Questions From the Readers: Can You Save Chicken Drippings?

Breakfast fried in chicken drippings.

Andrea, I just roasted my first chicken and I have a pan full of drippings. Can I save them for future use? What can I use them for? Can I freeze them? -Katie

Awesome! I love chicken grease! Its almost the best part of the chicken. Your question was well timed in that, although I didn't roast a chicken this weekend, I did need to finish up some chicken thighs we were BBQing in the oven when it started to rain on us friday night. Boo hoo about the rain, but we ended up with a small pan of chicken drippings which I used Saturday morning to make us a decadent and delicious breakfast!



Using the chicken grease in my cast iron pan, I first fried up a pan of potatoes to golden crispy deliciousness. Then I threw in some eggs and fried them up in the same grease. This grease puts the chicken back in the egg. (hmm that sounds sort of weird, but its true!) The whole house smelled deliciously chickeny and we had a breakfast which will definitely put meat on your bones.

Now in answer to your question, if you don't plan on using the drippings to make a gravy, I would still save them for sure. This stuff looks and tastes like liquid gold. Besides using the grease for frying up deliciousness, its also a great way to punch up a quick soup or sauce if you don't have time to make a chicken stock. Depending on the amount of grease, you may want to separate the two so you don't make your soup or sauce too fatty.

In terms of saving it, you can definitely freeze the drippings in a jar or Tupperware container until you need to use it. I prefer glass since I can easily throw it into the microwave to quickly defrost it when I want to use it. Some people like to separate the grease from the drippings when freezing, but again, depending on what you want to use it for, you may not need to.


Delicious pan fried breakfast in chicken drippings

In short, Chicken drippings are great to use in soups, sauces, stocks or for pan frying and can be frozen to keep for future use.

• separate the grease from the juice if you plan to use the juice in a quick soup or sauce.
• don't waste time separating the grease for stocks because you'll have to skim grease from your bones off the surface anyway.
• use separated chicken grease for pan frying or deep frying (if you collect enough!)