The value of bacon grease

record-eagle ^ | May 30, 2009 | ED HUNGNESS

[goat granny]

LOL good one.

[goat granny]

Olives don’t grow all over the earth, but animals do..I think animal fats were probably used first, nomads didn’t encounter olive trees unless they were in that part of the world where they grow..

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

Wilted lettuce. I use spinach. Fry bacon until crisp. Remove from fat and put on paper towel.

Add vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper to bacon fat. Pour over lettuce (or spinach). I add red onion rings, flavored croutons, cherry tomatoes, chopped celery, etc.

It is very good.

[Daniel II]

Today you could do it with pH strips. If I recall, basic yields shades of blue to purple and acidic shades of red to yellow.

Our ancestors probably had a more formulaic approach.

You might be able to tell in that if there is not enough lye, you'll still have a greasy emulsion floating on the top. Too much lye and all the grease will react and you'd be left with water (and lye) on top that you could just pour off.

Any chemists out there?

[AFreeBird]

B4L8r

[mamelukesabre]

Olives grow everywhere that people first colonized.

[annieokie]

had some yesterday, grew the lettuce in my flower bed as a border, also grew some spinach the same way in my front flower bed. Wilted Lettuce, yummmmmmmmmmmmmmm. At the leftover’s today.

[fanfan]

I know it's wiki, but look at this....

How to Make Lye

~snip~Check to see if your lye is ready. For what purpose are you leaching this lye? Body soap or heavy cleaning? Lye concentration gets stronger with each leaching. For average soap making, you can use these measures: Drop a fist-sized potato or a raw egg into the barrel. If it floats enough for a quarter-size piece to rise above the water, it is ready. If it doesn't, you need to add more ashes or drain all the water and re-leach it (pour it back into the cask and let it set one more cycle).~snip~

[Daniel II]

That wiki. He knows everything.

[fanfan]

Apparently.

;-)

[Brad’s Gramma]

Add vinegar, sugar,

Yup. That was missing from the earlier recipe...(if I recall). THANK you!

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

It actually takes quite a bit of sugar.

[Brad’s Gramma]

And this is bad how? ;)

[trisham]

I fry eggs in olive oil. Yum.

[goat granny]

Yep I forgot the sprinkle of sugar.....me bad :O( me also very old...:O(

[Hugin]

I fry eggs in olive oil. Yum.

Uckk. Olive oil is fine for salads and pasta, but I don't want to have it mucking up the tase of my eggs. If there's no bacon or sausage grease available, some butter in just enough canola oil to keep it from burning will have to do.

[JoeProBono]

Leaf lard is the layer of fat that lines the gastrointestinal cavity of a pig. When the pig is slaughtered leaf lard looks like milky, half set, jello and when chilled it hardens to a waxy firm leaf-shaped solid. If you ever wondered why crisco was developed it was because leaf lard is awesome but relatively hard to get if you weren't killing your own pigs. Rendering leaf lard is pretty easy. Just chop it up, as shown, and place it in an oven safe pot with a half inch of water and place in the oven covered at 350' until the fat has rendered and the cracklings are golden brown. Strain and chill the lard and save the cracklings to sprinkle on top of a salad or flavor corn bread with. After the fat has solidified seperate the white lard from the liquid. Failure to do so will give you bad lard. Use in any recipe that calls for Crisco/Vegetable shortening.

[VRWCmember]

I was afraid the author was going to suggest using bacon grease for bio-diesel which would have earned him a horse-whipping.

[VRWCmember]

Like Homer, I found that strangely appealing.

[GOPJ]

The soap smells like bacon? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of washing?