Reuse Fat

Chicken fat used to be prized as a baking and cooking fat; beef fat is also good to use in many ways. When you roast a chicken or a piece of beef, let the pan liquid cool in the refrigerator, then skim off the fat. Clean it by simmering it in a skillet until all the water is gone, then strain and refrigerate. Try it the next time you need fat to cook with.

Greasy soup? Fix it!

A lettuce leaf will soak up excess grease from a pot of soup. Leave it in for little while, then remove and discard. If the soup is very greasy, use two or more leaves.

Grease soakers

Forget the paper towels to absorb grease from fried foods. The food tends to stick to them, and you have to buy them in the first place - not a good frugal move. Instead, use brown paper, the kind they make paper bags from. Ask for paper bags at the grocer or save the inner brown paper wrapping from bags of sugar.

Oven and grease cleanup

Put a half inch or so of ammonia in a shallow nonmetal container and leave it in a cold oven overnight. Fumes from ammonia is what does the job, so if you have grungy pots and pans, put them in there, too. The whole mess will clean up with soap and water and just a little elbow grease in the morning.

Cooking fat

If you eat bacon, you might as well save the bacon grease to use in other things. Try it instead of butter on popcorn, or put it in green beans or use it to grease the pan for cornbread. It's free and you eat it anyway when you eat the bacon.