Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

by Samin Nosrat

  It can be difficult to find a good, affordable everyday olive oil in grocery stores. My standbys include the extra-virgin oils from Seka Hills, Katz, and California Olive Ranch. Another good everyday oil is the Kirkland Signature Organic Extra Virgin Oil from Costco, which regularly scores well on independently administered quality analyses. In their absence, look for oils that are produced from 100 percent Californian or Italian olives (as opposed to those with labels that simply read “Made in Italy,” “Packed in Italy,” or “Bottled in Italy,” which imply that the oil is pressed in Italy from olives whose provenance cannot be traced or guaranteed). The production date should always be clearly marked on the label.

  If you can’t track down a good, affordable everyday olive oil, instead of using a lower-quality one, make your own blend of good olive oil and a neutral-tasting cold-pressed grapeseed or canola oil. Save the pure stuff and use it as a finishing olive oil for salads and condiments.

  Once you find an olive oil you love, take good care of it. Constant temperature fluctuations from a nearby stove or daily brushes with the sun’s rays will encourage olive oil to go rancid, so store it somewhere reliably cool and dark. If you can’t keep it in a dark place, store olive oil in a dark glass bottle or metal can to keep light out.

  Butter

  Butter is a common cooking fat in regions with climates that support pasture for grazing cows throughout the US and Canada, the UK and Ireland, Scandinavia, Western Europe including northern Italy, and Russia, Morocco, and India.

  One of the most versatile fats, butter can be manipulated into several forms and used as either a cooking medium, main ingredient, or seasoning. In its natural state, butter is available salted and unsalted, and cultured. Salted and tangy cultured butters are best as is, spread on warm toast, or served with radishes and sea salt as an hors d’oeuvre. There is no way to know exactly how much salt is in any one particular brand of salted butter, so use unsalted butter when cooking and baking, and add your own salt to taste.

  Chilled or at room temperature, unsalted butter can be worked into doughs and batters as a main ingredient to lend its rich dairy flavor to baked goods and produce a variety of luxurious textures, from flaky to tender to light. Unlike oil, butter is not pure fat—it also contains water, milk protein, and whey solids, which provide much of its flavor. Gently heat unsalted butter until those solids brown and you get brown butter, which is nutty and sweet. Brown butter is a classic flavor in French and Northern Italian cooking—particularly apt for pairing with hazelnuts, winter squash and sage, as I like to do in Autumn Panzanella, which is dressed with a Brown Butter Vinaigrette.

  Melt unsalted butter gently over sustained low heat to clarify it. The whey proteins will rise to the top of the clear, yellow fat, and other milk proteins will fall to the bottom. The water will evaporate, leaving behind 100 percent fat. Skim the whey solids and save them to toss with fettuccine—the buttery flavor is an ideal complement to the eggy noodles, especially if you top the dish with grated Parmesan and freshly ground black pepper. Since the proteins can sneak through even the finest cheesecloth, take care to leave them undisturbed at the bottom of the pot. Carefully strain the rest of the butter through cheesecloth to yield clarified butter, which is an excellent medium for high-heat cooking. I love using clarified butter for frying potato cakes—with the solids removed, the butter doesn’t burn, and the potatoes take on all of that buttery goodness. Indian ghee is simply clarified butter that’s been cooked at a higher temperature, allowing the milk solids to brown and lend the finished fat a sweeter flavor. Smen, used to fluff Moroccan couscous, is clarified butter that has been buried underground for up to seven years to develop a cheesy taste.

  Seed and Nut Oils

  Almost every culture relies on a neutral-tasting seed or nut oil, because cooks don’t always want fat to flavor a dish. Peanut oil, expeller-pressed canola oil, and grapeseed oil are all good choices as cooking fats precisely because they don’t taste like anything. Since they have high smoke points, these oils can also withstand the high temperatures required to crisp and brown foods.

  Spreading a rumor of tropical flavor to any dish where it’s used, coconut oil tastes particularly good in granola, or as the cooking fat for roasted root vegetables. Coconut oil is also the rare vegetable oil that’s solid at room temperature. Read on to learn how solid fat is a boon for making flaky pastries, and use coconut oil to make a pie crust the next time your lactose-intolerant friend comes over for dinner. (Cook’s tip: Both skin and hair readily absorb coconut oil, so it makes for a fantastic luxury treatment whenever you’re feeling dry!)

  Specialty seed and nut oils with vibrant flavors can be used as seasonings. Fry leftover rice in toasted sesame oil with an egg and kimchee for a Korean-inspired snack. A little toasted hazelnut oil in a vinaigrette will amplify a simple arugula and hazelnut salad with an echo of nuttiness. Garnish pumpkin soup with an Herb Salsa pumped up with toasted pumpkin seeds and a drizzle of pumpkin seed oil to incorporate multiple dimensions of a single ingredient.

  Animal Fats

  All meat-eating cultures make use of animal fats, which can be incorporated into food as a main ingredient, cooking medium, or seasoning depending on its form. Most aromatic molecules are repelled by water, so in meat they’re predominantly found in an animal’s fat. As a result, any animal’s fat will taste much more distinctly of that animal than its lean meat—beef fat tastes beefier than steak, pork fat tastes porkier than pork, chicken fat tastes more chickeny than chicken, and so on.

  Beef

  When solid, it’s called suet. Liquid, it’s called tallow. Beef fat is a crucial component in hamburgers and hot dogs, lending beefy flavor and enhancing moistness. Without suet, or another added fat, a hamburger would be dry, crumbly, and tasteless. Tallow is often used for frying french fries and cooking Yorkshire pudding, a giant popover traditionally served with prime rib.

