This Restaurant-Examined Trick Makes a Messy Prep Process A lot Simpler

The world is filled with futile undertakings. There’s not a lot level, for example, in making an attempt to herd cats, squeeze water from a stone, or nail Jell-O to a tree. And, whereas there could also be a couple of strategy to pores and skin mentioned cats, I can inform you from private expertise that skinning eels can drive an individual mad with frustration. However of all of the kitchen duties that make me need to pound my head in opposition to the counter, dicing room-temp bacon must be one of many worst.

Slippery and squidgy when even barely heat, the extensive 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 prone to find yourself with a ragged pile of torn, shredded, mashed, and smashed bits than the good pile of even cuts you had been aiming for.

This occurs as a result of animal fat are a fancy combination of various saturated and unsaturated fat, and thus soften over a large temperature vary. Whilst you’d must warmth pork fats to properly over 100°F (38°C) to totally render it, a few of its elements 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 troublesome to work with.

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

You could have a few selections right here. You could possibly, for example, simply hold all of your fatty pork merchandise, like bacon and pancetta, properly wrapped within the freezer always, which is what many eating places do. Kenji, for example, tells me that he at all times retains his sliced bacon within the freezer, slicing off solely what he wants from the frozen-together strips. (They inevitably stick collectively when frozen, so making an attempt to peel off particular person strips will simply get you a bunch of damaged and torn shards.) This technique could be tougher with slab bacon and different stable cuts, like fatback, which freeze so exhausting via the middle that attempting to chop them turns into like attempting to push a knife via a block of ice.

You possibly can 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 delicate 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 choice, which is usually 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 any case, 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, supplying 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 a substitute of being annoyed, can be as completely happy as a pig in…(not the freezer).

December 2016