If you’ve ever cooked up meat for a meal, be it bacon for breakfast, beef for a taco night, or deep fried some chicken, you’ve certainly ended up with a pan full of hot grease at the end. The question is, do you know what to do with it? I know I didn’t when I was in my ‘I want to be a chef’ phase as a kid, so I took it outside and poured it in the sewer. And apparently, I’m not the only one. People on TikTok are satirically confessing to pouring their hot cooking oil outside because they don’t know what to do with their leftover grease. Joking or not, this is a PSA — don’t do this! There are plenty of easier options than balancing your leftover oil all the way outside to the back door. You don’t have to leave your kitchen at all to clean up your grease. Here’s how to properly dispose of cooking oil.
Why TikTokers are pouring cooking oil outside
Clips have popped up on TikTok of users dumping their pots and pans of grease into the dirt outside because they don’t actually know what to do with the oil leftover from cooking. For people who taught themselves how to cook, or just never watched their parents dispose of grease after that pancake breakfast, it’s no surprise the method for getting rid of oil is a boiling hot mystery because it’s not obvious. Some people even pour their oil down the drain, which you should definitely not do as it will ruin your pipes.
While the videos are joke-y, if you relate to those videos, which you might since @lirtyofficial’s video has 1.4 million likes, it’s time to learn how to properly get rid of your grease.
Why you shouldn’t pour your grease outside
Not only does a trek to the great outdoors equipped with a hot pan of oil require more effort than actually needed to properly dispose of oil (not to mention the risk of harm if you trip), but it’s also not great for the environment. Your pipes don’t want the oil and neither does nature. The oil will contaminate water and soil — hurting plants and people — and may also lure pesky creatures like rodents and bugs which you probably don’t want around when you’re trying to host a backyard BBQ. Your leftover cooking oil is waste, so think of it like littering. You don’t throw your trash in your backyard, so don’t throw oil there either.
How to properly dispose of your leftover oil
There are plenty of ways to dispose of your oil that don’t require you braving the outdoors. You can wait for the oil to cool before pouring it (a funnel will help with potential spillage) into a strong container with a lid, like a milk jug, and then throw it out. You can also mix your oil with flour or cat litter to make it into a solid that’s easier to throw out. Or, if you don’t have that much oil, you can just blot the pan (once it has cooled) with paper towels and then dispose.
If you’re itching for an adventure, instead of going to your backyard, you could take your oil to a recycling center if you have one that accepts oil. Bottle up your grease like you would for disposal, then head over. It doesn’t matter how you dispose of your oil as long as you’re getting your greasy pans out of your backyard.
Can you keep leftover grease?
You can definitely keep and reuse your leftover grease if you want to. Strain your cooled oil with a coffee filter or a fine strainer, and then pour into a glass container and stick it into the fridge for future use. Or, if you’re making breakfast, you could reuse it right away by making eggs in your bacon grease.