Putting grease down the drain can clog your pipes. Don't do that. Use one of the many alternatives (see meme and comments).
Hell nah, jar. Next time you pan fry something, use the bacon grease to take it to a whole nother level.
It's also tasty as an ingredient in pasta sauces, stews, and soups. I use a bit when I make gumbo.
Man… I tried using all bacon grease as my fat when I made the roux…. That was a tough gumbo to get through. But canola with a bit of bacon grease is right. If you can find it, 1-2-3 oil in place of the canola is the tits.
My brain interpreted that as 3-in-1 oil for a brief second, in which I thought you were really out here trying to murder some folks.
Not positive, but I think it’s a blend of canola, vegetable, and safflower oil. Whatever it is, it’s mild enough and mostly neutral to give the right flavor.
3-in-1 oil would be… unpleasant…
I pan fry stuff all the time, but usually use Canola oil. What am I gonna do to my arteries if I start using bacon grease instead?
I use bacon grease and beef tallow for almost all of my frying. The only side effect I've had is that I no longer bleed when getting shot because my arteries have become bulletproof. It's like a superpower.
Agreed. When I'm cooking with bacon I'll save the grease and use it if that singular meal requires any additional pan frying, otherwise I toss it cause I don't need to be ingesting all that grease on the regular
If you have the bacon grease already it's very nice. I use a small strainer and pour the grease into a little mason jar and then use the grease for all sorts of cooking. There's no advantage to it, but it's giving the grease a second use, which is useful.
•
I respect the concern, but if you already ate the bacon that left you with the fat, hasn't a fair amount of the damage already been done?
Seriously, that stuff is delicious! Don't throw it out.
Add it to cornbread, use it to fry vegetables, put it on popcorn, use it to season your cast iron... The list goes on and on. And it keeps almost indefinitely in the fridge thanks to all the salt. There is almost no reason I can think of to throw out bacon grease unless you eat so much bacon that you can't possibly keep up with the grease or you don't have a refrigerator.
Ok pro tip for getting rid of your grease that doesn’t assume you have infinite containers lying around or make you wait forever for it to solidify.
Put a sheet of aluminum foil down over your drain so it creates a cup. Then pour your grease in that cup. Then drop an ice cube in if you feel like it.
Then just lift the edges and twist the top of your foil and put it in the trash.
•
Aluminium foil needs a lot of energy to produce. I'd recommend an old newspaper or (non laminated) cardboard to soak it up. If you plan a barbecue anytime soon, you can use the greasy paper as a perfect firestarter. Otherwise just put it in the trash when cold.
...Why not just wipe the pan out with a paper towel and throw it in the trash? If you bunch up a few of them and move quickly, you can do this while the pan is still kinda warm, even.
•
If you use not that much oil, it's easier to wipe it up with paper towel, but it's starts wasting it when you've used more oil
I still feel a can is the easiest and least wasteful solution. You pour the grease in and put the can in the cupboard until next time. Unless you're cooking bacon all the time, it takes a long time to fill up. You don't need more than one or have to wait.
I can just see people trying this for the first time, knocking the foil out of alignment and pouring a whole pan of hot grease down the drain
If I'm in between jars i put the tin foil in a bowl and do the same but after pouring put the bowl on the counter so family doesn't accidentally toss a dish in there.
Reduce FOG. Fats, Oils, Greases.
Especially if you're on septic. You can have clean pipes and a bricked tank or even worse clogged drainfield.
Sewage backing up into the home, or surfacing in the yard, and now the house is posted for non-occupancy and a 20-80k repair or replacement.
Gotem.
•
Yeah, I wish I knew this when I was growing up. My parents had so many problems with septic, and I’m sure some of them were what we put down the drain. We cost my parents so much money
Ah don't be ashamed of not having known though. I used to work for a health department and did a lot of outreach in rural communities. It's amazing how little knowledge of wastewater systems there is out there. Education on private infrastructure is lacking. People might learn about public treatment plants (seriously Ms Frizzle's Magic School Bus is the primary common point of reference) and assume their house is served by the same: even when miles out side a city off a forestry road.
why the hell would someone throw out perfectly good bacon grease? or is that the joke, that the third fellow is deranged?
well yeah, but also, you don't pour grease down the drain so you can use it later. any time i'm pan frying anything, the pan gets a bit of bacon grease. if i accumulate enough of it, i'll use it for deep frying too. throwing it out, down the drain or in the trash just does not make sense to me.
Pour the grease in a hole outside. Just dig a hole in the dirt where you don't walk a lot and pour it in there. It'll be fine.
•
Until you go outside and find every woodland creature in a 10 kilometer radius has dug up your front lawn looking for more bacon flavored dirt.
