Cooking Tip

Whenever you are sautéing or frying foods, you are always left with little brown bits, called fond, in the bottom of your pan. That fond is like gold and contains extra flavor. If you are making a sauce or gravy, normally, you would put oil or butter in the pan and you would scrape up the fond as you are stirring in some flour. Well, even if you are not making a sauce you will always have some of the fond left. If you were to leave that in the pan after your meal was over, you would have some crusty stuff to scrub because the fond would have solidified - especially since we usually don't wash the pan immediately after cooking. Instead, after you remove the item you just sautéed, immediately put in about 2 tablespoon of chicken stock or broth (you can even use water) and start to scrape up the fond. As the fond is being scraped up with the little bit of stock, it will mix together and turn brown. After all the fond is gone from the bottom of your pan, pour the sauce over your dish. Even if you don’t have a saucy dish, that extra bit will add some good flavor to your food. It works really well with eggs, just put a touch of stock in the pan and scrape around the eggs, that little bit will mix in with your eggs. Another benefit of doing this is that you will end up with a pan that is very easy to clean because the fond didn’t get a chance to solidify in your pan.

I do this all the time and today, I did that with bacon. I sautéed some bacon for a pea salad and was left with some brown goodness in my pan that I didn’t want to waste. I put in about 2 tablespoon of chicken stock. The pan started sizzling and I started to scrape up all that goodness. When the fond was incorporated with the stock, I poured the extra bit of flavor into my salad - it was very tasty and my clean up was effortless.