If You Haven't Already, Try Scrambling Your Eggs In Leftover Bacon Fat

Bacon and eggs go together like peanut butter and jelly, pancakes and syrup, or any other classic culinary duo. If you are a scrambled eggs and bacon fan, here's a tip that will make your eggs all the more flavorful. First, cook your bacon, then conserve some of the bacon grease and use it to scramble the eggs, infusing all that rendered bacon fat flavor right back in.

Many home cooks drain off the grease after cooking bacon, but that leftover fat is the perfect way to pack some extra flavor into your breakfast. You'll hardly need to season your eggs; they'll already be full of salty pork deliciousness. And if you're health conscious, don't worry — bacon fat has about the same calorie and fat content as other varieties of oil, so if you don't overdo it, it's perfectly fine to use sparingly to add some flavor to your breakfast.

If you want to store bacon grease, sausage grease, or any other breakfast meat fat for frying, here's how to get started. Simply cook your meat in the pan as you normally would and when the meat is cooked to your preferred doneness, remove it from the pan. Let the grease cool briefly, then strain it through a fine sieve and store it in a non-plastic container. 

You can omit this process and simply cook your eggs in the same pan as your meat without straining off the oil, but depending on how much meat you cook, you may find your eggs swimming in grease. If you strain it out first, you'll have more control over how much fat goes into the final product.

Scramble your eggs as you would with any other fat; for extra meaty flavor, you can mix chopped-up pieces of the cooked meat back into the eggs as well. And if you're not a fan of scrambled eggs, you can make fried eggs with the leftover fat instead or an omelet if that's your preference.

If you've rendered off a decent amount of fat and want to use it beyond just scrambling eggs, plenty of recipes can benefit from a bit of bacon grease. Cornbread, especially skillet cornbread, always tastes better with some bacon fat to keep the batter from sticking and impart that smoky, savory flavor. Gravy is always a little more flavorful when starting with a base of flavor-infused fat as well, especially if you're making something like a country sausage gravy, perfect when served over fresh biscuits.

If you want to jazz up homemade mayonnaise, substitute some bacon grease for extra bacon flavor in the finished product instead of using all canola oil in the recipe. Then, spread it on sandwiches for that distinct taste without having to spend time frying up a few slices. In any savory application where you could use a little oil, you can sub in bacon grease for that extra pop of bacon deliciousness.