So you've made burgers for your meal. You might have made other things too, but now that you've made the burgers you have frying pan filled with burger grease.
A lot of people will put that pan in the sink without a second thought. They don't know what they're missing.
Beef fat has been used in cooking for a very long time. McDonalds French fries were originally cooked in the stuff, which is why they tasted so good. When the House of Ronald changed to plant-based oils due to consumer concerns about the health effects of beef fat, they started injecting the fries themselves with beef flavor. Vegetarians are still pissed at the Golden Arches for that one.
The thing is, if you've made burgers at home and you're staring at a pan of beef fat, you could do worse things than just use it for other dishes. Yes, many plant-based oils are healthier for you, but they are not as flavorful. Plus you have the fond on the bottom of the pan, and that's the flavor you want in all sorts of recipes. A couple of ideas below the fold:
The first time I ever cooked with beef fat, I was visiting a net-friend in Florida and had been cooking through the week. One night I made burgers, and after the burgers were done I cooked some frozen tater tots in the beef fat left behind. Those were some of the tastiest little tots I ever tried. They won't take as long to cook as in the oven. Just make sure your pan is on medium high and start to fry. Be ready to flip them after several minutes, and until you've gotten the timing down don't go too far away.
The most recent time I cooked with beef fat was last night. I was hungry for a burger, the house was asleep, so one large burger went into one small frying pan. When it came out, I saw the fond and the fat and thought, I should cook something in that. I've done a lot with frozen broccoli, but this time I went with a simple spinach approach. I turned down the heat to medium, put about a third of a bag of frozen spinach in the pan, added a few items to taste (salt, dried roasted garlic, dried chopped shallot--sometimes I need the convenience of dried things), and cooked until it had properly de-iced. Just before the final stir, after all the spinach had gotten properly covered with a little fat, and was clearly warm I added a little lemon juice for brightness. You wait until this point so the spinach doesn't go all weird-colored. I ended up with an extra dose of iron-filled goodness on my plate.
My usual standard, broccoli, goes something like this, depending on the size of the dinner party and the size of the frying pan:
4-16 oz. frozen broccoli florets
2-3 Tbsp mirin
1-2 tsp tamari or teriyaki
1-2 tsp fresh ginger (I use minced ginger from a jar. If you only have dry stuff, use half as uch as you would fresh and add it when you add the mirin)
White pepper to taste
1 Tbsp lemon juice, rice vinegar or ponzu (optional)
Keep your pan at medium high heat. Add your broccoli florets and your minced ginger, and any white pepper you might be using. Cook for a few minutes, until the broccoli is properly warmed through, then add the tamari and mirin. Let cook another minute or so at most. If adding lemon juice, rice vinegar or ponzu, wait until right around the time you take the broccoli from the pan. This will protect your broccoli from going to shades of green you really don't want to eat.
If you remove the broccoli from the pan first (then that will be the best time to add the lemon juice/rice vinegar/ponzu to the sauce) then you can reduce the sauce down and let it thicken slightly without any starch. Pour as much of it from the broccoli back into the pan as you can, then reduce--it should only take a few minutes at most. The sugar in the mirin will help with the thickening process. Let it reduce by about a third. This will thicken it slightly and intensify the flavor in the sauce. Alternately, you can thicken the sauce in the pan using starch, carefully, but too much starch will leave you with a gloppy mess.
Obviously you can add other things to this: fresh water chestnuts, red pepper, chives, sliced mushrooms, sliced bamboo, you name it. But sometimes it's nice to keep it simple.
The best thing about reusing a pan like this? Unless you burn the food, you're actually making your frying-pan cleanup easier. Instead of scrubbing off the fond with a scouring pad after the meal, you're getting that flavor into you and leaving your pan with less to scrub.
Unless it's spinach, but that's a story for another day.