Excerpt: Cutting Bacon Lardons

the appetizer:

Complete Book of Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to Use, Techniques & Care by Jeffrey Elliot and James P. DeWan includes excerpts like Rondelles; Cutting Bacon Lardons; and Deveining Shrimp.

Cutting Bacon Lardons

by Jeffrey Elliot and James P. DeWan

Strictly speaking, lardons are long, thin strips of fat that are inserted into roasts to add moisture. Bacon lardons are thin strips of bacon that are cooked and used as a garnish. They are different from crumbled bacon in that they are cut before they're cooked, so they all end up the same size. Traditionally, they'd be cut from slab bacon into batonnet-sized strips, but since it's much easier to purchase precut bacon strips, we'll use those for our lardons.

Recommended Knife: Chef's knife or Santoku

Lay several strips of bacon on top of one another on the cutting board. Place your guide hand on top in the claw position.

Place the knife blade flush against your guide fingers and line it up to cut off a 1/4-inch (6 mm) slice. Cut straight down through the bacon.

Keeping the blade against your guide fingers, move them back 1/4 inch (6 mm) and cut off another slice.

Repeat step 3 until you have cut all the bacon into slices.

Don't be concerned that the individual lardons are sticking together. When they are cooked, the fat holding them together will melt and the lardons will cook individually.