Fat

No, not the love handles on mah belly. I'm talking about grease, the leftover stuff from cooking some form of meat.  In this particular instance, it's leftover breakfast sausage grease.  I used to throw it out (NOT down the drain ).  The only fat I would purposely keep was duck fat.  I would render the fat and keep that deliciousness in my fridge for a few months, judiciously adding it to roasted potatoes every now and then.

Well, I kept thinking about that and thought to myself, "Why not save the other fats, too."  So, I am. Now, just like the duck fat, a little goes a long way.  I tend to mix it with EVOO because the flavour can overpower.

Here is an example of breakfast sausage grease being cleaned up and stored as a fat in my fridge. I buy the "warehouse" packs of breakfast sausage because I have a child army with a grown-up commander that consume copious amounts foodstuffs.  Breakfast sausage is a mixture of pork and beef, and it produces a lot of grease.

Two sausage trays later, and I this is what I have:

At this point, it's still very hot.  I transfer the hot grease to a glass and then add some hot water.  You need the water so the particulates have somewhere to drop into.

I give it a good stir and then strain it into a clean glass to trap out the larger pieces.  Now, some people use coffee filters but my coffee filter is a permanent one so I can't comment on how well they work.

Here is the grease after the first straining, and then an hour later.  You can see it starting to solidify.  Once it reaches this stage, I put it in the fridge to harden the fat further.

After an hour in the fridge, it's about the consistency of very soft margarine.

At this point, it's pretty clean but it still has some floaty bits in it.  I like to get it a bit cleaner, but if you don't mind the floaters, all you need to do is scoop out fat. But, like I said, I want mine a bit cleaner so I scoop out the congealed fat, heat it in the microwave for about 30 seconds, then repeat the straining with a finer mesh (I used a tea strainer this time).

You can see that there really wasn't much more in there but the fat is now as clean as I am bothered to clean.

And, then, once it chills, and you scoop it out, you are left with this:

Lookout, roasted potatoes and mirepoix, some flavour is headed your way!