Everyone knows bacon is tasty. A large part of bacon’s tastiness is fat, which makes up maybe 50% of most bacon.
And yet, strange to say, after frying bacon, many of us just dump the fat, treating it like some unwanted byproduct when in fact it’s what makes the meat taste so good.
‘Twas not always thus.
In days gone by, the rendered fat of the bacon was saved and used to fry other foods, like eggs, or it was added as a flavoring to foods like collard greens or beans.
Try it yourself. Fry some eggs in bacon fat to see how you can bump up the flavor, and how the hot grease makes the edges of the eggs all crisp and lacey. When making greens or a pot of split pea soup, try adding a teaspoon of bacon fat to add some flavor.
Bacon fat is delicious, and it’s a shame that we let it go so easily down our drains. We bought some delicious bacon at Carnivore, and for a premium piece of pork like that, I’m going to use every ounce of it I can.
Okay, okay, I hear what you’re thinking: Bacon fat is fat, and fat is bad.
There is fat in bacon, obviously (that’s why it’s so tasty), but half the fat in bacon is monounsaturated, mostly oleic acid, the same fatty acid in olive oil, a key ingredient in most Mediterranean, “heart-healthy” diets.
So, from the standpoint of home economy as well as taste, try doing some of your cooking the old-fashioned way: with pig fat. It’s tasty, it’s cheap, and if you cook a little bacon now and again, you probably have more bacon fat on hand than you could possibly use
So I’m resolving: in 2015, I’m going to save bacon fat and use it for cooking, not all the time, but whenever I want to include in any meal the beloved taste of bacon.
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