How do you deal with the left over fat/oil in your pan?
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I do not baby cast iron at all. I use plenty of dish soap and scrub it. But then again, I've also to completely refinished cast iron before. You learn to appreciate how durable seasoning can be when you actually try and remove it. My main skillet I've in the past taken it down to bare metal with an angle grinder, then built the seasoning back up from nothing.
wrote last edited by [email protected]My first exposure to cast iron was through boy scouts with cast iron griddles and Dutch ovens cooking on an open fire.
They got left out in the rain, blasted with heat hot enough to melt lesser metals*, had all manner of acidic foods cooked in them, got scrubbed clean with steel wool and dish soap, spent most of their lives when they weren't in use in a garage with no climate control where the humidity often got pretty gross, and generally got used, abused, and neglected. Never had any issues with the seasoning, rust, etc. I think one time after a camping trip by the beach where they sat out getting lightly twisted with salt spray all weekend, they picked up a bit of rust, so someone's dad got them sandblasted at his job, and after a trip or to through the oven for reseasoning they went right back in service, and that was the only special treatment they ever got.
So it was really weird to me when I got older and got some pans of my own to see people talking about babying their cast iron like they do. I'm a little more careful with my pans than I was with the ones we had in scouts, but not by much. And when I take them camping I'm not above throwing them into the fire to burn off any really stubborn, burnt-on crud.
And at the end of the day, there's not much that you can realistically do to a cast iron pan that you can't fix with some sandpaper and elbow grease and a quick reseasoning.
*At one point, we somehow ended up with an aluminum griddle in one of our cook kits. It was a pretty much indistinguishable from our iron ones except that it weighed less, it was a pretty solid griddle. On one camping trip it was left on the fire after breakfast, and I don't know exactly how it came to pass because it was another patrol, but they somehow got the fire up hot enough to melt it. I still have a blob of aluminum somewhere that we fished out of the ashes.
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I currently use (probably too many) paper towels to absorb the oil and then toss them into the trash can. I'm not happy with this solution, but I don't want to pour it down the drain.
I found this the other day https://fryaway.co/ but I haven't tried it yet. It's supposed to make the oil solid so you can more easily toss it.
Looks interesting but not at that price point for me. Seems more expensive than paper towels and probably worse overall for the environment since it'd be heavier than paper towel to transport to the store.
Would be interesting to compare the carbon footprint.
I also like how nowhere on the page did it compare it to paper toweling it into the trash. Just pouring it down a sink or putting it in a jar lol. That's marketing -
If it cools into a solid fat then it goes in a bowl and put it outside for wildlife to enjoy some easy calories. A trail cam and some time has given me a good chunk of backyard nocturnal drama, like the falling out of two tomcats.
Liquid fat/oil is used to re-season pans or soaked up with a paper towel and dumped.
Man, living in a house sounds so cool sometimes 🥲
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I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I'm just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
Fried bread!
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I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I'm just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
Stopped deep frying. Partly for health and partly out of laziness.
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Stopped deep frying. Partly for health and partly out of laziness.
I was talking about just in your pan. Like after bacon or whatever
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I'm in a rental so it goes straight down the drain
It affects far more than just the building you're in when you do that. You're ruining the pipes for the whole town.
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I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I'm just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
What I totally don't ever do under any circumstance at anytime for any reason even though it's super convenient and easy is pour it down the sink. Yes sir. That's not something I ever, ever do! Wouldn't it be crazy if I did? Omg. So crazy!
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I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I'm just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
I just wash my pan normally. The amount of leftover oil is negligible.
If I deep fry something (which I pretty much never do), I put in a glass jar and throw it into the bin.
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I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I'm just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
Keep an extra can about for fat drippings.
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I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I'm just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
Saw this thread from a mile away and ran to tell everyone I don't have that problem because I own an air fryer
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I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I'm just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
I don't use so much fat that I have to dispose it afterwards. You know that stuff is killing you, right?
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I do not baby cast iron at all. I use plenty of dish soap and scrub it. But then again, I've also to completely refinished cast iron before. You learn to appreciate how durable seasoning can be when you actually try and remove it. My main skillet I've in the past taken it down to bare metal with an angle grinder, then built the seasoning back up from nothing.
I did the same with these pans too. Though I didn't need an angle grinder. A day or two in a trash bag marinating in oven cleaner, then some steel wool and elbow grease. That's why I call them my babies, they are antique pans that sadly had gotten rusty and I gave them new life. They were my mom's, and before her, her great-grandma's pans (and maybe someone else's before then but we, the family, have lost track).
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I don't use so much fat that I have to dispose it afterwards. You know that stuff is killing you, right?
"my food tastes terrible, don't eat at my house"
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There are better ways to sabotage a rental without screwing with the rest of the plumbing system
Oh do tell?
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I was talking about just in your pan. Like after bacon or whatever
Save your bacon fat in a jar, it's clutch.
You can do the same with beef tallow.
Need to saute some onions for rice and beans? Bam, fry them in bacon fat. Stew recipe calls for vegetable oil to saute your carrots? Fuck that, tallow it.
Some traditions exists because they work. -
I’ve tried olive oil. Idk what it is, maybe user error, but those cures seem to be very delicate. Like the olives are all primadonna about touching such a base metal like iron.
I don’t use lard with cooking. My beef these days is limited to pho and a bi-yearly burger, but my rationale was, what did grandma use? Why was she soaping hers up in the sink with impunity?
Lard. And layers.
I respect the baby it approach too, and vegans, if that is your way.
Whatever works, it’s in.
Pretty much the same rationale. WWGD. But I used shortening for my base coats only because that's what I had on hand. Then I basically only cooked bacon, sausage, ham, and pork chops in them to build up the seasoning.
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I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I'm just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
I don't have enough oil left over to bother doing something other than wash normally
if there's enough fat left, either cook more food in it, or wipe it with a paper towel. but that's rare
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I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I'm just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
Left... over?
If I'm deepfrying, I set it aside and reuse it.
If I cooked something like bacon that gave off fat, I save it and use it to cook other things later.
If I was sautéing something, I used the correct amount of oil and there's none left over.
If I was roasting something, I turn the pan drippings into a sauce.
I will say, if you're having this problem a lot cooking meat, you're probably not trimming the cuts properly before cooking. Trim those and throw the scraps in the freezer until the next time you make stock.
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I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I'm just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
I try not to deep fry anything, my body doesn't need it, and the convection oven does a decent job. Shallow frying can also do a similar job most times at the cost of some extra time.
Decent quantity of bacon grease get collected for reuse. Small amounts just get paper toweled. If I did give in and deep fry something, that oil is being reused all week. Go big or go home.
When I'm done with it, I grab the smallest sealable container from the recycling, out the cooled fat in it, and it goes in the trash. It usually isn't more than a cup or 2.
