Bacon drippings rewards a little know-how: how to choose them, cook them, store them, and substitute in a pinch. Browse 120 recipes to cook with them.

What are bacon drippings?

Bacon drippings are the rendered fat left in the pan after you cook bacon. It is liquid and golden while hot, then sets into a soft, opaque solid as it cools, somewhere between butter and lard in feel.

That fat carries the smoke and salt of the bacon it came from, which is the whole reason cooks save it. A spoonful turns plain food smoky without adding a single strip of meat.

Strain it warm and you have a free cooking fat.

Cooking With Bacon Fat

Use it anywhere you would use butter or oil and want a savory, smoky backbone. It has a higher smoke point than butter, so it browns and sears without scorching.

Fried eggs are the classic. A teaspoon of warm drippings in the pan gives the whites crisp, lacy edges and a faint bacon flavor that plain oil cannot touch.

It is the traditional fat for cornbread. Greasing a hot skillet with bacon fat before the batter goes in gives the crust its crunch and a savory edge against the sweet crumb.

Southern greens lean on it the same way, a spoonful melted into the pot to season collards or green beans from the first minute, the way it does in Cabbage & Potatoes.

Roast potatoes in it instead of oil and they come out crustier.

It is also the fat that makes a warm bacon vinaigrette work, as in Octoberfest German Potato Salad, where the hot drippings are whisked straight into the dressing. Beans and grits soak it up too: a swirl finishes Tim's Idaho Cowboy Beans and gives Sauteed Shrimp with Grits its backbone.

Saving and Storing It

Pour the warm fat through a fine strainer or a coffee filter into a clean jar. Straining matters, because the browned bits left behind, the cracklings, are what turn rancid first and cloud the fat.

Keep the jar in the fridge, not the counter. Cold and dark slows the fat from going off, and a sealed jar in the fridge holds for several months. Left at room temperature it can turn within a few weeks.

Smell is your test. Fresh drippings smell like bacon; rancid fat smells sharp, like old crayons or paint. If it smells wrong, toss it.

A heaping spoonful per pack of bacon is about what you get, so it builds up fast. Many cooks keep a running jar by the stove and top it up after every batch.

Bacon Fat Versus Lard

Both are rendered pork fat, but they are not the same thing. Lard comes from pork back fat or leaf fat and is nearly flavorless, which is why bakers reach for it in pastry and biscuits, where you want fat without taste.

Bacon drippings come from cured, smoked belly, so they are salty and smoky. That flavor is a gift in savory cooking and a problem in a pie crust, where the smoke would fight the filling.

So swap them with intent. Use lard where you want clean fat and flake. Reach for bacon fat where you want the dish to taste of bacon.

For a quick stand-in when you are out, butter or oil handles the cooking but loses the smoke. There is no real substitute for the flavor itself short of cooking another strip of bacon.

Nutrition

Quick facts

Where to find bacon drippings: Bacon drippings are usually found in the meats section or aisle of the grocery store or supermarket.

Food group: Bacon drippings are a member of the Fats and Oils US Department of Agriculture nutritional food group.

In Chinese

培根水滴

British (UK) term

Bacon drippings

en français

gras de bacon

en español

grasa de tocino

How much do bacon drippings weigh?

Amount	Weight
1 teaspoon	4 grams

Related

Fats and Oils

Recipes using bacon drippings

There are 120 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 120 recipes

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