Fond! What it is and how to use it!

Fond and How to Use it

One of the most important things that you can learn how to do if you’re teaching yourself how to cook, is to learn how to cook with this stuff. Now, you’re going to hear this talked about in two different ways. There are going to be people who have studied classical French food and they’re going to be calling it suc – think of the French word sucre for sugar – that’s what that is. Here in America we call it fond, even though fond in classically French cooking is the next step. But we’re going to call this entire process of development fond. And I remember it, and help my kids remember it when I’m teaching them by remembering we’re fond of fond.

Now fond in French means foundation and what you’re doing with this stuff is building from it. And it’s the most valuable thing which you can develop in your kitchen. This is the first step in deglazing and this is the first step in developing a pan sauces.

Now what I’ve done in here, is I’ve browned off a whole bunch of bacon, and then I’ve browned chicken on top of it. All this luscious, lovely stuff down here in the bottom? That’s where the outsides of my foods have caramelized or developed their sugars. It’s incredibly rich, it’s incredibly deep in flavor.

Now my next step is going to be to use the fond, all of this wonderful stuff as a base for a sauce that I’m going to build to go with my chicken. I’m going to do that by simply deglazing my pan. Deglazing is not hard. You put some kind of liquid in there, keep it over the heat, scrape it up with a wooden spoon, and that’s what gives you the basis for just about any kind of pan sauce you want to develop. In this case I’m using some white wine, some chicken broth and some veggies, but you can use just about anything you can think of. And that’s all there is to it.

So – fond. We’re fond of it. It’s the foundation for all of our recipes. This is how you get really fabulous flavor!