How do you dispose of fried bacon grease?

“Line a heat tolerant bowl with aluminum foil. Pour the hot grease you’ve drained off into the lined bowl. When it has hardened, simply gather the edges of the foil and toss it into the garbage.”

It is bad for your sink and what not, but i’m sure theres some use for it somewhere.

Just pour it into a jar and keep it in the fridge. It is good to fry stuff in or when the jar is full then toss it into the rubbish.

Noooo, never pour it down the sink. What I do is let the grease solidify & then scoop it out of whatever you’ve poured it in & put it in the trash. That’s just what I did this morning. Never pour hot grease in the garbage.

I don’t- I use turkey bacon only and there is no grease to pour out. I just wipe with a paper towel and stick it in the dishwasher. Healthier and easier to deal with… and just as tasty.

Give it to the dawgs. I don’t fry much, but I do have an empty metal coffee can to put what grease I may use in. But for small things, like bacon, I give it to the dogs.

If you’re industrious, you could render it and make (somewhat bacon-scented) soap. ;) Otherwise, we just put it in a big glass jar for eventual disposal if we’re not going to use it for further cooking.

Oh, yes, absolutely keep some to cook with!! When throwing any kind of grease out, I put it in a plastic container or even a ziploc bag, then put it in the freezer to solidify. Then I try to remember to actually take it out of the freezer & put it in the trash the next time I get rid of it!! :-/

@ccrow – the remembering is the hard part, I have frozen toads and all sorts of strange things in my freezer that I always forget to put in the can on rubbish day!

@rooeytoo – Toads?! Yikes!! :-)

@rooeytoo: Can’t you thaw it out for one of the odd Brit. dishes called “toad-in-the-hole,” or am I hallucinating?

@rooeytoo I had the first fish my son ever caught in the freezer for EVER. Along with various and sundry bugs and such that they’d caught….

@rooeytoo Frog legs, okay. But toads!!?? Hahahahaaaaaaa

Almost all of Australia is being over run with cane toads. They were introduced to eat some bug that was destroying the sugar cane. They did a wonderful job at that and loved the country and are taking it over. They have a poison sack on the back of their head and are supposedly killing off the indigenous wildlife because they eat them and then die.

So there is a big toad killing campaign on. I can’t bring myself to kill them with a golf club or some of the other cruel methods employed so they say freezing them is a relatively painless death. When I catch them in my yard, (I worry about the dogs playing with them and getting sick) I put them in a plastic bag and toss them in the freezer.

Some nights when I am searching for something to make for dinner, I will accidentally pull out a frozen toad!

People who work for the sanitary sewer service hate bacon grease with a passion. Apparently, even if you heat it until liquid or mix it with soap it finds other bacon grease down in the drains and forms giant bacon grease bergs, which some poor schmuck has to fish out of whatever pipe they are blocking.

However, do not throw it out! Bacon grease can be a wonderful fat to cook with, and it is a Southern tradition to keep a jar or can of bacon grease near the stove for using as needed. My grandmother even made oatmeal cookies with bacon grease. I know it sounds strange but people loved them.

Okra and tomatoes just isn’t the same unless you saute the onions in bacon grease.

@rooeytoo Oooooohhhhhhhh…........:-(

On another note, I used to have all sorts of odd things in my freezer when I worked for a museum. I would spot a cool bit of road kill and pop it into the freezer so I could take to work later on. The best one was a river otter that I was later able to trade to another museum for a sabertooth cat skull cast.

And @rooeytoo, freezing is indeed a good way to painlessly kill reptiles and amphibians. We used to do it with rattlesnakes that members of the public would bring to us at the museum.

BTW, we used to be victimized by the same Cane Toad when I lived in Florida. It was originally released in sugar cane fields to help control rats and mice and has happily spread to people’s gardens where hapless dogs bite them and are poisoned.

Apparently it is possible to eat the critters (since they can weigh 5 pounds or more it is worth considering) but I suspect a certain high level of desperation has to be involved.

