Ham hocks just don't do justice to home cooking, and salt pork doesn't either. The only seasoning to give that delicious, salty, sultry, wonderful, smoky flavor is bacon grease.
Most Southerners are raised to save all forms of bacon grease and put it in a can next to the stove. There ain't no seasoning on the market shelves that can do the same bodacious things to food that bacon grease does.
Don't want you to think that bacon grease is good only for your occasional sawmill gravy, pinto beans, and cornbread. Southerners use bacon grease just as we would butter or other condiments. Some of us have been known to put it on the supper table with a spoon in it! Any kind of beans (navy, kidney, green, Lima) and peas (black-eyed, purple-hulled, pink-eyed, English) are enhanced greatly by this seasoning. There are also other vegetables like cabbage, collard greens, grits, potatoes, and carrots that bacon grease imparts its earthy flavoring to
If the appearance of bacon grease is unappealing to you, just don't look directly at it when you are cooking or you might change your mind. Quickly spoon it into your dish and stir while you look away. The appearance of this substance is frightening, but then so is your one-year-old after he feeds himself chocolate pudding, and you love him anyway.
You may also wonder about the shelf life of bacon grease. There is a restaurant in Memphis, Tennessee, named Dyer's Hamburgers, that fries its hamburgers in eighty-five year old grease. I reckon bacon grease would keep forever.
Go ahead down to the yard sale at the corner and purchase that pretty little grease container that you've had your eye on since last week. Next, fire up the stove and fry up a pound or two of bacon and then save your drippings. Now you are prepared to create your own culinary masterpieces with the awesome flavoring of bacon grease.