Originally published at: Bacon grease conundrum solved: quick and easy cleanup with aluminum foil | Boing Boing
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Does no one use an old tin can until it’s full(ish) for dealing with grease any more?
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Or just save it to cook with. Sheesh, everything tastes better cooked in bacon fat.
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My preferred way is to cook it in the oven, on parchment paper for easy cleanup.
After cooking, the options are to:
- Save the grease into a soufflé cup for later re-use.
- When done, roll up the cooled parchment paper and discard.
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I will second this… However, every oven recipe I’ve seen for bacon cooks it at 375-400F. My wife like “jiggly” bacon or not shatter crisp. I cook it at 275F for 75-100 mins depending on the thickness. This can be easily varied depending on how long you have to cook it, just as long as you don’t go above ~325F. Some Saturday mornings I’ll load up the pan and put it in the oven at 230F and go back to bed for a few hours and it’s fine. Then maybe 15 mins or so at 300F and it’s done, but not crisp, just kind of fall apart chewy.
(This really only works on “thick” cut bacon, but honestly if you love bacon who isn’t cooking with thick cut.)
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So… waste recyclable material and discard something that can be composted.
Two birds with one stone.
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Sort of, I use a milk carton in the freezer. Also put chicken bones and other assorted oils in it.
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You really don’t want to try to compost animal fat. But yeah, better to put the grease in a container that’s going to be thrown away anyways.
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How does that not melt the wax and soak through?
Please don’t treat aluminum foil as disposable. Aluminum is the most important metal to recycle, given the tremendous amount of energy required to extract it from bauxite. Use another, more sustainable/degradable organic material, such as cardboard. Even parchment paper would be a better choice than aluminum.
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Yeah, this is pretty wasteful considering there are loads of other options out there. But unless you live alone, I’d say the the risk of someone turning on the tap and making a very expensive mess isn’t worth it.
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I pour it into a ramekin and then compost it once it solidifies.
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Yeah i second this. Depending on how often one is making bacon then i can see instances where someone will have way more bacon grease than they could ever hope to use, and in such a case just empty the grease in a sealable container you might throw away anyway. My mom often uses pasta sauce bottles
I don’t cook with bacon (or any meat for that matter) since my gf is vegan so that solves my problem.
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That’s happened a couple of times over the 40 years I’ve been doing it.
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Not sure how the “sustainability” and “green dining” tags apply. This is neither. Sad.
Even if you don’t want to cook with it… It can be added to dry catfood/dogfood. It can be used to make candles or camping fire-starters. It can be used as a lubricant. If you literally have no other use for bacon grease and are too impatient to let the pan cool off, maybe just pour it in a coffee mug until it’s cool enough to pour in the trash? You don’t need to add new packaging to something that’s going in the trash.
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I use the “jar in the fridge” method of storing bacon and other animal fats, use it for many cooking applications, and when it gets too old or starts to smell like it’s starting to go rancid, toss it out jar and all and repurpose another old jar. Between cutting back on the bacon and frying in general, and giving up my beloved bacon-fat biscuits because they are just too delicious for my waistline to survive, this is less of an issue these days, but the well-sealed jar keeps such freshly rendered fats fresh for at least a year.
Word of advice: after reading about rush lights and fat-lamps, I tried using one of the older jars as a candle. It worked, but smoked and smelled like its contents, which was not a good thing. Avoid it unless you have no other option, or really like the smell of burning bacon.
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Another adding to the chorus of “put the grease into a container, let it solidify, and scoop out the blob for the trash/compost, re-use it for cooking, etc.”
I had to have the kitchen drain replaced from too many people dumping hot grease down the sink over the decades that this old house has been around- the grease traps water under it as it cools and solidifies, and that will rust out cast iron pipes; replacing them was frigging expensive. (plus it’s not good on the sewer system in general- Just Ask London about the fatburgs…)
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Here in the Vancouver, BC region we are supposed to dump all organics (except for solvents) into the green waste recycling stream. So we usually soak up grease in paper towel and dump it in there.
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Does nobody else pour it onto their dog’s dinner? Bad dog owners! BAD!
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