When To Toss Your Tub Of Leftover Bacon Grease

Savvy chefs will always save the flavorful pool of grease collecting at the bottom of the skillet after cooking a rack of bacon. It can be used with  fried eggs, mixed into a roux, or added into just about anything (because of course, bacon tastes good with everything). No matter how it's used, the grease does an excellent job of imparting a rich, smoky taste that can't be replicated with anything else.

However, despite bacon grease's many values, it's common for home cooks to forget about the jar of grease at the back of the fridge, where it stays unused for months on end. Unlike store-bought ingredients, homemade bacon grease doesn't come with a handy expiration date, so it's something that you'll have to time for yourself. Bacon grease will stay good in the fridge for three months. If you store your bacon grease in the freezer, rest assured that you can keep it indefinitely!

If you store your bacon grease either on the countertop (the worst way to store it is on the counter, where it'll only last for a few weeks at best) or in the fridge, your bacon grease — just like fresh bacon stored in the fridge — can spoil in time. One clear sign it's gone bad is a strange smell. Fresh bacon grease has a rich, smoky aroma, but when it spoils, you'll notice a distinctly unpleasant odor when you open the jar. Another way to tell is by its color. Good bacon grease should be white, not yellowish. If you notice that it's changed color in the jar, it's likely gone bad.

Some of these signs can be subtle, especially when the bacon grease is just starting to spoil. So, if you're wondering if the jar's gone off in the first place, then it's better to err on the side of caution and dispose of it. It's not worth the risk of accidentally eating spoiled grease. Besides, making a fresh batch by cooking more bacon is cheap and easy, so there's really no need to be overly thrifty about it!