Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Samin Nosrat
they are ideal mediums for developing the crisp, golden crusts that delight our palates so much. Cooking methods where fat is heated to achieve crispness include searing, sautéing, pan-, shallow-, and deep-frying. (A bonus: using enough fat to create even surface contact will prevent food from sticking to the pan.)
As with salt, I encourage you to abandon any fear of fat, for knowing how to use fat properly may lead you to use less of it. The best way to know how much fat to use is to pay attention to certain sensory cues. Some ingredients, such as aubergines and mushrooms, act like sponges, quickly absorbing fat and then cooking dry against the hot metal. Using too little fat in a pan, or letting the fat be absorbed and neglecting to add more, will result in dark, bitter blisters on the surface of the food. Other ingredients, such as pork chops or chicken thighs, will release their own fat as they cook; walk away from a pan of sizzling bacon for a few minutes and you’ll return to see the strips practically submerged in their own fat.
Let your eyes, ears, and taste buds guide you in how much fat to use. Recipes can be a useful starting point, but conditions vary from kitchen to kitchen, depending on the tools available to you. Say a recipe asks you to cook two diced onions in two tablespoons of olive oil. In a small pan that might be enough to coat the bottom but in a larger pan with greater surface area it probably isn’t. Instead of just following a recipe, use your common sense, too. For example, make sure that the bottom of the pan is coated with fat when sautéing, or that oil comes halfway up the sides of the food when shallow-frying.
Food cooked in too much fat is no more appetising than its inverse. Few things can retroactively ruin a meal like a puddle of grease left on an otherwise empty plate. Drain fried foods—even pan- or shallow-fried foods—with a quick dab on a clean dish towel or paper napkin before serving. And lift sautéed foods out of the pan with a slotted spoon or tongs, rather than tilting them out onto a plate, to leave the excess fat behind.
While you’re cooking, if you notice you’ve used more fat than you’d intended, you can tip the excess out of the pan, taking care to wipe its outer edge where fat may have dripped, to prevent a flare-up. Just do it carefully so you don’t burn yourself. If the pan is too heavy or hot, then be smart: take the food out and use tongs to place it on a plate, then tip some of the fat out, replace the food, and continue cooking. It’s not worth a burn or a grease spill to avoid washing an extra dish.
Heating Oil Properly
Preheat the pan to reduce the amount of time fat spends in direct contact with the hot metal, minimising opportunity for it to deteriorate. As oil is heated, it breaks down, leading to flavour degradation and the release of toxic chemicals. Food is also more likely to stick to a cold pan—another reason to preheat. But exceptions to the preheating rule exist: butter and garlic. Both will burn if the pan is too hot, so you must heat them gently. In all other cooking, preheat the pan and then add the fat, letting it too heat up before adding any other ingredients.
The pan should be hot enough so that oil immediately ripples and shimmers when added. Various metals conduct heat at different rates, so there’s no set amount of time to recommend; instead, test the pan with a drop of water. If it crackles a little bit before evaporating—it doesn’t have to be a violent sound—then the pan is ready. A general clue that both the pan and fat are hot enough is the sound of a delicate sizzle upon addition of the food. If you add food too early and don’t get that sizzle, just take the food out, let the pan heat up sufficiently, and put it back in to ensure it doesn’t stick or overcook before it browns.
Rendering
Intermuscular and subcutaneous fats—the lumpy bits between the muscles and the layer of fat just beneath the skin—can be cut into small pieces, placed in a pan with a minimal amount of water, and rendered, or cooked over gentle heat until all the water has evaporated. This process transforms solid fat into a liquid that can be used as a cooking medium. The next time you roast a duck, trim all of its excess fat before cooking and render it. Strain it into a glass jar and store it in the fridge. It’ll keep for up to six months. Save it to make Chicken Confit.
While fat in meat is a great boon to flavour, it can also prevent meat from crisping. Even when the aim is not to render fat to use as a cooking medium, this technique is crucial for transforming texture. Crisp bacon is the happy result of properly rendered fat. Fry at too high a temperature, and it’ll burn on the outside while remaining flabby. The key is to cook it slowly enough to allow the fat to render at the same rate the bacon browns.
Since animal fats begin to burn at around 176°C, try arranging sliced bacon in a single layer on a baking sheet, and then slipping it into an oven set to that temperature. The heat of the oven will be gentler and more even than on the stove, giving the fat an opportunity to render. Or, when cooking bits of bacon or pancetta on the stove, start with a little water in the pan to help moderate the temperature and give the fat a chance to render before browning begins.
The skin of a roast chicken or turkey will crisp up on its own as long as the bird cooks long enough for the fat to render. Duck needs a little more help, though, since it has a thicker layer of subcutaneous fat to provide the bird with energy for flying and help keep it warm in the winter months. Using a very sharp needle or metal skewer, prick the skin of the entire bird, focusing particularly on the fattiest parts—the breast and the thighs. The holes will allow the rendering fat to escape and coat the skin as it melts, leaving you with glassy, crisp skin. If roasting a whole duck is beyond your comfort zone right now, start with duck breasts. Before cooking, score the skin on both diagonals with a sharp paring knife, leaving behind a pattern of tiny diamonds. The same rendering will occur on a smaller scale, leaving the breasts with perfectly crisped skin.
I’m a stickler for rendering the fat cap on pork chops and rib steaks. I hate getting a nicely cooked steak with a strip of flabby, barely cooked fat running down the side. So either start or finish the cooking process by laying a chop or steak on its side in the pan or on the grill, allowing the fat to render. This might require a little bit of balancing trickery on your part—hold the meat in place with your tongs, or try to cleverly lean the meat up against a carefully placed wooden spoon, or the edge of the pan itself. Whatever you do, don’t skip this step! You won’t regret taking the time to turn that strip of fat into something golden, crisp, and delicious.
Smoke Points
The smoke point of a fat is the temperature at which it decomposes and transforms into a visible, noxious gas. Have you ever added oil into a hot pan for sautéing vegetables and then been distracted by a ringing phone? If you’ve returned to an offensive, smoky scene at the stove, then the oil has surpassed its smoke point. Once, while I was trying to demonstrate the importance of preheating the pan to an intern, another cook approached me with an urgent question. By the time I addressed him and turned back to the pan, it was so aggressively hot that the second I added olive oil, it hit the smoke point, turning the pan black and throwing everyone nearby into a coughing fit. In an attempt to save face, I tried to imply that I’d made the mistake on purpose, and it had been a lesson about smoke points from the start. But, blushing hard before the other cooks, I couldn’t keep a straight face, and we soon all dissolved into laughter.
The higher a fat’s smoke point, the further it can be heated without ruining the flavour of the food cooking in it. Pure, refined vegetable oils such as grapeseed and peanut begin to smoke around 200°C, making them an ideal choice for high-heat applications such as deep- or stir-frying. Impure fats don’t do as well at extreme heats; the sediment in unfiltered olive oil and the milk solids in butter will begin to reach their smoke point, or burn, at about 176°C, making them well suited for applications where a very high temperature isn’t needed and their flavours can shine, such as oil-poaching, simple vegetable sautés, pan-frying fish or meat. Or, use them for dishes that don’t involve any heating, such as mayonnaise and vinaigrettes.
Achieving Crispness
Crispness results from food’s contact with hot fat and water evaporating from the surface of food. So do everything in your power to keep the pan and the fat hot when seeking a golden crust. Preheat the pan, then preheat the fat. Avoid putting more than a single layer of food into the pan, which will