The next step, though, is rather... tricky. Few make it past it with their... shall we say... virtue, intact.
I was a fool. I was curious. I clicked. I haven't actually felt that "Lunch wants to come back up because you looked at something" feeling in a LONG time!
Bacon Flavored Dirt sounds like a product some scummy Kick streamer would try and peddle to his viewers.
Same, and doing this is devastating for whatever biosystem is in that soil.
Small amounts, it'll cope with. But for industrial amounts, or if you deep fry, please no.
there was a time when I saw a food show on tv about steamed burger place. I thought it seemed easy enough so I tried making it myself. The burger runoff water/grease left over got dumped next to a tree in my yard. For the next several weeks everyone walking their dog would have to wrangle it awag from the spot because they would zoom in as soon as they smelled it. I also tried dumping it on the road thinking the rain would wash it away but the rain just chilled and hardened it and dogs would lick it up, further distressing their humans.
edit: also recommend trying the food. steamed cheese is spoogy and really neat on burger
Ah, Superintendent Chalmers, welcome! I hope you're prepared for an unforgettable luncheon!
You're not just being inconsiderate to your landlord, though --- 'Monster' fatberg found blocking east London sewer
Perhaps the endorphin hit from sticking it to your landlord makes it all worthwhile.
"Monster" fatberg found blocking east London sewer
I was wondering why I hadn't seen your mom around lately
This year, on some random holiday, I had to take 20ft of piping out of the walls and remove one solid block of hardened grease that had accumulated there, blocking the pipes, causing dirt water to flow back into the kitchen and into appliances. What a joy that was... the stench alone.
Don't flush grease down the drain.
What does that have to do with pouring grease down the drain? Whether you agree with landlords or not it's objectively not the right thing to do and if anything will just be a pain in the ass for the next tenant
People like this are why I am hesitant to rent. I don't need the investment, but I'm good at owning and keeping up property, and I've thought about renting out my spare area at below cost just so someone can have a cheaper place to live, just while I pay it off. Like hey, I have a spare suite in my house, someone could live there since I don't need the space. It's not the Ritz, but a young couple trying to get started or a young family could use it while they save up for a down payment.
Then someone comes along and says "yeah I'm going to trash it because fuck landlords". Like, ok, fuck me for trying to provide a cheaper alternative to the huge corporate housing. Guess I deserve it for ... Reasons
Edit - I remembered it elsewhere, but posting it in this comment too. Independent landlords are not wealthy. Maybe they inherited a house from a family member, or what I describe, I could afford to upgrade but want to keep my old place and rent out below cost while I continued fixing it up. People who think "Landlords are rich" need to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxIgGkA5tXM Corporations buying property is one thing, people who have dozens of properties are one thing, someone just renting out a spare room or a spare property? You're probably financially ruining them.
I'm renting half someone's basement right now in a situation like you're describing. I'm very grateful to them for the opportunity and am not surreptitiously destroying their home. I've actually done several repairs for them since I started living here. I've known them for a long time though so they knew they could trust me.
That's who I'd love to rent to. It's not about profit for me, but more I have property and I can rent for under value. People are freaking assholes though.
This video haunts me, I saw it originally years ago, this guy breaking down over what renters did to his property: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxIgGkA5tXM
Owner occupancy credit against property taxes to hold them at their current rates, or even drop them a bit. Next, we target an 85% owner-occupancy rate, increasing the property taxes every year that owner-occupancy rate is below 80%, and reducing them any time it is above 90%. We will end up with a massive increase in property tax rates, but those increased taxes will only be paid by investors.
On-site landlords, living in one unit of a duplex, triplex, or quadplex will be able to claim the credit. Off-site landlords, (or landlords living in a complex of 5 or more units) will not be able to claim the credit.
Investor-owners will be fighting tooth and nail to convert their tenants into buyers: they will be offering land contracts, private mortgages, converting apartments to condominiums, etc. They will be earning considerably greater profits selling than they would be able to renting, while charging less.
Lenders who elect to foreclose will be saddled with the property tax rate from the moment they file, so they will have one hell of a financial incentive to cooperate with the borrower.
An owner-occupancy tax credit will give renting the death it deserves.
