If you love to make bacon but are dumping all the grease down the drain or into the trash, you should start saving it instead. Not only is bacon grease great for cooking, it makes a great clean-burning candle.
This video by Finding Self-Reliance shows you exactly how to make a bacon fat candle. All you need is bacon grease, a container, and a wick (you could also use twine or yarn).
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Here's how to make it:
Step 1: Cook some bacon.
Step 2: Pour the grease into a container (use a strainer to filter out chunks of meat).
Step 3: Tie your wick around a pencil and hang it down the center of another container.
Step 4: Pour your bacon fat into the container around the wick.
Step 5: Put it in the refrigerator to make the fat solidify faster.
Watch the video below to see it done:
You can clean the fat so that it is clear white without any bacon Siri bacon residues. Take fat, pour into water, bring it up to a gentle simmer. A brown frost rises to that you skim it off. (That is residue bacon). When the grease no longer has any color to it it is clean. It also means that it does not give off the residue of cooking meat. If you’re in a SHIF situation having meat scent around you is not a good sign. Pour the grease gently off, the two was separate (i.e. water from fat) Thereby giving you a clean flame Without having to worry about smelling bacon for any great length of time.
How are these candles stored? Do they have to be stored in the refrigerator? Will they go rancid?
Get a 50 lb bag of soy wax. Use that to make candles. Yes, we like bacon, but we do not use it often enough to make the fat usable before it becomes rancid. Hobby Lobby has this kind of wax in quantity bags made just for candle making. You can mix the two together after purifying the bacon fat as per the instructions above. You can use both lard and soy wax together if you wish. We do. Just mix them together in the double boiler and stir. Two wicks are better than one, although it may shorten the life of the candle by 20%. You can still add essential oils, or the scent cubes made for ellectric candle wax warmers. Choose a scent that everyone loves, like vanilla or some other scent. Good Luck!
You shouldn’t be pouring grease down the drain either way!
Yes, I agree after running a snake down the kitchen drain often enough to clear smelly, slimey blockages a woman of mine likes to use the drain for! Fat goes in the garbage, only water goes down the drain. I made her use the “snake” one day to prove it to her. She will never pour grease down the drain ever again!