How to discard used cooking grease and oil

Cooking oil

There are several cooking oil solidifier products available. NOTE however that they only work on used cooking oil — what's used for deep frying — but they do not work on grease that's left over from cooking beef or bacon.

Cooking grease

The typical suggestion is to seal the grease inside a container, and then throw that container away in the trash.

I don't like the fact that the grease seems to grow smelly pathogens after a day or two, but there are some common household materials you can add to prevent growth:

• Lye, AKA soap. Lye is used in drain cleaners to break up blockages of fat.
  • Pure lye could be used, but in concentrated form is very caustic to skin and eyes. So the most economical option is dishwasher detergent in either powder or gel form. However, most other types of soaps are good fallbacks, especially handwashing dish soap.
  • To avoid the grease going rancid, you could store it in a tightly-closed container that you keep in a dark cabinet.
• Cleaning chemicals — bleach, Simple Green, etc.
• Vinegar, or any other moderately strong acid. [2].
• Salt, which has long been used as a food preservative.

Alternatively, you could combine the grease with cheap flour, to make a throw-away roux that's thick enough to not slide out of the trash bag.