I was asked about using bacon fat

I was asked by a lady who has been reading this blog if it would be okay to use the fat left over from cooking bacon in a stir fry.

There's no reason why you can't use your bacon fat, for that matter fat that comes from roasting chicken, pork, beef or lamb.

I remember years ago my Mum used to pour all the fat (dripping as we called it) into the same bowl and use it for everyday frying. Now they would say that is bad for your health. My Mum will be 89 this year and smokes around 10 cigarettes a day. So it can't be that unhealthy.

                                   My Mum at 88

For us poor people bread'n dripping was a luxury. 

Oliver Twist would have asked for more.

Saying that I do keep any fat that comes from cooking separate from each other. Like the big chickens you get here in the USA, you get a lot of fat from them you could use for frying potatoes.

If I'm going to make a chicken curry, either Thai or Indian. I would get a whole chicken and cut the breast and legs from the carcass myself. I would boil up the carcass to make my own stock. I would cut off most of the chicken fat and put that into boil away as well. When it is cooled I would usually make two pots of chicken stock, these I would put in the freezer for later use. There would be quite a healthy layer of fat on the top.

The fat from roasting beef is great for your roast potatoes.

The same with the fat from lamb, though you do not get that much from lamb.

Pork fat I'd cook on the pork and eat with the meat, too tasty not to eat it.

Back to bacon fat. Unfortunately here in America, unless you find a store that sells English bacon, you only get the fatty, what we call streaky bacon. When you fry or grill this you get a lot of fat from the bacon. You can save this fat for frying something, like potatoes, especially for breakfast potato. 

You could have something really wicked, a fried slice of white bread, delicious with your breakfast. But don't tell your heart specialist I told you.

I also save the bacon from when I grill (broil). I do this buy having a piece of kitchen foil in the bottom of the grill tray to catch the fat from the bacon on the grill rack.

The foil also helps to keep your grill clean.

I'm not sure about using the bacon fat for a stir fry, though I do use it when cooking a fried rice from left overs but that is the fat from bacon going into the fried rice.

For a stir fry I use canola oil and sesame oil for extra flavour.

A really good Chinese cook website is www.chinghehuang.com Her videos are brilliant. If you read about her you'll see someone who made herself a millionaire from cooking. With no formal cooking teaching.