Reuses for old cooking oil? How to?

Throw away in the trash? Gasp! But then....one person's trash is another person's treasure. 😄

When I lived in New Jersey, we saved the rendered fats for mixing with birdseed for feeding to the wild birds on harsh winter days.

Nowadays a beekeeper near me uses oil traps under and in her beehives to trap mites and beetles. She often uses old used corn oil.

I collect non-contaminated cooking oil from a local restaurant which I use in my homemade chicken and pig feed.

I've used dirty, rancid oil (from a different restaurant) as a weedkiller, painting it on the foliage of a stubborn weed, on a hot sunny day. I'll also pour a little onto the root zone. Heating up the old oil first really fries those weeds. By the way, I use an old paintbrush. Don't try this with a sprayer. It gums up the works.

Su Ba wrote:Throw away in the trash? Gasp! But then....one person's trash is another person's treasure. 😄

Another Gasp! here! No, just kidding☺️.

I really appreciate you starting this thread, cooked oil/grease is one of the reusable things many people overlook. Maybe because of the yuck factor?

I collect mine and use it in soap. Not in the fancy, cold processing soaps I make for washing bodies, but use the hot process method, and make a soap that I use for clothes washing, or add some grit and it becomes the best for washing hands in the shop, and other uses like that. It doesn’t smell the greatest, I don’t really know if it can be made to smell good, but as a cleaning soap is great.

The liquid part that separates - kinda like the whey when cheese is made - is better than bleach to clean whites with, though, just like bleach, care needs to be taken as is very strong and can burn things.

I just put it into the 'compost' and soldier flies and other things eat it.

This one

http://diyworkplace.com/14-diy-oil-burner.html

oil burner

But I will go for Chris strategy. Feed it to the needy rather than burn it. We mix ours into dog food.

From this article at Fix on reusing oil, this article at Preparedness Advice, and this article at at MaHoney, some good ideas for reusing include:

-Recycle the cooking oil for future cooking



-Possible cooking uses for reused/recycled oil could be:
  - seasoning cast iron skillets
  - garnishing soups
  - making breads
  - making vinaigrettea
  - sauteing vegetables

-Possible noncooking uses could be:
  - Lubricants for keys, cars, household parts
  - Livestock of pet food
  - Biodiesel
  - Polishing things (leather, wood, etc)
  - Washing hands of grease
  - Moisturizer (for skin or hair)
  - Protection from rust (hand tools, gears, etc)
  - Making soap

Fuel or starter in a wood stove. Instead of starting a fire with paper, you can keep a can of oil near the woodstove, dunk the ends of kindling in oil, and then you'll find they light even without paper. I've seen it often here where I've lived for 26 years: rural families here don't buy or subscribe to newspapers, so starting fires with paper was never a thing, really, in the past.

I reuse cooking oil until it has completely broken down. This would depend on how much temperature the oil has endured - oil taken over 300F for extended amounts of time can only be reused a few times.

Chris Wang wrote:I just put it into the 'compost' and soldier flies and other things eat it.

Me too - it's very effective for 'heating up' a bin full of shredded leaves.

I follow the instructions in The Encyclopedia of Country Living for using old fats to make soap. There's a method detailed in there about even using rancid oil to make good, clean soap. I recently found an entire jar of spoiled coconut oil (whooops) in my house, so it will get added to my other rendered fats for this purpose

I've wondered, does rancid fat a rancid egg(or porkchop)  make?
My chickens seem too spoiled to eat much in the way of good scraps, much less spoilt oil,  so I'll probably never find out for myself.
Despite reports to the contrary, every time I have attracted solider flies,  they have created the worst stench.
Seriously bad,worse than anything else I've smelled, and I used to unclog sewers and grease traps for a living.
Hard to wash away too.

I've considered Dubai cockroaches as a vermiculture substitute for soldier flies,  they eat everything...

Soap seems like the best product to make,  so useful and  it keeps.

William Bronson wrote:I've considered Dubai cockroaches as a vermiculture substitute for soldier flies,  they eat everything...

i looked them up and saw no results in google - aren't dubai roaches the same as other roaches? and cockroaches are a real problem not to be taken lightly. i don't want any of them in my compost or anywhere else near me or my garden/home.

pusang halaw wrote:

William Bronson wrote:I've considered Dubai cockroaches as a vermiculture substitute for soldier flies,  they eat everything...

i looked them up and saw no results in google - aren't dubai roaches the same as other roaches? and cockroaches are a real problem not to be taken lightly. i don't want any of them in my compost or anywhere else near me or my garden/home.

I would imagine there will be solider flies and other animals in your area. Sometimes it will take them time to find the area and if their is a heavy use of poison in the are, it may even kill soldier flies.


Apart from that, if you cover rotting material with mulch it will encourage soldier flies to nest and deter most other flies. They will go through a carcass very quickly once you get them going. pretty sure BSF naturally existed in the area before US colonization.

Chris Wang wrote:I would imagine there will be solider flies and other animals in your area. Sometimes it will take them time to find the area and if their is a heavy use of poison in the are, it may even kill soldier flies. Apart from that, if you cover rotting material with mulch it will encourage soldier flies to nest and deter most other flies. They will go through a carcass very quickly once you get them going. pretty sure BSF naturally existed in the area before US colonization.

i don't mind but i'm not after soldier flies. i'm waiting for worms to move back into one of my full compost bins. and this thread is about reusing cooking oil - not really about dubai roaches or BSF.

Between the soap makers and the folks who have converted their vehicles to bio-diesel around here, there is almost a competition for the greasy (fast) food waste oil...there is not enough to go around.

I'm not certain how long it can be stored? and I'm pretty sure they are all using vegetable oil, no animal fats.

Maybe separating the oils would be helpful and there might be good uses for some of them?

We do put bits of oil in the compost, all vegetable oils though.

I finally got back to this thread--sorry everyone for not updating the wiki! I'll try and work on that tomorrow. I got all busy with book giveaway stuff.

ANYWAY, thanks to this thread, when I went to bury my meat scraps, I remember that jar of cooking fats (mostly bacon grease...my husband loves bacon...) that was all full next to the stove, and that my husband was planning on tossing. I heated it up in a pan to melt the bacon fat, and poured it into the meat scrap hole. Not nearly as fancy or useful as making soap or running a car, but at least it's not in a landfil, and I can reuse the jar, and hopefully it'll help nourish my cherry tree!

Ive used used peanut oil to help seal a permeable spot in a pond.

Chris Wang wrote:I just put it into the 'compost' and soldier flies and other things eat it.

I would like to second it. I also put the used cooking oil in the compost. Earlier, I used to reuse it but my husband doesn't really like the idea of reusing cooked oil (men don't understand a lot of things hahahaha) so, I don't reuse it anymore.