The Simple Restaurant Trick for Reducing Bacon And not using a Mess

The world is stuffed with futile undertakings. There’s not a lot level, as an illustration, in trying to herd cats, squeeze water from a stone, or nail Jell-O to a tree. And, whereas there could also be multiple strategy to pores and skin stated cats, I can let you know from private expertise that skinning eels can drive an individual mad with frustration. However of all of the kitchen duties that make me wish to pound my head towards the counter, dicing room-temp bacon must be one of many worst.

Slippery and squidgy when even barely heat, the huge striations of fats in bacon, pancetta, salt pork, and fatback slither and squirm beneath the blade as you attempt to slice them. A razor-sharp knife can simply get the job finished, as long as you’re employed quick and it stays chilly, however dillydally in any respect and also you’re extra more likely to find yourself with a ragged pile of torn, shredded, mashed, and smashed bits than the great pile of even cuts you had been aiming for.

This occurs as a result of animal fat are a posh combination of various saturated and unsaturated fat, and thus soften over a large temperature vary. When you’d need to warmth pork fats to effectively over 100°F (38°C) to completely render it, a few of its parts will start to liquefy even at room temperature. Contact it along with your fingers as you cube it, and your physique warmth warms it up much more, partially melting it and making a slippery texture. With every passing second, the fats turns into increasingly more tough to work with.

After all, as with many issues, the answer is clear, and it is one thing many cooks do: Preserve it chilly. What could also be much less apparent is simply how chilly.

You might have a few decisions right here. You possibly can, as an illustration, simply maintain all of your fatty pork merchandise, like bacon and pancetta, effectively wrapped within the freezer always, which is what many eating places do. Kenji, as an illustration, tells me that he all the time retains his sliced bacon within the freezer, chopping off solely what he wants from the frozen-together strips. (They inevitably stick collectively when frozen, so trying to peel off particular person strips will simply get you a bunch of damaged and torn shards.) This methodology might be tougher with slab bacon and different stable cuts, like fatback, which freeze so laborious via the middle that attempting to chop them turns into like attempting to push a knife via a block of ice.

You’ll be able to nonetheless make it work by merely tossing the frozen hunk of fatty pork on an aluminum baking sheet for a number of minutes till it is tender sufficient to chop. As we have proven earlier than, the superb conductivity of aluminum quickly transfers the room’s warmth into the frozen meals sitting on it.

The opposite possibility, which is commonly what I do, is to maintain the pork cuts in your fridge and simply toss them within the freezer for 10 to fifteen minutes to offer them a deep chill earlier than slicing. The purpose, in spite of everything, is not to freeze the fats totally, however to drop the temperature sufficient that it turns into workably stable. Because the fats will get colder, it hardens extra, providing you with one thing agency to slip your knife via.

That, as they are saying, is as simple as apple pie, and also you, as an alternative of being pissed off, can be as pleased as a pig in…(not the freezer).

December 2016