1,570 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Balancing flavours

In the kitchen, we sometimes use ingredients that can be a little overwhelming in taste.

Grilled lardons, for example, are very good, they give a great taste to a lot of recipes where they are added, but you have to be objective, they're still pretty fatty!

9,644 5/5 (17 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Flavors Tastes Balance Nuance

Last modified on: November 7^th 2020

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Balancing flavours

And as a result, this fatty, suave side can sometimes be a little too much, when you add these lardons to something a little busy, tone on tone, for example a tartiflette.

tartiflette

The point here is not to try and lighten things up (after all, "fat is life"), but rather to try and accompany this flavor.
You might think that discarding the cooking fat and keeping only the "dry" lardons, and/or blanching them before cooking, would reduce the taste? Yes, a little, but not that much, in fact. They'll certainly be lower in calories, but their strong taste will still be there.

So what can you do?

I suggest giving your lardons a sort of tonic accent:

Grill them as you usually do (say, a small frying pan over high heat, with the lardons alone in it).
Once they're toasted to your liking, add 2 or 3 tablespoons of vinegar all at once. Be careful, it will boil and release very pungent fumes (start your hood first if you haven't already).
Continue cooking for about 15/20 seconds, until most of the vinegar has evaporated.
Remove from heat, and use in your recipe (allow to cool if necessary).

By proceeding in this way, you'll give the grilled lardons a hint of acidity that will balance, or counterbalance, the fatty, suave, original flavour.
This delicate nuance is the perfect accompaniment to your recipe.

So, you've seen the general rule: when there's a risk of a little too much fat, compensate with a little acidity.
Another example in the same spirit: enjoy rillettes (rather fatty) with a good glass of Bourgogne aligoté (rather acidic), each revealing the other, it's a delight...

Note that it also works the other way round, which is why creams or lemon preparations, for example, are often generously creamed or buttered to soften the acidity a little.

lemon curd

In short: with things that are quite fatty in taste, think about adding a little acidity, and in the other direction, a little cream or butter to a preparation that's too acidic.

Lasts posts

A little leftover butter

Very often when you're making a cake, your recipe will tell you to melt some butter and mix it into the batter - a classic for cookies, cakes, moelleux and the like. And every time you do this, you'll have to butter the baking tin to prevent the dough from sticking during baking. Naturally,...
April 16^th 20267245

A tablet holder

Perhaps you too cook by consulting your recipe on a tablet or phone, and putting it down on your worktop? It's practical, but not the best solution. Here's a look at how you can make an inexpensive, almost universal stand.
March 14^th 20261,4535

Pre-calibrated pastry dough

When making pie dough (shortbread, shortcrust, sweet...), it's always a good idea to make a lot at once, and then divide it into pieces, which you can freeze. I've already pointed out the mistake not to make, which is to form a ball before freezing. It's difficult to roll out afterwards because...
March 9^th 20261,3195

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20253,3465

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20252,2545

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

How to properly roll out a pie crust?

Very often in pastry making, you have to roll out a pastry before using it for a pie or another dessert. At home, of course, you get out your rolling pin and simply roll it out. Is there a way to get an evenly rolled out dough? That's what we will see in this article.
May 10^th 202311 K4.9

The beautiful story of the croissants

As you may have already noticed, cooking, baking and pastry-making are full of stories or legends, usually very romantic, about this or that product or recipe. This is often the case for named recipes, for example tarte tatin, peach melba, paris-brest and many others, but it also applies to very...
October 10^th 201821 K5

The dissociation of a preparation

It may have already happened to you: You prepare a sauce, a cream, a ganache etc. and then suddenly or almost, the whole thing dissociates, and from a smooth mixture that you were preparing with love, you end up with a horrible thing with a more or less solid part and another liquid part. It's...
January 22^th 202214 K4.9

Should I believe my oven?

Can you really trust your oven? This is an important question as we are always tempted to take the temperature indicated as gospel truth and, unfortunately, this is rarely very precise. .
July 4^th 201134 K4.6

Preserving egg yolks

If you're using only the egg whites in a recipe (such as meringues ), you'll need to store the yolks until you're ready to use them again. There's nothing very complicated about this in principle - all you have to do is chill them, but there are a few pitfalls to be avoided in practice.
June 18^th 20249,2895