For one month, I swapped every drop of olive oil and canola oil in my kitchen for bacon grease. Eggs, roasted vegetables, baked goods — if a recipe called for oil or butter, it got bacon fat.
The short version: week one was delicious, day 15 hit me with a wall of bacon smell I couldn’t take anymore, my weight never moved, and my cholesterol crept up. Here’s how the month actually went.
How I Stocked the Jar
Every morning I cooked about 12 ounces of bacon, which gave me roughly a cup of liquid fat. I poured it through a fine-mesh sieve into a glass jar and parked the jar in the fridge.
Straining matters. Those little browned bits are the first thing to spoil, and they scorch in a hot pan. Chilled, the grease sets into a creamy, spreadable paste that’s easy to scoop straight into a skillet.
Week One: Everything Tasted Like a Diner Breakfast
The flavor payoff was immediate. Scrambled eggs tasted like a full breakfast. Roasted vegetables came out tasting like they’d been cooked next to a Sunday roast.
The reason is simple: the smoky, salty compounds from the bacon cure are dissolved right in the fat, so anything you cook in it picks them up.
There was a learning curve, though. Bacon grease solidifies fast, so a cool pan or cold ingredients grabbed it before it could coat anything. And it burns more easily than a neutral oil — trace sugars and particles from the cure scorch quickly. Walk away from the stove and you’ll come back to a smoking, bitter mess. Medium heat, and don’t get distracted.
Day 10: Fuller, Steadier, and a Little Heavy
Around day 10, I noticed my energy was surprisingly even, with no big crashes. My sugar cravings dropped off too.
That tracks with how fat works: it slows digestion, so meals stick with you longer. I was full faster and stayed full, which meant smaller portions without trying.
The flip side was a heaviness after meals that I’d never had before. Rich food is satisfying right up until it sits in your stomach like a brick.
Day 15: The Pancake Incident
The turning point came over a batch of pancakes. The smell of bacon grease in the pan — the same smell that had made me hungry for two weeks — suddenly felt overwhelming. Not unpleasant, exactly. Just everywhere.
That’s palate fatigue. When the same smoky note shows up at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, your brain stops reading it as a treat and starts reading it as too much. Bacon had become background noise, and not the good kind.
That’s when I understood the real problem with the experiment: the issue wasn’t bacon grease itself. It was bacon grease in everything.
Skin, Sleep, Weight, and One Blood Test
The rest of the month was a mixed bag. My skin got oilier across the T-zone, enough that I switched to lighter products. I was bloated more often, which makes sense — very fatty meals empty from the stomach slowly.
My sleep stayed the same. My weight stayed the same too, most likely because I was eating smaller portions of richer food.
The number that mattered came from a doctor visit: my cholesterol had ticked up slightly. One person’s month isn’t a study, and I can’t prove the grease did it. But bacon fat is heavy on saturated fat, and it was a clear reminder that flavor and health don’t always move in the same direction.
Where Bacon Grease Actually Belongs
Bacon grease is a seasoning fat, not an everything fat. It earns its keep where smoke and salt help:
- Frying eggs
- Roasting potatoes and hearty vegetables
- Sautéing greens or cabbage
- Greasing a cast-iron skillet for cornbread
It falls flat in delicate dishes and sweet baking — the pancakes made that obvious — and it’s the wrong pick for hard, high-heat searing. Olive oil and canola oil deserve their counter space for everything else.
The Bottom Line
I wouldn’t do another all-grease month, and I don’t need to. The habit that stuck is smaller: when I cook bacon, I strain the fat into a jar and keep it in the fridge. A spoonful for eggs, potatoes, or a skillet of greens adds the flavor I loved in week one without the wall I hit on day 15.
A little bacon grease makes a meal memorable. A month of it just makes everything taste the same.
