Make Prime Rib With This Flavor-Packed Leftover Ingredient

A perfectly cooked prime rib is already indulgent on its own, but you can make it an even richer dish with the addition of one leftover ingredient you really shouldn't be throwing out: bacon grease. The next time you make yourself a few crispy strips for breakfast, set the melted fat aside for dinner; it'll kick the flavor of your beef up by several notches.

Adding bacon grease to your prime rib infuses the meat with a little bit of the umami and smokiness from the bacon itself, while also adding some richness from the extra fat. You're basically coating the beef with the essence of bacon, getting subtler but similarly nuanced flavor improvements as you might find on a classic bacon-wrapped filet mignon. Bacon grease does have other uses, such as infusing bourbon, but using it on a steak is hands down the best application of this leftover ingredient.

One of the most efficient ways to collect the grease is to use Ina Garten's preferred method for cooking bacon, which is to bake it in a sheet pan. Cooking it this way allows the fat to fully render, and you can put the bacon on a wire rack to maximize its crispiness by minimizing its contact with the liquid gold. From there, it's all a matter of pouring the bacon grease out of the sheet pan and into your preferred container, filtering out any solids that might have fallen through. If you keep it in your fridge — the best way to store bacon grease, really — it'll stay safe to use for as long as three months.

The easiest way to upgrade your beef with rendered bacon fat is to follow a steakhouse-worthy prime rib recipe, but add bacon grease to the rest of your seasoning rub ingredients. Adding a little extra grease to the ends helps to keep everything nice and juicy. If you're feeling fancy, you can also make a compound butter with bacon grease, herbs, and spices to baste your prime rib with, and to top slices with just before serving.

To get even more bacon flavor on your prime rib, use the drippings from roasting to make a beef jus infused with the bacon grease from your rub. You can amp up the bacon flavor by swapping out some of the butter or fat from the recipe you're using with even more bacon grease. If you want an extreme infusion of bacon flavor, inject the rib with it before roasting.

There's no reason to stop at just the prime rib, either; bacon grease goes great with some traditional sides, too. Use it to transform your mashed potatoes into umami-packed, pillowy goodness. Give side salads a meaty kick by using it in hot bacon dressing, an old-school salad staple from the 1970s. Serve a creamy potato-bacon soup for a hearty meal that perfectly complements your similarly infused prime rib.