How do you deal with the left over fat/oil in your pan?

Are you renting or do you own?

Depends on what kind of leftover fat.
If frying something in measurable quantities of oil, the oil can be filtered to remove solids, then stored to re-use later.
If cooking something greasy like bacon or sausage, either I'll cook other things in the same pan after, or I'll pour it through a strainer, let it cool, and freeze it. Once I've saved a bunch, I clarify it.
Fat is flavor. In my house, it doesn't get thrown away. There are lots of ways to reuse it.
- Reusing cooking oil causes cancer. I thought this was wildly known, but I'm consistently surprised at how many people online say things like this.
  This is why "drip jars" stopped being used in the 20th century. There used to be one in every house until it was understood it causes stomach cancer.
  https://www.adityabirlacapital.com/healthinsurance/active-together/2025/01/27/cooking-oil-and-cancer/
  https://www.sfa.gov.sg/food-safety-tips/food-risk-concerns/risk-at-a-glance/reusing-cooking-oils
  
  But singapore site links USDA q&a on how to reuse it safely and has section for "what you need to do if you reuse oil". They don't particularly advice or encourage single use.
  Oil quality is dependent on storage method (strain it with filter, keep airtight non-transparent container etc) and cooking temperature so people need to be informed, but I don't see reusing it once or twice with appropriate care cause significant harm.
  
  That's if you take it beyond the smoke point. Which you wouldn't do if you are trying to avoid free radicals in your food to begin with. Even vegetable oil is extracted through a heating process.
- Popcorn made in pre-used oil can be awesome, and an easy way to get rid of 100ml or so.
  
  Omfg...bacon grease popcorn...I'm about to take 10 years off my life
  
  Popcorn made in pre-used oil can be awesome, and an easy way to get rid of 100ml or so.
  Then there was that time in college I tried to re-use oil I had previously fried shrimp in.
  Turns out shrimp-flavored popcorn is not an enjoyable experience!
- What kind of filter?
- Sounds pretty good. Oil is expensive too.
- Citation needed.
  A generic insurance website is not a citation.
  And literally everything causes cancer.
  People have reused cooking oil for millennia.

Wipe with paper towel, toss in trash.

I let it cool off and then scrape it into the trash/compost. Sometimes I use a paper towel, sometimes I just scrape it.

Goes into the compost.
- But the salt.
  
  Not all oil is salty. I suppose there are probably pros and cons to composting it, but I'd expect it to draw pests like crazy.
  
  It's generally just animal fat for me, unsalted. I make a lot of soup stocks.

Depends how much is left. Alot then filter and jar. A little then paper towel and trash.
- Uwu, its sooooooo cut. They're magestic horns; and the lux fur, et al. Their snaggle teeth, that pacific one, is just hte peice of resistance!
- A filter? What you doing with the filter?
  
  Filtering out any chunky bits from the cooking so it doesn't go back into the fat jar

Lick it off
- The only correct response

If it cools into a solid fat then it goes in a bowl and put it outside for wildlife to enjoy some easy calories. A trail cam and some time has given me a good chunk of backyard nocturnal drama, like the falling out of two tomcats.
Liquid fat/oil is used to re-season pans or soaked up with a paper towel and dumped.
- Man, living in a house sounds so cool sometimes 🥲

Our city's trash disposal also provides free plastic buckets for cooking oil. I try to use that as often as possible. I love it
- Oh that's cool actually. I hadn't heard of that before.

You can compost it if you aren’t generating huge amounts. Mix it with something absorbent like sawdust or used coffee grounds and mix into a composter, and add extra “green material” like leaves or lawn clippings.

I currently use (probably too many) paper towels to absorb the oil and then toss them into the trash can. I'm not happy with this solution, but I don't want to pour it down the drain.
I found this the other day https://fryaway.co/ but I haven't tried it yet. It's supposed to make the oil solid so you can more easily toss it.
- Looks interesting but not at that price point for me. Seems more expensive than paper towels and probably worse overall for the environment since it'd be heavier than paper towel to transport to the store. Would be interesting to compare the carbon footprint. I also like how nowhere on the page did it compare it to paper toweling it into the trash. Just pouring it down a sink or putting it in a jar lol. That's marketing

Saw this thread from a mile away and ran to tell everyone I don't have that problem because I own an air fryer
- We are gods among rodents, you and I.
- Does your airfryer nor drip the fat off of bacon? Or other fatty meat?
  You out there making sunny side eggs with an airfryer?

I use an iron skillet for most things, it gets cleaned then takes up real estate on a stove burner until the next day.
Most of the time it’s just enough oil to sear things. Salmon. The white meat chicken with a bacon iron on top. Each needs some oil for Maillard rxn on the hot iron and non-stick, in addition to flavor and moistness.
It’s liquid at room temp. It’s minimal. When the pan is cool enough, a dollop of dawn, a light abrasive without a lot of pressure (it’s a tactile thing, cast iron people know) and the soap slurry goes right down the drain. I’ve owned for 25 yrs, no issues.
(Because someone is about to start text screaming: If it’s a new cure or a cure done in 1-2 layers or a weaker fat, any abrasive or cleaning will likely kill it. I use lard for my cures while lightly washing with hot soapy water in between. 5 layers/rounds of cure. Then oil it after each use for the first month post new cure. Then, it’s solid, just wash and dry, and you can use a light abrasive. We have a 12, a 10, three 8s, and three 5s in circulation.)
Now, if I make Pho, I’m not skimming the beef tallow/oil off into the sink. I wait for the broth to cool, crack the disc of solid lard off the top, and drop it in the trash.
Popcorn pan, sink. Salmon in the pan, sink. Dark meat chicken in the pan, cool and scrape those solids into the trash.
It’s about amount and what it does at room temp.
- I respect that you were brave enough to admit on the internet to using a little soap now and again with your cast iron. It took me about a year after I rehabbed mom's pans to work up the courage to gently swipe a little soap on them now and again. They still get dried in the oven and moisturized with avocado oil. Mah bebes.
  
