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This is yet another one of those never ending discussions I have with my friends. So here's the deal. Every once in a while we (me & J) cook bacon or sausages by pan-frying them. This of course leaves a fair bit of melted fat & grease in the pan, which we may then use to sliced potatoes, cabbage, onions, eggs, or whatever vegetable or sidedish we happen to be eating that day with our meal. We realize that this isn't entirely healthy, but it does add extra flavour and makes whatever we're cooking taste better.

My friends are completely grossed out by this and say it's disgusting and wrong in more ways than they can count, and they can't figure out why one would want to eat something that's been cooked in animal lard. They're also convinced I'm going to have a heart attack by the time I'm 30. I think it tastes great, I know it's not that healthy but I figure that in moderation it's not going to kill me.

So, have you ever cooked with bacon fat or other melted animal grease and what are your opinions on doing so?

Do it all the time ( In urban life, you DONT waste grease, its something that has been passed down here) It can be unhealthy but it is good.

Grease is grease, though I prefer others, such as butter, for the flavor.

What's wrong with that? We use bacon grease all the time. We even keep it in the fridge for later if we don't plan to use it immediately. It's delicious.

Bacon fat used to be pretty common. Honestly, I doubt you or your girlfriend have much to worry about. You both exercise enough that eating it occasionally isn't going to do any harm.

Bacon and bacon grease are standard ingredients in green beans and baked beans and they're also commonly found in German style hot potato salad.

Sure it's unhealthy to a degree, but if your cholesterol is within limits and you aren't obese, no real harm is done.

One thing I do when I fry hamburgers is toast the buns in the burger grease.
But it kinda defeats the purpose of buying lean meats.

Unless your friends are total vegans, they probably eat lots of food that's been cooked in animal grease or lard and don't realize it.

Don't see what's wrong with it myself. While I don't cook much anymore, whenever I do and I'm happening to make bacon and/or sausages, I'll simply use the grease that's leftover to fry up what's next. Not only does it add to the flavor, it speeds up the cooking time instead of having to start from scratch.

Heck, that's how I learned to cook! With bacon grease. Well, breakfast, anyway. Cook the bacon first, drain most of the fat out, and use what's left so the eggs don't stick to the pan.

Sure. Nothing wrong with it at all.

Cook in it and turn it into yummy white gravy. mmmmmmm tasty

Fat and grease is what makes food taste good. Everytime I make eggs, I would just drain the excess fat into a canistor. It gives the eggs a slightly "meatier" flavor, and keeps them from sticking to the pan.

French fries used to be cooked in beef tallow up until 15 years ago.

It's disgusting on so many levels, but honestly eggs fried in bacon grease do taste really good.

Got to be honest, I do use grease although butter in generally better. Too much grease also sometimes makes me sick so I cannot do it too often.

Pick wrote: What's wrong with that? We use bacon grease all the time. We even keep it in the fridge for later if we don't plan to use it immediately. It's delicious.

That's what I say, though like my BF's friends, most of my friends think I'm courting an early death. Some of them understand though, which I find kinda weird since females in general tend to be more health-concious than males.

BTW, we had sausages for dinner and used the leftover grease to fry up some onions. Man was it ever good!

Thats one of the ingredients in my breakfast tacos. I just fry up the bacon first, then scramble the eggs in the grese(keeps the pan cleaner too) with cheese. Delicious.

You probably do more damage to yourself by breathing city air.

By all accounts, both of you exercise well and often. Also dietary cholesterol really has fuck all todo with blood cholesterol, which is what actually matters.

It is the other food stuffs which you eat which depends on how much "bad" blood cholesterol(LDL-cholesterol) you have around. LDL-cholesterol is largely from saturated fat & trans-fatty acids levels.

Ironically, it is probably healthier to use bacon grease than a slab of butter(high in saturated fats)/margerine(high in trans-fatty acids) when cooking eggs

Thats silly. Now if you were sitting at the lazy boy eating bacon lard with your chips, then you might have a problem.

Taters fried in bacon grease is a delicacy. An honest to god, north american cusine.

I used to do that myself too. And when I leave this place in March/April 2007, I will do that again. As for health, well, I reckon this place'll stress me out much faster than the grease and fat would kill me. Nothing like pork fat I reckon. All the good Chinese pork dishes have wallopings of fat: kong bak, sio bak. Or use generous amounts of lard: char kway teow, bak cho mee etc.

Standard procedure for cooking scrambled eggs at my place is to first cook up some sausage in the same pan. Drain the excess grease from the sausage and use the remains as a substitute for butter. Scrambled eggs aren't good if they don't have those black spots from sausage grease. : )

If you are thinking of changing breakfast foods, dont go for just corn flakes. Those are high GI foods, and get processed into sugar extremely fast. So you end up lacking energy a few hours after.

Mixing high GI foods and low GI foods is a good bet, as it provides short term and long term energy.

We do it every time we're cooking eggs around this place. They just don't taste as good using butter and I'd never think of margarine. That stuff's poison. Are your friends dirty hippies or something?

Neither of us plan to change our breakfast foods, laziness & time constraints means we usually go with toasted bagels with butter & peanut butter or cream cheese and a large glass of milk. Sometimes we go with dark rye bread, once in a while I'll change to cereal, and we do the bacon & eggs thing when we have the time and we're in the mood. Nothing fancy, gets us through the day.

Glocksman wrote:Bacon and bacon grease are standard ingredients in green beans and baked beans and they're also commonly found in German style hot potato salad.

That certainly depends on the region of Germany. There are severe differences in what is considered a potato salad between regions

Anyway, I like bacon, and it is a very common part of cooking...

I much perfer to use olive oil myself.

aerius wrote:This is yet another one of those never ending discussions I have with my friends. So here's the deal. Every once in a while we (me & J) cook bacon or sausages by pan-frying them. This of course leaves a fair bit of melted fat & grease in the pan, which we may then use to sliced potatoes, cabbage, onions, eggs, or whatever vegetable or sidedish we happen to be eating that day with our meal. We realize that this isn't entirely healthy, but it does add extra flavour and makes whatever we're cooking taste better.

My friends are completely grossed out by this and say it's disgusting and wrong in more ways than they can count, and they can't figure out why one would want to eat something that's been cooked in animal lard. They're also convinced I'm going to have a heart attack by the time I'm 30. I think it tastes great, I know it's not that healthy but I figure that in moderation it's not going to kill me.

So, have you ever cooked with bacon fat or other melted animal grease and what are your opinions on doing so?

Your friends should learn a thing or two before freaking out, lard is something like 11% lower in saturated fat than butter, and delicious as hell.
All things in moderation, and there should be no problem.

Mark S wrote:Are your friends dirty hippies or something?

One of them was raised in a family of vegetarians and eats meat only once a week or so on average, so I'm not too surprised he frowns on my eating habits. The others are normal people with normal diets, they just think everything should be cooked in vegetable oil instead of bacon fat.

The part that really baffles me is that they have no problem eating french fries and fried chicken that's cooked in oil that's been recycled 50 times, but mention bacon or sausage grease and they all say "that's disgusting! Do you want to die?"