@Val123 That sounds very unhealthy for your dogs.

I have two outdoor dogs, both of which are high-energy performance dogs that need a lot of calories (they are hunting dogs). Anyway, I save the bacon grease in the winter, and mix some in with their dog food to help them keep their weight up throughout the winter so they stay warm and cozy outside. They love the taste, and it help keep a little extra fat on them when they need it. In the summer, I let it solidify, then scrape it into the trash. I never, ever put it down the drain (in part because it will clog the pipes, and in part because I have a septic tank that cannot handle grease).

@juwhite1 We used to do that with dog food, too. They’d go nuts for it.

Personally, I leave it in the pig.

@rooeytoo – Good thing you don’t have to freeze all the rabbits, or you’d be full up! OTOH, them’s better eatin’.

@Darwin – some of the native species seem to be finding a way to deal with them. The kites scoop them up and then fly very high and drop them on the road, then they seem to be able to pick around the poison sack and eat everything else. But there are more toads than kites so it is a losing proposition. It is also said that it is another reason the croc numbers are increasing because the goannas who normally eat the croc eggs from the nest are dying from eating the toads. Amazing how all these things are interrelated. Does Florida have a successful plan to deal with them? One morning at the end of the dry we were camping at a billabong and it must have been their mating season. The billabong looked like something from a horrible sci-fi movie, the surface was rolling and rippling with what looked to be millions of mating toads. Assuming the water was a foot or so deep, they must have been stacked 5 or 6 high.

@laureth – yep they have rabbit plagues down south, and mice too, they just look like a moving carpet. I never saw anything like it. The only predator are the dingos and the farmers want them done away with because they will take down lambs and calves, but then the rabbits and mice eat the crops. One of these days humans may learn not to mess around with Mother Nature!!!

@laureth! Bite your tongue! I’m covering my eyes with my ears…. ;0)

I usually take a can out of the recycle bin and pour the grease in that, let it sit on the counter to solidify, and then toss the can. If you cook bacon a lot, keep the can in the fridge and when it’s full, toss the full can.

Bacon grease is delicious to fry onions, potatoes, sauerkraut, brown cubed beef for stew, etc. but it’s not healthy for you at all.

Save it and then in the summer buy a small kiddie pool. Invite some bikini clad ladies over for a wrestling match. Kick back with a cold one and rub your bacon belly in the sun.

As southern tradition goes: You put the left over bacon grease in a Mason jar or scavenged glass Duke’s Mayo Jar. (HA) Putting it down the sink is an awful idea and in the garbage is a sin.
(Then you put the ham fat in the frog legs and the gravy in the potatoes and before you know it, it’s time to milk them there cows again.)

I have a jar of Duke’s in my fridge.

@PandoraBoxx I just used up my gallon. Got to go get 3 more gallons so I can send my mom in Wyoming some for Christmas!

don’t.

when i was young bacon grease was saved in a can atop the stove for whatever reason. i think grandma just didn’t want to throw it out simply because it was grease, but it was later used to flavor subsequent meals actually. hence, diner restaurant ambience.

DAMN, these eggs and potatoes or “corned beef hash” is good! grandma, i love when you make breakfast; how do you make it taste so good?

that old-ass bacon grease, fool! now go get me a switch out the yard for breaking yo granddaddy’s favorite juice glass…

@charliecompany34 Had she not saved that grease, you wouldn’t have such wonderful memories. Ah, the power of fat.

@Clair like they say these days on food network, pork fat rules!

I store it in a glass jar for use in cooking, mainly for frying eggs. Must be my mother’s semi-Southern upbringing showing on me. When there’s too much, I pour off the excess into something I’m disposing of in the trash, such as an empty container that isn’t going to be recycled. It never goes down the drain.

I have been letting it solidify in the pan that I fry it in and scraping into my jars/ garbage. It’s easier to transfer solid than in a hot runny state.

