Back in the day, everyone used to cook with bacon grease. They didn't really have a lot of options. These days, with an entire section of the grocery store dedicated to cooking oils, not to mention 50 different kinds of butter and margarine in the dairy case, the practice of cooking with bacon grease has declined steeply.
Bacon grease tastes delicious, and it makes everything taste like bacon. (Thus, you wouldn't want to use it in, I don't know, tea cookies. Or maybe you would!) But it is admittedly not the most healthy fat you can cook with. (That honor probably goes to extra virgin olive oil, although some would say coconut oil is better for you.)
It doesn't take very much bacon grease to add "pow" to a dish, though. Maybe a tablespoon at most. Which is good, because you don't usually get very much grease from cooking up bacon. It may seem like a lot at the time, but most batches of bacon will only yield a few tablespoons of rendered fat.
In olden days, people just poured bacon grease into an empty tin can and left it on the stove. But people got sick a lot in the olden days, too. Personally, I would worry about the fat going rancid or attracting kitchen pests like bugs or mice. Better, probably, to store it inside the fridge. Be sure to use a sealed container, unless you want your gallon of milk to end up tasting like bacon. (Once again - maybe you do!)
Here are some great ideas on how to use bacon grease, from caramelizing onions to rubbing on chicken breasts. My personal favorite thing is to cook some bacon in a skillet, pull out the bacon, then crack in a few eggs and fry them up in the sizzling bacon grease. It's not an everyday food, more of a rare treat. But it certainly is delicious!
Image courtesy Flickr/Dinner Series
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