Bacon Grease Is The Magic Ingredient For The Most Flavorful Pie Crust Ever

If you're saving exponentially more bacon grease than you have uses for as a cooking fat, you're not alone. If that's the case, it's time to explore new ways to leverage all that delectable greasy goodness you've painstakingly set aside for a rainy day. One of the best uses for leftover bacon grease is pie crust. Water-containing fats like bacon grease and butter produce steam while baking, making room for tiny spaces between the puffy layers of dough, leading to a tender, flaky crust.

Bacon grease also adds a luscious, smoky richness to crusts. That flavor complements a range of fillings, from savory quiches to sweet fruit pies. The key is to balance the bacon fat, in terms of both texture and taste, to avoid overwhelming the primary flavors of your crust (or, for that matter, your pie). Luckily, you can do so by using bacon grease it in tandem with other cooking fats in the crust and certain ingredients in the filling.

Bacon grease works best when used in conjunction with another, more refined fat. Unlike its more polished cousin lard, bacon grease has a delightfully charred, salty flavor. But that flavor can become overwhelming, especially if you keep bacon and sausage grease in the same jar.

Like butter and lard, bacon grease has a lower melting point, making the resulting dough more pliable but also more challenging to work with as it warms up, while vegetable shortening has a higher melting point and is a bit more forgiving. Either way, at least half your fat should be refined fat. Whether you strain your bacon grease is up to you. That removes flavor, but it also removes bits of bacon that become potentially unwanted texture in your crust. Then make your pie crust like you always do.

The resulting pie crust is surprisingly versatile. Pouring in savory mixtures like quiche or potpie filling is a no-brainer. And the salty component works exceptionally well with fruit pies of any kind. But it also complements the often cloying sweetness of pecan or shoofly pies. Or replace some of the crust's water with a tipple of bourbon to pair with a pumpkin or sweet potato pie. But you don't need a pie plate. This crust works well with hand pies too. Experiment with different flavor profiles and textures until you find your new signature pastry.