Bacon Grease

The other day I made a corn risotto and the recipe I used called for bacon, so I had a few uncooked pieces left over. I almost never buy bacon because of how much I love it. It's a classic obsession; bacon never goes out of style. Unless you're a vegan or vegetarian but I'm not.

I cannot buy bacon because if I cook it there is only the slimmest chance it'll make it into the designated recipe. Usually it goes straight from the pan to my mouth. I think I got the risotto done by chewing gum during the bacon cooking process but that left me with six uncooked pieces that stayed in my fridge until yesterday when I remembered I should cook them before they go bad.

See, to me this is an acceptable meal.

David, my business/ best friend partner suggested I cook it up and then refrigerate it for later use sprinkled on salads in pasta, etc. which I thought was a great idea. But yesterday evening, with both roommates out of town and two episodes of Thirty Rock in the que, I ate all the bacon pieces. Pan to mouth. It's ok, I don't feel too bad; it's a protein so I'm gonna call it dinner.

Nevertheless I still had an actual dinner to go to and since I didn't have any roommates to be civilized for, I figured I'd clean up when i got home.

Upon entering my apartment later that evening I saw that the grease had hardened into a buttery solid fat.

This is a photo I stole from Simply Recipes, but I swear, my bacon fat looks exactly like this

So today I made a bacon vinaigrette and had an avocado, egg, arugula salad. People, it was awesome. Straight from the internetz via Alton brown, I did 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 1 tbs bacon grease, I tbs brown sugar, 1 tbs mustard, whisked till it emulsified.

I particularly recommend waiting until your grease hardens before collecting it versus the other acceptable method of pouring it hot into the container. Let me tell you why! Because then you get all these tiny delicious bacon pieces left over from the fry up and, oh dear god, it is so good.

So that's that I guess. I've still got three salads worth of greens and vinaigrette left so this obsession will last me at least another week. I'm not a big baked goods fan so probably won't be using the bacon grease in the now passe maple-bacon-cookie type genre. But used on some roasted veggies.

Until the next obsession,

Nina

P.S Here's the recipe. I think you could skip the sugar and it might be even better.