This sounds extremely effective at shifting housing stock. My only question is what happens to people who can't get mortgages yet? You can't just give out a mortgage to anyone who asks. The banks did effectively that in the lead up to 2008 and we saw how that worked out (granted the specifics are far more muddy, but it is a period in recent history where many people qualified for mortgages they shouldn't have qualified for, and a ton of people ended up foreclosing
You can give a mortgage to anyone who wants it, just not the type of mortgage that you're thinking of. Private mortgages don't have the follow on effects that traditional mortgages have. Private mortgages aren't bought and sold on a secondary market. Private mortgages aren't wrapped up into CDOs or other derivative investment products. A lender who issues a private mortgage can't turn around and sell it to a different lender. They can't package up a bunch of garbage loans into a new security and sell it to an unsuspecting buyer. The 2008 housing market collapse wasn't because of bad mortgages. It was because of the entire house of cards that was built on top of them.
Whether Adam rents a home to Bob, or Adam issues a private mortgage and sells to Bob, Adam is taking substantially the same risk on Bob. Adam is already prepared to take that risk as Bob's landlord; there is no valid reason why he shouldn't take that exact same risk as Bob's lender.
Land contracts are another option.
A land contract is, effectively, a rent-to-own arrangement. The tenant/buyer earns equity from day one. But, if they default on the contract on the first 3 or 5 years, they lose that equity. After that 3 or 5 year period, the equity they built is, effectively, the down payment on their mortgage.
So vote for people who do that. Except you won't find any, because it's a fever dream. No government can afford just building houses for millions of people. Some have tried and ended up with consequences that they deal with till today
No it didn't and that's not how it works. Also living in the Soviet Union fucking sucked and reading about it on the internet won't give you the full picture.
Correct. Grease down the drain is simply not based.
Everyone from neighbors to sewage workers to the environment will have to put up with it.
Even with our grievances against the ownership of some things, I think we should all be agreeing with "Don't crap (or otherwise ruin) where you eat." Or has the world really reached such a point of madness where that idea is contested too?
Oh, would I be creating an inconvenience for the guy who feels the need to run his leaf blower every week to push dust around? God forbid
Ruin someone else's house because you don't like to be a tennant. I swear people on lemmy are fucked in the head.
Buddy we all want huge mansions. The reality of the world is, that housing is scarce. Renting from someone to specifically be a shitty tennant just makes you a miserable person to be around. It also gives them a good reason to kick your ass to the curb.
https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Housing/Tables/vacancy-rate.html
Scarce, my ass. Landlords and especially "investors" are manufacturing that scarcity squeeze more money out of us. I don't want a "big mansion", I just want my place to have more square meters than my fucking skin surface. But I don't have that. I pay over 300 Euros for one room. Not a one room apartment, mind you. One. FUCKING. Room. And a fucking small one at that.
I'm not saying be a shitty tenant for being a shitty tenant's sake. But also don't put in any extra special effort to be a nice one. The better reason to store away fat is that you can reuse it. Plus, it also creates a general sewage problem, not just in your drain, which is bad for all of society in your municipality.
Pouring grease down the drain is being a shitty tennant to your landlord, plain and simple. Some people might not know, that's fine. But if they learn about it and keep doing them, then they deserve eviction.
Buddy we all want huge mansions. The reality of the world is, that housing is scarce.
No I don't and no it isn't.
Not agreeing with being a shitty person but those two points are simply bullshit.
Hmm, you know, how many people actually have newspapers lying around anymore?
Edit: forgot about the junk mail!
Just sign up for the local church's newsletter or use the spam in your mailbox with the local grocer's weekly deals. It's free garbage!
This all probably sounds nuts, but here are my oil systems:
I wash out and recycle glass jars, but peanut butter jars are difficult to clean and will end up getting fat into the water system. So I keep the peanut butter jars for oil.
I also keep a bendy, steel decorating pallet in the kitchen for scraping out fat from the grill tray and rack. You’re left with some fat that you can wipe off with kitchen paper, which you can also use to wipe the pallet knife. Then washing up liquid and a splash of boiling water from the kettle.
There can be quite a lot of oil in leftover food, like sauces, too. I use a silicone spatula to scoop it off before washing.
•
I can usually find something in recycling: it doesn’t need to be glass or a can even when the grease is hot. Milk cartons work well, plastic cups like for single serving applesauce (yeah I know, single-serving). It doesn’t even need a lid since it will solidify as long as you can let it sit a few hours
I let it cool and then scrape it into our food waste bin. (I don’t know if grease composts but for us it’s moot; the city doesn’t compost food waste but instead makes it into pig feed or something.)
I mean… aren’t they already? My understanding of pigs is that they literally eat just about anything.
My sister once asked if I could help with the kitchen sink in her house as it was blocked. I started taking waste pipes off and quickly realised there's a bunch of sardines stuck in one pipe. Her 15 year old daughter had shoved fish down the waste pipe of the sink rather than putting them in the bin. I still can't understand the logic in her head. Surely it's more difficult to push fish through the small holes at the bottom of the sink than it is to take 2 steps towards the bin.
