Why Bacon Turns Squishy When You Reduce It—and the Restaurant Trick That Fixes It

The world is stuffed 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 solution to pores and skin stated 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 wish to pound my head in opposition to the counter, dicing room-temp bacon needs to be one of many worst.

Slippery and squidgy when even barely heat, the vast 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 good pile of even cuts you have 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. Whilst you’d must 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 troublesome to work with.

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

You could have a few decisions right here. You would, for example, simply preserve all of your fatty pork merchandise, like bacon and pancetta, effectively 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, reducing 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 methodology could be harder with slab bacon and different stable cuts, like fatback, which freeze so onerous by the middle that attempting to chop them turns into like attempting to push a knife by 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 mushy 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 provide 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 by.

That, as they are saying, is as straightforward as apple pie, and also you, as a substitute of being pissed off, will likely be as pleased as a pig in…(not the freezer).

December 2016