Bringing Home the Bacon

By Elaine Viets

My grandmother kept a pot of this in her kitchen and used it every day.

I know this will horrify some of our younger moms – she fed it to her grandchildren.

I’m talking about bacon grease. Recycled hog fat.

Bacon grease was the backbone of old-fashioned Southern cooking. Many a girdle-popping meal began with a big dollop of bacon grease melting in a cast-iron skillet.

Bacon grease was ideal for frying chicken, pork chops, baloney and eggs. It adds flavor to cornbread, grits and potatoes and onions with black pepper. Onions fried in bacon grease make a spectacular sandwich. Even shoe leather would be tender and tasty, fried in bacon grease.

Grandma kept her bacon grease in a special metal container that looked like a short fat cookie jar. Inside was a strainer that filtered out bits of bacon and burned stuff. The grease in the bottom hardened into lard.

After the food was forked onto the serving platters, the hot grease was poured back in the strainer to be used again. And again.

Whenever fat was required in a recipe, Grandma added a dollop of recycled bacon grease. God knows how old that grease was when it finally hit our plate again.

I can hear the health-conscious thinking, "Eeuw." Maybe by today’s low-fat, high-fiber standards, recycled bacon grease was unhealthy. Especially when it sat unrefrigerated on a kitchen stove, summer and winter. It had about 35 calories a teaspoon.

But in my neighborhood, kitchens ran on recycled bacon fat. Bacon grease was an all-natural ingredient with the amazing ability to turn health food into a nutritional nightmare. Vegetables went down faster with a hunk of melted bacon grease. Green beans were made for onions and bacon grease. In the summer, when folks had their own garden patches, my grandmother made wilted lettuce salad – white vinegar, hot bacon grease, sugar, new lettuce and green onions. Delicious, and endorsed by Elvis Institute for All-American Eating. I can feel my arteries clogging, just thinking about it.

You used to be able to buy a bacon grease strainer as part of a kitchen cannister set. The canisters would be marked FLOUR, SUGAR, SALT and GREASE. Some cooks preferred a Mason jar full of grease, or a coffee can.

Sometime while I was away at college, the bacon grease strainer disappeared. When I was a bride, I received many splendid and useless objects for wedding and shower gifts, but no bacon grease strainers. I’ve seen some sold online for about $15, but they lack authority.

Jinny Peterson used to keep a fake blue teapot filled with grease on the back of her stove. She believes grease strainers "disappeared with the coming of the microwave oven. That is when I got rid of mine. I ‘waved’ the bacon and the grease went into the paper towel and wasn't saved. I also started to steam the veggies and didn't put that big clump of bacon grease in the pot to boil them."

Many Jewish cooks used chicken fat instead of bacon grease. "It was a major treat to put chicken fat on matzoh during Passover," one friend told me. "Might explain why heart disease is rampant among Jewish people."

I suspect chicken fat and bacon grease oiled the way out of this world for many people in grandmother’s generation.

Grandma knew about Olive Oyl – as a character in "Popeye." But using that Eye-talian oil in American cooking would have seemed unpatriotic. America ran on recycled grease. It made our country great and our bodies as well as our arteries hard. For all Grandma knew, George Washington crossed the Delaware on bacon grease.

"Heart healthy" was not a term that would have impressed her. She smoked, drank, cussed a bit and poured bacon grease on everything but the davenport.

Her philosophy was, "Might as well enjoy yourself. Nobody gets out of here alive."

Comments

[Mary Storyteller]

What a guy!

[Elaine Viets]

Look no more, Ramona. Here's a URL for a bacon grease strainer on Amazon, of all things.

http://www.amazon.com/RSVP-International-Fryers-Friend-Grease/dp/B0000DDVV7

[Elaine Viets]

I know you're all worried about Harley. We have information that she's fine, or as fine as you can be when you evacuate your home and take three kids.
Our own Tart fan, Tom, has been giving us regular updates on the fires. At this point, it looks as if Harley's house is unscathed.

[Cate]

My mother STILL has a pan of bacon grease on the back of the stove. I don't keep one, but when I go to visit, I always have two eggs fried in it. OMG they are so good.

[michele]

Thanks for encouraging a walk down memory lane, Elaine. I don't know much about bacon grease, but being half Peurto Rican and half Jewish I know from starchy, greasy food. Matzoh ball soup, brisket, rice and beans, roast pork, kugel, you name it. I would not've wanted to grow up without that stuff. The key is not to eat it at every meal.

[michele]

We're all SO glad to hear that Harley's house is okay!! Many thanks to Tom for sharing that news.

PS -- It's my understanding that Google Earth is updated only once every two years.

[Tom]

Yeah, Josh, the maps show no breakouts directly in the Topanga Canyon area. So far, so good.

But remember : 'safe/not safe' can change in a minute, with a switch in wind direction. We've had years of drought here in SoCal, with occasional downpours to feed the growth of new scrub fuel. And it's a desert to start with; we've tried to change that, and we can't.