  Pork

  When solid, it’s called pork fat. Liquid, it’s called lard. Pork fat is an important addition to sausages and terrines, providing both flavor and richness. Use solid pork fat for barding and larding, two hilariously named terms for supplementing lean meats with solid fat to keep them from drying out. Barding is the term for covering lean meat with slices of pork belly— either smoked and called bacon, cured and called pancetta, or left unadulterated—to protect it from the dry heat of roasting, while larding refers to the act of threading pieces of fat through a lean piece of meat with a long, thick needle. Both processes add richness and flavor.

  Since it has a high smoke point, lard is a terrific cooking medium and is commonly used in Mexico, the American South, southern Italy, and the northern Philippines. It can also be used as an ingredient in doughs, though it should be used with care, because while it makes for a perfectly flaky empanada dough, its distinctly porky taste may not always be desirable in your blueberry pie!

  Chicken, Duck, and Goose

  These fats are only used in their liquid forms as cooking media. Schmaltz—or rendered chicken fat—is a traditional ingredient in the Jewish kitchen. I love sizzling rice in it to lend it some chickeny flavor. Save duck or goose fat that renders when roasting a bird, strain it, and use it to fry potatoes or root vegetables. Few things are tastier than potatoes fried in duck fat.

  Lamb

  Also called suet, it’s generally not rendered, but it is an important ingredient in lamb sausages such as merguez in countries where pork is not consumed.

  In general, fat makes meat taste good. We prize—even grade—steaks based on how marbled, or fatty, they are. There’s also the fat that we don’t love to eat—the rubbery, chewy lump at the top of a chicken breast, or the bit of brisket fat that always ends up on the edge of the plate. Why do we value some animal fats and eschew others?

  When four-legged animals are fattened up with lots of calories, the cuts of meat from the center of the animal receive the most flavor benefits. Some fat ends up layered between groups of muscles, or directly under
their skin, as in the cap of fat on the outside of a pork loin or prime rib. Some fat ends up within a muscle. This is the more prized kind of fat—what we call marbling when we look at a steak. As a well-marbled steak cooks, the fat will melt, making the meat juicier from within. And since fat carries flavor, many of the chemical compounds that make any one kind of meat taste like itself (beef like beef, pork like pork, chicken like chicken) are more concentrated in fat than in lean muscle. That’s why, for example, chicken thighs taste more chickeny than the leaner breast meat.

  Though lumps of fat might not be so tasty on the plate, you can remove them from the meat and melt them down, then use the rendered fat as a cooking medium. The distinct flavors of animal fats lend themselves well to being used in dishes where the goal is to evoke a certain meatiness: matzoh balls fortified with schmaltz will amplify a chicken soup’s chickeniness, and hash browns cooked in bacon fat will lend breakfast a smoky, rich flavor even if no meat makes it onto the plate. A little animal fat will go a long way toward enriching and flavoring even the simplest foods.

  How to use the Flavor Maps

  Flip this page open. Inside, you’ll find one of the three flavor maps in this book. Use it to navigate through the flavors of the world. Each level of the wheel contains a layer of information: use the two inner layers to guide you to your cuisine of choice, and then refer to the outermost layer to choose the right fat for cooking foods from that cuisine.

  Fats of the World

  Just as I’d discovered in Italy, cuisines are distinguished by their fats. Since fat is the foundation of so many dishes, choose culturally appropriate fats to flavor food from within. Use the wrong fat, and food will never taste right, no matter how carefully you use other seasonings.

  Don’t use olive oil when cooking Vietnamese food, or smoky bacon fat when making Indian food. Instead, refer to this flavor wheel to guide your decision making as you cook foods from around the world. Sauté Garlicky Green Beans in butter to serve with a French-inspired meal, in ghee to serve alongside Indian rice and lentils, or with a splash of sesame oil to serve with Glazed Five-Spice Chicken.

  HOW FAT WORKS

  Which fats we use primarily affect flavor, but how we use them will determine texture, which is just as important in good cooking. Varied textures excite our palates. By transforming foods from soft and moist to crisp and crunchy, we introduce new textures and make the experience of eating more amusing, surprising, and delicious. Depending on how we use fats, we can achieve any one of five distinct textures in our food: Crisp, Creamy, Flaky, Tender, and Light.

  Crisp

  Humans love crisp and crunchy foods. According to chef Mario Batali, the word crispy sells more food than almost any other adjective. Crisp foods stoke our appetites by conjuring up past experiences of foods with pleasing aromas, tastes, and sounds. Just think of fried chicken, a version of which you’ll encounter in practically any country around the world. Few moments in a meal can rival that first bite of chicken, fried so expertly that the skin shatters the moment your teeth sink into it. Steam ripe with the mouthwatering aromas of that crisp batter; a loud, attention-grabbing crunch; and the comforting flavors of fried chicken all emerge simultaneously to deliver that universal experience of deliciousness.

  For food to become crisp, the water trapped in its cells must evaporate. Water evaporates as it boils, so the surface temperature of the ingredient must climb beyond the boiling point of 212°F.

  To achieve this effect on the entire surface of the food, it needs to be in direct, even contact with a heat source, such as a pan at temperatures well beyond water’s boiling point. But no food is perfectly smooth, and at the microscopic level, most pans aren’t either. In order to get even contact between the food and the pan, we need a medium: fat. Cooking fats can be heated to 350°F and beyond before beginning to smoke, so 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 eggplant 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 appetizing 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, minimizing opportunity for it to deteriorate. As oil is heated, it breaks down, leading to flavor 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 flavor
, 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 350°F, 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.