# Rendering bacon fat



## fire in the hole (Aug 25, 2013)

I have what could be a silly question.

I have been attempting to make my own bacon, both dry cured and brine cured.

I just made another small batch of brined bacon.

My question is.......why do I seem to be able to render more fat/grease from the brined bacon than from a dry cure????

Is there an answer to this????


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## daveomak (Aug 29, 2013)

In the smoker or in the frying pan ????  

Dave


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## fire in the hole (Aug 29, 2013)

Dave

I am refering to rendering in the fry pan while frying. Hardly any bacon fat after frying a dry cured bacon, but my brine cured seems to give off plenty of bacon grease/fat.

Gary


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## daveomak (Aug 29, 2013)

I haven't brine cured any bacon yet...  stuck on dry rub curing...  I get no fat from my dry rub bacon either....     maybe it has something to do with the infiltration or water into the fat layer...  Like store bought is injected with those needle pump machines and it renders fat....   When I worked for Hempler, they made 4 kinds of bacon...  the aged rubbed hang to dry bacon, directions were, add oil to the pan to cook.....  there was no fat rendered from it...  the pumped stuff, fat rendered easily.....   SOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo   "lets blame the water".......    That's just a SWAG...  (scientific wild a$$ guess).....

Dave


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## fire in the hole (Aug 29, 2013)

I use SWAG a lot........and it fits well in this situalion.

I like the idea of getting and saving bacon grease......cuz I like it on my baked beans and other things.  It's even good on a salad. 

This is very interesting to say the least.

Thanks,

Gary


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## mdboatbum (Aug 30, 2013)

I'm no scientist so I can't specifically answer your question as to WHY, but I can give you a practical solution to the underlying problem. Just add water. I don't remember how I figured this one out, but whenever I want to render all the fat out of bacon for later use in mayonnaise, hot bacon dressing etc... what I do is cut the strips of bacon (store bought) into 1" pieces. Then I put it in a frypan with 2-3 tablespoons of water over medium high heat. It starts off as a gloppy mess, but as the fat renders and the water evaporates, it eventually produces perfectly browned and crispy bacon bits and beautiful golden bacon grease. Before I figured this out, I would never be able to get enough fat rendered out of the bacon. I'd either burn it or end up with floppy, fatty undercooked bacon and not nearly enough grease. With the water added, I seem to get almost COMPLETE separation of the meat and fat parts of the bacon. I have also tried adding oil to the pan instead of water, but never got the same results as with water.

So I'd say it definitely has something to do with the added moisture in the brined bacon.


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