The HarleyKids are out on the road somewhere, I guess - maybe hangin' with the real-world Joey and Fredereeq. Our San Diego nephew grabbed his kids and his ex-wife and headed out of town with the other 900,000 people who bailed. They're in a motel half-way to Tucson. Can't be fun.

We have a long way to go in this fire season.

[hollygee]

Elaine, you brought back a crystal clear image of my mom's brushed aluminum grease strainer that, yes, was one part of her canister set. I haven't thought about that in years.

Lard does make the finest pie pastry, but not that block of stuff that you can still get in the supermarket. That is just nasty smelling/tasting. Get the lard from that other almost extinct species, an old-time butcher.

[Josh]

There's a real-world Joey and Fredereeq? I always thought that Joey and Wollie were two halves of Harley.

Now I have to think back to who could be Joey, soap actress and action TV star. Time to ask my wife.

[Michael]

I’m with Laura, I’d rather have the “Real Stuff” as an infrequent treat, rather than some half hearted PC imitation.

I actually own a cast iron skillet. And yep, I’ve been known to cook (PORK) bacon in it, and fry up some eggs in the grease. As they say here in Texas; “Mmmmm, boy!”

The other essential component of the Old Fashioned Breakfast: Real pancakes made on a cast iron griddle, greased with real butter. The marbling effect just can’t be duplicated on a non stick cooking surface.

Pancakes cooked on non-stick surfaces have a smooth, uniform texture that reminds me of a clean room full of white plastic jump-suited technicians hovering over a silicon wafer.

Give me Old Tech in the kitchen, please.

[Elaine Viets]

Pancakes in butter? Michael, I am itching to pour my soy milk down the drain and fix the real thing.

[Michael]

GO for it Elaine!

I hear soy milk makes an excellent drain cleaner anyway.

[PJ Parrish]

Oh wow...that coffee can full of grease sitting on the counter next to the ice box. Bringing back memories there, Elaine!

We had a housekeeper named Florence who also kept a bottle of old milk to make sour-milk pancakes. Yum!

[Pam aka SisterZip]

Both of my grandmothers had the grease pot on the stove and so did my mom. I was a freak in my German/Dutch English home...I didn't like the green beans mushed with bacon grease & onions. I have never liked very greasy things much; it just doesn't set well.

But my half-sister's grandmother has a recipe for oatmeal cookies that you add bacon grease to and they are to die for. As soon as I get home I will post it. I am a cookie nut and love to try new recipes...that sour cream sugar cookie sounds good.

I still have a small can of Crisco in the cabinet to grease & flour cake pans (on the RARE occasion that I bake anything). And I keep a little bacon grease in the fridge when Dear Hubby craves biscuits & gravy.

[Tom]

Josh, I have no idea whether or not there are a real-life Fredereeq and Joey. It's just my nagging tendency to fill in unknowns with imaginings. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.

[Josh]

Darn! Because I know that there is a real-life basis for Bubbles. I may have even met her.

[Emmy]

Your grandmother and my great-grandfather must be partying somewhere together. He always had a coffee can of bacon grease on his stove, in his un-airconditioned house, all year round. He also apparently ate raw bacon every day, and drank like a fish. He lived to 97.

[annette]

Elaine, thanks for the link to that bacon grease strainer. I remember my grandmother, my father's mother kept one on the stovetop. Now I can order one to give my husband at Christmas. He is a master breakfast chef. He loves to make bacon or sausages, eggs, biscuits, pancakes, waffles and of coarse grits. He keeps the bacon drippings in a tightly sealed jar UNDER the kitchen sink.

[William Simon]

Elaine, ditch the soy milk, grab Don, and head out to IHOP. The Breakfast Sampler: two eggs, two bacon strips, two sausage links, two ham strips. Big ol' chunk of hash browns. Two pancakes, or the "special" of the month; this one is crepes. (Yes, the cinnamon apple walnut are terrific.) Follow with a gallon or so of coffee, and a large juice of your choice, and it's as close to heaven as we can get in this day and age of Political Correctness in the Kitchen....:)

[Nancy Martin]

Either William has given up his Healthy Lifestyle Changes like Lindsay Lohan busting out of rehab, or he's dreaming about nothing but food these days. I feel your pain, honey.

[Kerry, the Martial Tart]

William, you're killing me! Except I loooooove the Harvest Nut Combo (those pancakes are to die for).

Why does my Southwestern Egg-white Frittata sound just the teensiest bit unappealing at the moment?????

[William Simon]

Actually, y'all, that's my Major Weekly Indulgence! There are times I believe I can hear my arteries clogging as I order, but as Elaine's grandmother said....:)

[michele]

I love IHOP, but you know what I really love? Waffle House. Give me some eggs and grits!

[annette]

I really must brag about my husband's grits. He makes them better than any restuarant. He can stand right next to me and give exact directions, but I jst can't cook 'em like he can.

[Avis in NH]

Nancy, if the above recipe for Sour Cream Sugar Cookies doesn't look familiar, this link has multiple pages of recipies. Enjoy!

http://www.cooks.com/rec/search/0,1-0,sour_cream_sugar_cookies,FF.html