Bacon Grease

I grew up with my grandma and mom using bacon grease for pretty much everything except pie crust and then they used lard. My grandma had homemade butter, which as kids, we called “real butter”. Mom used margarine in the tubs so real butter at my grandma’s was such a treat. For seasoning beans or cooking onions or garlic, it was always bacon grease. I had always saved bacon grease and used it like my mom and grandma had. When Vince and I got married, he was horrified that I used bacon grease so I somewhat switched to butter but never fully gave up bacon grease.

When I first began getting pork fat from local butchers in Texas, Vince was again not real pleased with the idea so I told him I would use it for pie crusts and things like that but I wouldn’t use it for cooking and he was ok with that.

Before anyone starts hyperventilating, please do your own research. I’m not telling anyone else what to use but we’ve gotten rid of all our seed oils unless they are cold pressed and even then, I just don’t bother to buy them. I do have a small bottle of corn oil that we use to grease the grill before grilling meat. I get pork fat from a local butcher and render that for lard so I use lard, bacon grease, butter or coconut oil. I will use olive oil if I’m cooking something on a lower temp and we use cold pressed, organic avocado for cooking at a bit higher temp and for our salad dressings/mayonnaise.

Yesterday we stopped by Atwoods looking for something and I saw this!

That’s 3 gallons . . right at 22 pounds of bacon grease. I see that Walmart sells a 14 oz. container, a 9 lb. container and the almost 22 pound container that Atwoods had. I had never seen bacon grease sold like that. I brought Vince over to show it to him. He said “You aren’t getting that are you?” I said no . . there are a lot of ingredients in the grease and in bacon that I would prefer not to eat in huge quantities. I will continue to use the bacon grease that renders out of the bacon I cook for us but in my mind, bacon grease is really smoked lard so I can but a pan of pork fat in the smoker on low heat and let it render and get some smokey flavor and . . it would be just the fat with no salt or other weird ingredients, but have the smokey flavor that I love for adding to beans.