caul fat: n. The web-like membrane of fatty material that encases the internal organs of certain animals, like pigs, sheep, and cows.
That's all well and good, you say. But what on Earth do you do with this stuff? Well, we have the answer. And just so you know, you've probably eaten this in restaurants and never known...
The other night we met Brad Steelman, the chef at the River Cafe in Brooklyn, at an event for Electrolux (Steelman was showing off their luxe induction cooking stovetop and other appliances). The chef was making lamb, and before he put the loins in the oven, he pulled out a wad of caul fat (from a pig), spread it out like a picnic blanket, and wrapped each lamb loin snugly in it.
Whoa.
As Steelman explained, caul fat renders right away during cooking. It's a chef secret; wrap your meat (or fish) in a little caul fat, and you get flavor, moisture, and fat that literally melts into the meat as it cooks. Like bacon draped on top of a turkey roast, only it disappears into the meat—great for keeping a lean piece of meat juicy and basted, so to speak, while it cooks.
It really does look like a spider web, or maybe one of those mesh plastic sleeves the wine store sometimes slips on a bottle. And when we asked where, exactly, we're supposed to buy caul fat (we don't recall seeing it in the meat aisle of Whole Foods), Steelman said a lot of specialty grocery stores or butchers have it. Just ask. Also, it freezes beautifully and will keep for a while once it's frozen.
We found this article about chef Vuong Loc of Portage restaurant in Seattle, and it offers a few more photos and some suggestions.
• Caul Fat Tutorial, at Star Chefs
Has anyone cooked with caul fat at home?
Related: Word of Mouth: Rillettes
(Image: Star Chefs)
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Yes. When ever I have a recipe that calls for a lean cut of pork, I like to wrap it in caul fat. You almost never see a pork loin with the fat layer still attached, the caul fat will keep it from drying out.
This is a common method used in the Balkans especially for barbecued meats. It is called "u maramice" meaning "in a napkin" in serbian. It makes to-die-for hamburgers.
In my experience, caul fat is very, very hard to come by. It is great stuff when you can get it though.
First time i saw this was after i sent out my boyfriend to buy sausage for breakfast. He went to the local butcher, asked for sausage, and received sausage hamburger patties held together with a web of caul fat. It looked pretty gross, and unfortunately, tasted pretty gross too. The caul fat did NOT melt, at least not on a pan fried sausage patty.
That's not to say that i won't be buying it for a roast from my "secret purveyor". :)
a sausage type patty wrapped in caul fat is typically called a crepinette. This is a great technique to use if you do your own butchering. Sometimes, you don't want to have to go through the process of preparing sausage casings and stuffing sausage so caul fat allows you to make a "fresh" sausage so to speak.
But it is important to use the caul fat carefully. Notice how the fat in the picture has some very thick webbing throughout. Some of that thick stuff should be discarded or used for grinding as it may not completely render. Use just enough to wrap whatever it is you will be cooking.
I've seen it wrapping spiced sausage meat into some kind of super meat balls (size of a tennis ball) that are then grilled or BBQ-ed. It's very typical where my mum comes from, the eastern coast of Spain. I couldn't find a picture of them raw, but you can get an idea here.
Gracia
Interestingly I read about caul fat this week in Kathleen Flinn's book "The sharper your knife the less you cry". It's used a lot in Europe.
I could never knowingly eat the stuff. I'm not going to say what animal but in a high school biology class during a dissection I came across some of the stuff and just looking at that picture I can remember the smell of the preservatives. Yuck.
Oh yeah, that's the greater omentum. It's the first thing to go during a dissection.