  I’ve tried olive oil. Idk what it is, maybe user error, but those cures seem to be very delicate. Like the olives are all primadonna about touching such a base metal like iron.
  I don’t use lard with cooking. My beef these days is limited to pho and a bi-yearly burger, but my rationale was, what did grandma use? Why was she soaping hers up in the sink with impunity?
  Lard. And layers.
  I respect the baby it approach too, and vegans, if that is your way.
  Whatever works, it’s in.
  
  I do not baby cast iron at all. I use plenty of dish soap and scrub it. But then again, I've also to completely refinished cast iron before. You learn to appreciate how durable seasoning can be when you actually try and remove it. My main skillet I've in the past taken it down to bare metal with an angle grinder, then built the seasoning back up from nothing.

Other than pan frying something like chicken, I don't really have "leftover fat".
Bacon - ya pour that right into the bacon fat container that has its own strainer.
Most other recipes the fat is part of the dish. As someone else commented - fat is flavor. Say you brown chicken parts for something like Gumbo, the next thing in the pan will be vegetables that get glazed, and you're gonna need a fat for that which is already there in the pan.

If I want to keep the fat, like from bacon, then I strain it through cheesecloth into a small jar and use it occasionally.
If I don't want it, then if it gets solid at room temp it gets to cool and be scraped into the bin. If it is a liquid at room temp it goes into a ziplock bag or something to keep it from leaking.

I usually just pour it over the rice or macaroni or whatever, to consume whatever little is there, so as not to waste it, and for flavor.
I try to fry stuff in tallow as well, which is a lot nicer IMO.

What I totally don't ever do under any circumstance at anytime for any reason even though it's super convenient and easy is pour it down the sink. Yes sir. That's not something I ever, ever do! Wouldn't it be crazy if I did? Omg. So crazy!
- Yes, so crazy. You don't want to cause a fatberg the size of a bus

Reduce, reuse, recycle.
I try not to deep fry anything, my body doesn't need it, and the convection oven does a decent job. Shallow frying can also do a similar job most times at the cost of some extra time.
Decent quantity of bacon grease get collected for reuse. Small amounts just get paper toweled. If I did give in and deep fry something, that oil is being reused all week. Go big or go home.
When I'm done with it, I grab the smallest sealable container from the recycling, out the cooled fat in it, and it goes in the trash. It usually isn't more than a cup or 2.
- Reusing cooking oil many times increases your cancer risk more than cooking alone. Fyi

Straight down the sink. It's a rental.
- It's not only the rental's pipes that suffer from fat buildup. It's the entire city's pipes.
- You might be surprised to learn that those pipes connect to your entire community and you're being a dick to all of them instead of doing the bare minimum of effort
- There are better ways to sabotage a rental without screwing with the rest of the plumbing system
  
  Oh do tell?
  
  Please do tell so I know how to properly take care of this precious property for my lovely landlord who respects us very much.
- What the fuck

Other than saving it for use later when possible, we let it solidify and scrap it into the trash.

keep a rag bag handy and just wipe up cooking grease with those, them throw them in a pile next to the wood stove
you end up needing the oily rags to wipe down the wood stove anyway or else it will rust

Stopped deep frying. Partly for health and partly out of laziness.
- I was talking about just in your pan. Like after bacon or whatever
  
  Save your bacon fat in a jar, it's clutch. You can do the same with beef tallow. Need to saute some onions for rice and beans? Bam, fry them in bacon fat. Stew recipe calls for vegetable oil to saute your carrots? Fuck that, tallow it. Some traditions exists because they work.

Left... over?
If I'm deepfrying, I set it aside and reuse it.
If I cooked something like bacon that gave off fat, I save it and use it to cook other things later.
If I was sautéing something, I used the correct amount of oil and there's none left over.
If I was roasting something, I turn the pan drippings into a sauce.
I will say, if you're having this problem a lot cooking meat, you're probably not trimming the cuts properly before cooking. Trim those and throw the scraps in the freezer until the next time you make stock.
- I have fat in my freezer and am a total noob at stock making. The fat is leftover from a slab of pork I cut up into 8oz portions and froze.
  I would like to hear / read more about this earth thing called stock, if you are willing to share.

I pour it into a bowl. Once full ill freeze it then toss out on trash day

I just wash my pan normally. The amount of leftover oil is negligible.
If I deep fry something (which I pretty much never do), I put in a glass jar and throw it into the bin.

I pretty much use your method, although sometimes after making breakfast sausage, I will fill up the pan with soap and water and let it soak for maybe a day. Then, I will go outside and dump and kinda hose it off then take it back inside to wash in the sink proper.

I don't have enough oil left over to bother doing something other than wash normally
if there's enough fat left, either cook more food in it, or wipe it with a paper towel. but that's rare

Lubricate the garbage disposal with it.
- Damn, I'm happy you said garbage disposal.

Keep an extra can about for fat drippings.

Into a teacup, into the fridge, then when full and solidified, peeled out and thrown into the trash.

I generally don't get a lot of fat left in my pan. But when there is some, I tend to use it for whatever I cook next. It's good stuff.

Fried bread!

I don't use so much fat that I have to dispose it afterwards. You know that stuff is killing you, right?
- "my food tastes terrible, don't eat at my house"

I'm in a rental so it goes straight down the drain
- It affects far more than just the building you're in when you do that. You're ruining the pipes for the whole town.
  
  Yup: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatberg