My question comes from a place seeking less waste while maintaining food-safe ways of reusing appropriate fat types. I am coming from a place of poor food science knowledge, so please be patient!
I hear of southern folk in the states saving bacon grease and cooking with it and I agree it has great flavour, but.
1) Are grandmothers who store bacon fat at room temperature simply exposing themselves to unseen bacteria growth?
2) What about using bacon to season cast iron pans? Does high heat simply “cook off” bacteria on greased surfaces that have been exposed to air a long time?
3) Do animal fat and oils both get trapped in our bodies the same way as subcutaneous fat?
4) And does eating bacon grease of a poorly fed or sick animal affect us in anyway? Or this would all bypass the animal’s (removed) digestive tract and not necessarily be consumed by humans later? Thinking of heavy metals and pesticides, for example.
The internet says seed oils are high in polyunsaturated fats and are can turn toxic at high temperatures. This is supposedly bad for you. A lot of picked Italian products are preserved in oil.
6) When I’m done with a commercial jar [(canola oil for example)](https://images.app.goo.gl/FizK1wQwodKNJttY7), is it a safe idea to re-use the oil for cooking?
7) Does the presence of previously preserved food remnants start a bacteria growth process and this jar of used (but uncooked) oil should be discarded?
Olive oil is touted as the healthiest oil to cook with…
8) Is this a marketing gimmick? Chefs advise to avoided cooking with olive oil at high temperatures, but it seems like an oxymoron to me as you would think to use high temperature to kill bacteria on chicken etc.
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> Are grandmothers who store bacon fat at room temperature simply exposing themselves to unseen bacteria growth?
No. One, it’s sterile (they’re putting it in the jar at like 250 degrees or so.) Two, there’s nowhere near enough moisture for bacterial growth, and it’s kind of salty (because bacon is salty.) In fact you can preserve foods by packing them in oil or fat – if you’re familiar with brining, this is kind of the same thing, only with fat. (In French, this is called a *confit.*)
The concern with room-temperature storage of bacon grease is that it eventually goes rancid, which is when unsaturated fats are attacked by UV light and oxygen and develop a bad taste. But bacon fat, like most animal fats, is a highly saturated fat so its relatively resistant to rancidity. You can avoid rancidity by covering it and storing it in the dark, cool environment of your refrigerator.
> Do animal fat and oils both get trapped in our bodies the same way as subcutaneous fat?
Subcutaneous fat, like all your body’s fat tissue, is produced by your body *from* your diet; it’s not harvested from your diet. Fat doesn’t make you fat. There are only two essential dietary fats (fats your body can’t produce) but they’re mostly in your blood and are part of your energy metabolism.
> Thinking of heavy metals and pesticides, for example.
Different toxins accumulate in the body (and are removed from it) at different rates and in different tissues. Toxins that accumulate in fat are generally removed very slowly (since they’re typically not readily dissolved in blood) and if you eat the fat of an animal that has a lot of such toxins, you can expect those toxins to accumulate in *your* body as well. You can imagine how certain pollutants might accumulate “up the food chain” as a result of animals eating animals that eat other animals, and this mechanism is called “bioaccumulation” and it’s one of the reasons DDT was so unexpectedly harmful to predatory birds.
> When I’m done with a commercial jar (canola oil for example), is it a safe idea to re-use the oil for cooking?
I wouldn’t cook with packing oils, personally. Not because it’s unsafe but because they’ll likely contain a lot of food particles that will scorch – it’ll just taste bad. What you want in a cooking oil is clarity and purity, for a high smoke point.
If you’re looking for some way to recycle oils used to can or pack or preserve foods, you could look into soapmaking and make castille soaps. I’m not sure anyone wants a soap made from a can of sardines, though.
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