My grandmother poured it into an empty coffee can (the smaller size) that she kept on her stove. The lid would keep the smell from escaping and she made some damn good fried eggs with that stuff.

I usually pour it into an empty can if I’m making something from one for the same meal. Otherwise, I pour it into a Pyrex measuring cup and let it solidify. I find cleaning that out to be easier that scraping it out of the pan later.

@rooeytoo Carpets of mice and toads. That is such a disturbing image. I may not sleep tonight.

Dog loves it.

I dispose of it by putting some of the bacon grease in the pot when Im cooking turnip greens, mustard greens, collard greens, and poke sallit. Add some bacon grease along with herbs and spices when you cook blackeyed peas too. Im from Tennessee. My mom, grandma, and late great grandma all keep/kept a jar or ceramic mug on the stove to pour leftover grease .

If you are worried about the effect bacon grease might have on your health, why in Heaven’s name are you cooking bacon at all?!

And we always use frozen Bird’s Eye Orange Juice cans to hold the bacon grease.

heheheh @Darwin I was thinking the same thing!

@Supacase – sorry, but the toad scene was like a sci-fi horror movie and the movies I have seen of the mouse plagues are just as bad! This is a scary place when you get out of the city.

@rooeytoo – You asked about controlling Cane Toads in Florida – so far there has not been much success. Basically Florida opts for public education and attempts to keep them from moving on to new areas. Maybe that lab in Victoria that is working on possible means of control via pheromones might come up with the answer.

@Darwin – cooking the bacon gets rid of a lot of the grease, as evidenced by this thread.

I let it harden then slater it on stale bread, then dip it in birdseed and let the little woodland creatures than hang out in our backyard have at it.

@christine215: That’s a marvelous idea, but does the grease melt when the sun comes out? At least with suet (fat cut from beef) it remaves solid.

@BBSDTfamily Why would it be bad for the dogs?

@gailcalled if it’s warm out, then yes the fat does melt a bit in the sun, that’s why I always put it on bread (though it usually is consumed before it has a chance to melt too much)

in the winter, of course, when the birds and squirrels need it most it stays solid

(p.s. off topic I know, but peanut butter is like crack to squirrels)

@christine215 Like crack to squirrels? LOL! Gotta try it sometime!

Wouldn’t it do for dogs about the same thing that eating a vat of bacon grease would do for people?

All things in moderation. I love bacon now and again and the dogs get some of the grease and the rest goes into the jar for cooking. If I never ate anything that someone thinks is not good for me, life would be pretty dull!

@laureth Well, I never have an entire VAT of grease. Probably have about half of what what was on the bacon, and the rest is still on the bacon, which we eat. So…..is there a difference between licking it out of the pan, and eating it on the bacon? Besides. It makes their coats all shiny.

@Val123 – I usually soak the grease off on a paper towel before eating the bacon, so not all of us eat it. ;)

@laureth I do too. But really, it’s not going to hurt the dogs. These same dogs chomp on old dead fish and rotting turtles when we go to the lake with no ill effects! It is SO gross!

(By ill effects, I mean clogged arteries and obesity – not food poisoning. When they eat a vat of bacon grease, that’s a lot of cholesterol. My husband, before we met, fed his dog all the fat from every steak and batch of bacon he made, and wondered why the dog had health problems from being fat and a bad heart.)

@laureth – that is why I said all things in moderation. If someone is eating so much meat that the fat from it is making their dogs sick, then it is possible that they don’t have the healthiest diet themselves.

A little bit of bacon for the human or grease for the dog is not a bad thing. Enough bacon to create a vat of fat is a different story for man and beast!

True, that. His devil-may-care poverty-bachelor diet did improve when I moved in. ;)

(So did my husband’s.)

@laureth I feed the dogs all the left overs we have. They aren’t fat, and they don’t have heart problems. But they DO need a bath!
@rooeytoo Good point. If your dog is getting health problems from eating the foods you eat, what do you suppose is happening to your own self!