# How do you store bacon grease? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 28, 2010, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614 "2010-10-28T02:20:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/41 "2010-10-28T22:38:53Z")
My mother used to make french fries in beef fat. This was store-bought beef fat, though; she didn’t save beef drippings or anything. Also, those fries were the best. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/42 "2010-10-28T22:52:37Z")
I’ve never met the woman, but your mother sounds like my idea of a genius. ---
**Author:** ![rhubarbarin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb9ed0/32.png) [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/43 "2010-10-28T23:04:55Z")
Before the anti-animal-fat lobby took over, McDonald’s fries were fried in beef tallow. I do not remember them personally as I am young, but I can only imagine the deliciousness. Mmmm. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/44 "2010-10-29T00:21:34Z")
> [@rhubarbarin](#): > > Before the anti-animal-fat lobby took over, McDonald’s fries were fried in beef tallow. I do not remember them personally as I am young, but I can only imagine the deliciousness. Mmmm. Win. I AM that old, and let me tell you sonny, they were the BOMB. Haven’t been the same in 20-30 years. I store my bacon fat in a can next to the stove(so it’s not heated). Use it up in cooking things. Never(almost) have to throw some away. Lard and bacon fat have gotten a bum rap the last 20-30 healthy years. ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/45 "2010-10-29T01:00:37Z")
How do you know the grease hasn’t gone off, tiny footprints aside. And – so you just gouge out a spoonful and throw it in with the dish du jour you’re cooking? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/46 "2010-10-29T01:11:19Z")
> [@lizardling](#): > > How do you know the grease hasn’t gone off, tiny footprints aside. And – so you just gouge out a spoonful and throw it in with the dish du jour you’re cooking? I’m not sure that it _does_ go bad. 🙂 It’s been a long time. Mama Plant kept a metal tin of it beside the stove. You use it like a can of lard; scoop some out and put in the pan you are going to cook hash browns in. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/47 "2010-10-29T01:19:44Z")
> [@rhubarbarin](#): > > Before the anti-animal-fat lobby took over, McDonald’s fries were fried in beef tallow. I do not remember them personally as I am young, but I can only imagine the deliciousness. Mmmm. > [@samclem](#): > > Win. I AM that old, and let me tell you sonny, they were the BOMB. Haven’t been the same in 20-30 years. > > I store my bacon fat in a can next to the stove(so it’s not heated). Use it up in cooking things. Never(almost) have to throw some away. Lard and bacon fat have gotten a bum rap the last 20-30 healthy years. Yep. I rarely eat at McDonald’s any more. Between the vegetable oil that the fries are fried in, and the “milkshakes” made of frozen yogurt which always taste like soap, there’s not a lot on the menu that’s really appetizing. McDonald’s used to have some tasty items on the menu. They weren’t healthy, but they were quite tasty. Now that they’ve changed the items a bit, they’re STILL not healthy, and they don’t taste nearly as good. As far as I’m concerned, the changes that they made were almost purely cosmetic. If I want healthy fast food, I’ll go to Subway and get one of their salads…you can get just about any Subway sandwich served as a salad, that is, all the meat and cheese and veggies on a bed of lettuce, your choice of dressing. If you choose turkey or beef, and ask for the vinegar, you can have a fairly tasty salad with minimal fat. Subway usually has a very nice selection of veggies that are suitable for a salad. Of course if you get the cold cuts…well, you’re gonna get more fat and sodium than you need. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/48 "2010-10-29T01:22:25Z")
> [@lizardling](#): > > How do you know the grease hasn’t gone off, tiny footprints aside. And – so you just gouge out a spoonful and throw it in with the dish du jour you’re cooking? I always kept a couple of jars going. I used the grease from the old jar, while adding grease to the new jar. When the old jar was empty, I’d wash it out and start adding grease to that jar, and using grease from the jar that was mostly full. Notice the past tense, there…I almost never cook bacon any more. I think that I’d probably freeze any grease these days, just as I keep most of my butter in the freezer. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/49 "2010-10-29T03:28:59Z")
Moving from IMHO to Cafe Society. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/50 "2010-10-29T03:34:54Z")
When I was a kid, our kitchen had a “milk chute” that went through the wall, so the milkman would leave bottles of milk, and my mother would leave the empties. She also used to keep a coffee can containing bacon grease there. Until one Halloween, when someone took the can and smeared bacon grease all over our windows and the car. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/51 "2010-10-29T06:25:56Z")
Pickle jar in the fridge. It’s a whole lot harder to get the glass to crack if you warm the jar up in hot tap water in the sink. CMC fnord! > [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > … grackles, which are ugly and noisy and mean. [Ugly](http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/images/birds/grackles-broad.jpg)? 😕 Horror shows when they’re [fledgelings](http://www.eastvalleywildlife.org/images/grackles.jpg). :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/52 "2010-10-29T10:24:24Z")
DAMN, and I thought the adults were ugly! That might well be the scariest thing I’m gonna see this week. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/53 "2010-10-29T20:17:40Z")
I love that a thread on bacon fat got derailed by grackles, but I came back in to say I’m with **Crow.** The adults, particularly the males - when healthy, not molting, and not forced to bathe in dirty polluted street puddles - are quite striking, particularly in the sunlight, when they can really show off their irridescence and colors. Their eyes are intense, too. Plus, they’re native, if a bit invasive (in the non-alien species sense of the word) which is more than I can say for the sparrows and starlings. Noisy, quarrelesome bastards who are so big they knock too much seed to the ground, and this is the time of year they start congregating in huge Hitchcockian flocks, sure. But not ugly. We now return you to your regularly scheduled jar of congealed bacon grease… ---
**Author:** ![rayman5321](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@rayman5321](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rayman5321)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2010, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/54 "2010-11-01T16:17:30Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > We eat turkey bacon. The small amount of fat generated during cooking is blotted up with a paper towel. This is the way to go! ---
**Author:** ![Huerta88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/82dd89/32.png) [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2010, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/55 "2010-11-01T16:31:42Z")
> [@rhubarbarin](#): > > Before the anti-animal-fat lobby took over, McDonald’s fries were fried in beef tallow. I do not remember them personally as I am young, but I can only imagine the deliciousness. Mmmm. Even after they stopped using the tallow, they put in some type of tallow-based extractive or flavoring which kept some of the deliciousness going. Then the danged Hindus (sorry guys, but it’s personal with the fries) sued them for that (technically I guess for not disclosing it or for listing it as “natural flavoring” on the nutrition/ingredient disclosures) and they stopped to avoid that hassle. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2010, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/56 "2010-11-01T16:43:22Z")
If I’m saving bacon grease for another use, I let it cool a bit, pour it into one of my billion coffee mugs, and put it in the refrigerator. If I’m throwing grease, or any kind of rendered fat, away, I let it cool a bit, scrape it into an empty potato chip bag, roll it up tight, and put it in the trash. If no bags, into a cup or bowl, refrigerate, throw away. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2010, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614/57 "2010-11-01T16:43:44Z")
> [@rayman5321](#): > > This is the way to go! But your hash browns fellate. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-store-bacon-grease/558614.md?page=2)