As a child of the South, I was raised on bacon grease, butter, and lard.
The best bacon I’ve tasted lately, from a supermarket that is, is Hilshire Farms Maple Cured bacon. It smells like heaven when it’s cooking, and tastes even better.
But nothin’ beats farmer’s market fresh bacon… the kind you gotta slice yourself.
Momma just kept her bacon grease in an old soup can or broken-handled coffee mug on the back of the stove. (This is not recommended, though, especially in roach-infested apartments. I won’t tell you about the green bean incident. Unless you ask. But you’ve probably guessed by now.)
And yes, she’d use it to season everything that wasn’t rich enough to be seasoning for something else.
I’d make mom fry my french toast in the leftover bacon grease, too. mmmmMMMMM DOGGIE!
Another thing she’d do is slice potatoes paper thin, and then make stacks of them about an inch thick in the cast iron skillet, and then drizzle bacon grease over each one. I’ve done this myself. You have to cover the skillet, and cook the taters over med-hi heat until the bottoms are good and golden, about 10-20 minutes depending on how much you’re cooking. Then you turn them over and do the other side the same way. The outsides are crispy and the middles are tender… awesome!
(I have a pair of oval cast iron omellete skillets now, that fit together, top to top, like a glove. I just fill one pan with sliced potatoes, use the other as a cover, and when it’s time, just turn the whole mess over on the burner. Can’t use too much bacon grease, though, or you’ll start a grease fire… ok to substitute with butter, too.)
One of my favorite treats was leftover grits, fried in bacon grease. When you make more grits for breakfast than you need, and you always do, don’t pour 'em out, just let 'em cool off a bit, pour into a buttered loaf pan, and refrigerate. As you know, they congeal into a nice, gelatinous loaf.
Slide the loaf out of the bowl and cut it into 1/2" thick slices. Fry these in a cast iron skillet with a generous amount of bacon grease until golden brown and then let cool.
They’ll soak up the grease, so don’t be afraid to add more!
If you really want some awesome goodness, stir in some grated cheddar before you put the grits in the fridge!
Damn, now my stomach is growlin’ like a coon dog smellin’ a polecat under the back door.
let me say that grits are a culinary delight, to some of us anyway. Basically they’re dried corn or hominy broken into small pieces but not as fine as ground cornmeal. Cooked up properly, grits are like a thick porridge with a, well, gritty texture. Full of nice corn taste. I like either yellow or white but some Southerners insist white grits are the only real ones. The best are stoneground grits. The quick-cooking stuff in the groceries is barely palatable and the instant are, in my opinion, an abomination.