Answers to life's vexing cooking questions...
Cooking Without (or With Less) Bacon Grease
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Q. What can I use as a substitute for bacon grease? I am making a recipe that calls for 1-1/2 cups of grease. That's a lot of bacon to cook!A. The glib answer — and we're often pretty good at glib — is lard or schmaltz (rendered chicken fat). We don't know what you're cooking, but you can probably also use butter, margarine, vegetable shortening, and quite possibly any cooking oil in place of bacon grease.
None will impart the same flavor, but a surprising number of people are willing to make that sacrifice these days. You would probably need to cook 2 to 3 pounds of bacon to generate that much grease. Perhaps in the interest of preserving the intended flavor of the dish, you would be willing to cook a pound of bacon, and mix all the fat from that with enough of another fat to make your cup-and-a-half quota.
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