Learned my grandma's cornbread recipe uses a half cup of bacon grease

Oscar Henderson · 2026-05-29T20:55:03.936029+00:00

I was looking through her old recipe box last Saturday and found a note she wrote in 1975 saying she used exactly 1/2 cup of bacon drippings. Made a batch that way and it came out way better than using butter, has anyone else tried swapping fats in their family recipes?

reeseperez4mo ago

Hold your horses there, bacon grease is not some magic bullet for everything. My grandma used butter in her cornbread for fifty years and it was always perfect, light and fluffy with that golden crust. That half cup of bacon fat is going to make the whole thing taste like a greasy spoon diner, plus it'll weigh the bread down and make it dense. If you really want to swap, try a neutral oil like canola instead, your cornbread won't taste like breakfast sausage and the texture will stay right.

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williamm824mo ago

Bacon grease makes everything better, that's just science.

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susanm564mo ago

Oh great, now we've got the cornbread police out here gatekeeping bacon fat. Look, if your grandma's butter cornbread was "perfect" then fine, you do you, but don't act like a half cup of bacon drippings is gonna turn the thing into a soggy mess. That's just wrong. Bacon grease has a higher smoke point than butter so it actually crisps up the crust better, plus the fat content is similar so it doesn't weigh it down like lard would. Pretty sure half the South has been doing this for generations and their cornbread turned out just fine. Last time I checked, "greasy spoon diner" cornbread is still delicious cornbread. Maybe step out of the butter zone once in a while.

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