How do you cook your bacon and store the fat

One of my favorite side dishes has become Brussels sprouts, wrapped in bacon. Delicious, yummy, and a great source of vitamins C & K, antioxidants and fiber (which is all important, at my age! ).
As far as the bacon fat goes, I keep an old tin can on top of the stove (up by the control knobs). I keep it fixed there with a magnet from an old discarded shower curtain. When it gets up there in level, I'll spoon it into a smallish food container, and stick it in my freezer. Or if I'm cooking, it's handy there, to dollop a spoonful into a frying pan.

 

Mom used to always have a soup can filled with it on the back of the sink. Not sure what she used it for, lol...I think a little dab whenever something was made on the skillet.
Also tried bacon the other day cooked with water! Pretty good, but will need a few more test runs before I can declare it better.

 

We used to keep the bacon grease in an old small camping coffee pot.
One of my favorite side dishes is green beans and diced taters fried with bacon or just in the leftover grease.
Another good one for people that have gardens. Pick some fresh green beans, clean them and clip the ends. Wrap them with bacon in small bundles about an inch or so in diameter. Tie the bundles with butchers string, or pin the bacon on with toothpicks. Soak them in Italian dressing for a few hours or overnight. Then cook them on the bbq grill. Put them on the side or on the warmer grill and cook long enough to make the bacon how you like it. Sounds weird. Tastes pretty good.

 

The Problem with pan grease is it goes rancid really quick! What We Do, strain it right out of the pan into a coffee filter over a glass canning jar, after your done, pop it in the fridge till you need it again! DO this until it's nearly full, scrape it all out into a sauce pan and simmer till it's liquid, filter it through a paper again into the glass and now you got good renderings to cook with!
We use the Grease for pretty much any fried meat dish, especially fowl, like Duck, or Sage Hen, or even Quail! It's good for just about any of the dry meats, especially Pork or Lamb, which you should marinate and crock pot slow cook anyway, but we first fry it golden brown in Bacon Grease and Flower! For the BBQ, we make a tin foil catch tray under the rack ( Works equally well for Salmon BTW) and se save all the Bacon Drippings that way! I really like my Bacon on the BBQ, as it comes out perfectly done and I don't have to soak the grease out of it! Microwaved works really well for certain dishes, PLUS, it can be shaped into all sorts of nifty shapes that hold other tasty things!

 

I'm going to tell my wife about your idea @Ura-Ki

 

I remember Mom had an old style steel Crisco can with the plastic lid she'd save the grease in. I have seen various styles of grease containers on Amazon. Some are very like the old-style coffee pots, minus the strainer basket. I figure any good covered container will work.

 

Fry the bacon in a cast iron pan- save the grease in a can- keep it in the refrigerator. when there is enough the wife makes soap

 

Our extended family and friends butcher a bunch of hogs every other year. We’ll bring home 50-70 pounds of lard (basically the same as uncured bacon grease). We cut it into 1-1.5 pound blocks, seal it in bags and store it in the freezer where it lasts upto 2 years no problem.

When we cook French fries or something we use the lard. We use it multiple times until it takes on a not so good flavor and then discard it. Between uses we always store it sealed in a pyrex container in the refrigerator to reduce oxidation (rancid).

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The Old HOBO Camp Stove we made as kids is a good use for the rancid grease! Careful, it will burn HOT and Fast! IF you have paraffin, you can mix it in to slow the burn! I save up all my wood shavings/sanding and soak in grease, makes good BBQ starter or emergency Hobo Stove fuel! I even used one to PreHeat a glow plug diesel what wouldn't start because it was so cold out, just set it under the oil pan and lit it and let it burn till it was almost out, then had my buddy crank that old diesel over till it started!

 

Johnbb, please tell us how the wife makes soap from bacon! Also, what you use it for (only hand soap, clothes, etc.) and be specific about ingredients, portions, and process. Plus, throw in any details or tidbits you can provide. I would be really interested in hearing about this.

Of course, my main question is does it give one that manly-man bacon smell after showering?

 

Dogs tend to follow you a lot. I'll work on the wife to give me all the details ---

 

On a stove in a cast iron skittle and store the fat around my belly.

 

Grease will last a lot longer in the freezer,you can still spoon out some to use

 

Bandit ---The process would take me awhile to explain it and there a numerous ways to make soap from bacon grease, lard almost any kind of fat. I did a web search and there are plenty of good u-tubes videos on the making soap from bacon grease. If you are really interested my wife has a few books on soap making I can give you the titles to. She makes a bath soap that is pretty good smelling (not of bacon HA AH)

 

I used to keep bacon grease in a glass jar at room temperature and it lasted about 6 months. Now that I live in a warm climate I've switched to keeping it in the fridge and it lasted for a year. I've heard that it can last longer in the freezer.

 

Recently my Mother ran out of bacon grease and had to borrow some from my two sisters. Today at work I saw that we had Bacon Up on sale, it is a plastic tub holding 14 oz. of bacon grease, and only $3.23 at Rural King! I bought her one!