If you put them in the bin, you're going to have to take the trash out or else it's going to stink up the house in a matter of hours. Having been a teenager myself, I can confirm that I would have done just about anything to avoid the laborious task of taking out the trash.
You're not wrong but I realised my niece doesn't have that level of responsibility. If there's a smelly bin she'll just expect her mum to sort it out or disappear so she doesn't have to deal with it.
Smdh if you dont add pan drippings to your beans.
E: or rice! Next time you cook yourself up a little pot of rice go on and put those drippings in there!
Frying some uncooked rice in oil gives it a nice flavor (you then cook the rice like you normally would, unless you want some flavorful uncooked crunchy rice) - it might be worth testing out this process using pan drippings
Nah, put the rice in the pot first then pour the drippings in and stir it all around with a fork.
Then add the water and cook as you normally would
•
I usually have so little oil left I just put enough dish soap in that it all mixes with water... Does that still clog my pipes?
You can actually pour it into a can or container, put a wick (or make one out of paper towel) and burn it like a candle. The aroma actually isn't that strong since it's mostly fat and it doesn't sputter or anything. The solids sink to the bottom while solidifying.
I use a fuckload of soap and hope it keeps the grease from re-forming. Is that still bad?
Yeah, still not great. Even with a bunch of soap you're still going to have some grease that doesn't get emulsified with the soap and water.
The way soap works is by attaching molecules of oil to water, but it requires a lot of agitation/energy for a complete emulsion that won't quickly break down to its constituent parts again.
If you're in a situation where you have to pour grease down your pipe, continue your soap method, but let the hot water run for a min or two before, during, and after you pour the grease. The hotter the better.
Depends how much soap you use.
The soap doesn't work by attaching oil to water, the soap attaches to the water and then the soap is carried away by the water. Oil doesn't dissolve in water, but oil dissolves in soap and soap dissolves in water. So long as you use enough of an excess of soap and mix it together enough, you'll be fine.
Definitely agree with rinsing the drain before, during, and after, though. Especially as most mammal oils become less viscous (slightly runny) at higher temperatures.
The soap doesn't work by attaching oil to water, the soap attaches to the water and then the soap is carried away by the water. Oil doesn't dissolve in water, but oil dissolves in soap and soap dissolves in water.
I'm sorry, but that is incorrect. Soap is created as a reaction between fat and an alkaline reagent, often sodium hydroxide. This chemical reaction creates bi-polar molecules, with one side remaining hydrophobic allowing it to bond to other fats, and one side that is hydrophilic and will bond to water.
Oil by itself does not dissolve in soap, it creates a partial emulsification. That partial emulsification will relatively quickly separate back to oil and soap given time, adding water and energy will create a complete emulsion which will hold the water oil and fat together for much longer.
Due to a project at my company, I unfortunately know entirely more about emulsification than I would like.
Thank you for the correction on my terminology. Oil doesn't dissolve in soap and soap doesn't dissolve in water, emulsions are not solutions.
However, I think the general point about oil attaching to the soap and the soap attaching to the water still stands. I would still say that "the soap attaches the oil to water" isn't quite right. Per your statement, the soap attaches to both oil and water on opposite sides of the molecule, so the oil isn't really attached to the water - at least not directly. That was the thing I was trying to articulate.
But you also remind me of something a chemistry professor once told me: it's not the soap that cleans, it's not the heat that cleans, it's the physical scrubbing action that cleans. Soap and heat make it much easier, but if you add soap and hot water to a burnt dish and leave it to soak, everything will stay exactly where it is (separated) until you add physical energy to move things.
I would still say that "the soap attaches the oil to water" isn't quite right. Per your statement, the soap attaches to both oil and water on opposite sides of the molecule, so the oil isn't really attached to the water - at least not directly. That was the thing I was trying to articulate.
Yeah, it's open to interpretation as we aren't utilizing strict scientific terminology. The reason why i preface it that way is that technically emulsifiers are still oils/fats themselves, they've just undergone a chemical reaction that alters their polarity.
Also, when you are trying to create a proper emulsification the majority of the time you add you emulsifiers to the oils/fats first to create a partial emulsification, and then you add your water and energy to finish it off.
But I understand your reasoning, even the best emulsification is still technically an aided dispersion and will lose its homogenisation over time.
Less likely to cause issues, but it might still leave residue on your pipes over time. That said, I also do that. Wipe up what I can with a paper towel, then dilute the rest with hot water and soap
Cook bacon in the oven in aluminum foil (it's better that way anyway) put paper towels in to soak the grease crumple it all into a wad and throw it away in the trash... ?
