I’m saving it so I can make eggs with it, or, in old family tradition passed down from my Grandmother who grew up in logging camps in Kentucky and the U.P, fry chicken in it. You haven’t had fried chicken until you’ve had chicken fried in bacon grease.
The other way of dealing with it easily is to cook yer bacon in the oven. Yup, that’s what I said. Cooking it in the oven is the easiest, most foolproof way of doing it, it’s easy to clean up, and you can cook pounds of it at a time if you’re so inclined. Line a cookie sheet, one with a little lip on it, not the flat ones, with tin foil. Heat oven to 375 or so. Put bacon on tinfoil, bake for 10-12 minutes. Yummy, perfectly cooked bacon. Let cookie sheet with tinfoil cook, then simply take the tinfoil, crumple it up with the bacon fat in the middle, and throw away.
I bake my bacon in the oven as well. I use a broiler pan, so most of the grease drains off. It also means that I can heavily pepper the strips of bacon. Mmmmmmm… Baking it leaves delicate air-filled pockets.
There are so many things that you can use bacon fat for.
Any savory recipe that calls for butter or margarine, for just the tip of the iceberg. Oh, and homemade tamales! Yum!
I, personally, don’t eat bacon. I’m slightly militant about it. I’ve been known to assault restaraunt cooks in the Midwest: “Bacon is not a SPICE, Dammit!” Fortunately, Morningstar Farms makes an acceptable substitute – so I can still have my treasured BLT’s.
I do have the perfect solution for bacon grease woes. You have to get a big dog. Nothing is better than a big dog for getting rid of undesirable comestibles. Just put the dog’s food bowl right on the counter, then pour the bacon grease in. Add water and stir. Why not share the wealth? In time, you will notice that your big dog is much bigger. When this happens, it’s time for both you and the dog to go on a diet.
Like I said, it ain’t good for ya but ya gotta have it!
Danalan, you and Mrs. Pluto would get along fine. While I don’t agree, I certainly sympathize – bacon turns up in unexpected places at restaurants, etc.
Re: the leftover grease – Mrs. Pluto barely tolerates the presence of the uncooked bacon in the house. (I’m not allowed to actually buy it but if it mysteriously turns up in the fridge…) I could never get away with keeping the “used” grease for other culinary delights.
Not that I’m unfamiliar with them – I was raised in a home with the aforementioned bacon grease can. My now elderly mother still maintains her right to enjoy flavors she was raised with regardless of warnings from the medical establishment. One treasured memory of her cooking (which doesn’t involve bacon grease) is poached eggs smothered in browned butter. This, of course, explains my current “Pickwickian” morphology.
I will have to admit I’m intrigued by the chicken fried in bacon grease. Fried chicken is already an indulgence, why not go all the way? Of course I can’t fix it for Mrs. Pluto (see opening paragraph) but she visits her sister once in a while. (I told you it was my vice.)
As for me – they can take my bacon when they pry it from my cold, grease-stained fingers – following a massive heart attack, of course, brought on by a fried egg sandwich (cooked in bacon grease).
Christopher Kimball, editor of COOKS ILLUSTRATED magazine and indefatigable kitchen researcher, makes a case for Crisco as the best medium for chicken-frying. It actually does work better than anything else, even (cough) lard.
Simply add a tablespoon or three of bacon grease to the skillet before melting down your shortening, to add flavor. Alternately, fry up a couple rashers in the pan first…a sneaky little appetizer for the cook…beforehand.
My father makes the world’s best cathead biscuits. The “secret” ingredient: he adds a little bacon grease into the mix. Light, fluffy, and when slathered with butter (don’t defile them with margarine you heathen!)your tongue will think it has died and gone to heaven. Thems good eats. You can also cover them with strawberry preserves and achieve an instant culinary orgasm.
Milk cartons - they don’t melt from the grease, and you just put them in the waste bin anyway, as they’re not recyclable.
Okay, now I have this image of the great Pluto - Ike cook-off. The goal - to fry a chicken; the frying medium - bacon grease or lard? Which one tastes better, and which cook will clutch their chest and cock up the toes first?
I use it to season Green Beans. Make sure you cook all the water off. Good Stuff!
And if I want to get rid of grease without a muss, I run HOT water through the faucet while pouring the grease down the drain. If you don’t run the water, or use cold water you will have a clogged drain.
Hey, remember, the idea for the chicken cooked in bacon grease was my lovely Gramma Betty’s! If anyone gets to be in the contest, she does. She makes the most insanely wonderful fried chicken, along with Mashed Taters, Gravy, and nary a green veggy in sight. She’ll go up against that wuss Kimball any day.
On a side note, Uke, you know I dearly love Cook’s Illustrated, but I just can’t bear Christopher Kimball’s writings. Do you read that pap he inserts in the beginning of each issue? Granted, he’s a fine cook, and I agree on the “indefatigable kitchen researcher” bit, but if I read one more editorial waxing poetic about small children and homemade pie, I think I’ll lose it. Someone needs to tell him to dial down on the schmaltz.
I laughed…I cried…I love the Bacon thread.
[sub]Oh and I love Bacon too[/sub]
Gotta start paying attention here and saving my Bacon grease…getting bacon grease is a great excuse to make Bacon!