Caul Fat—The Chef's Friend

I have a fondness for making and eating charcuterie: pâtés, terrines, ballotines, galantines, sausages, hams, and such. One thing you learn early on when making charcuterie is the kinds and uses of various kinds of fat: fatback, kidney fat, bacon, pork belly, and especially caul fat. It constantly surprises me the number of people in this industry that I meet who have never worked with caul fat.

Caul fat, as you can see, is a very thin lacy membrane that surrounds the viscera of animals. I generally use beef or pork. Lamb is also available. I highly prefer pork caul fat, unless I am working with beef.

Caul fat is indispensable when you want to contain and restrain a loose or rolled product. During cooking, the fat largely melts away, leaving you the finished product that you would otherwise have had to tie with string or bind in some other fashion.

Caul fat is excellent for making individual servings of a forcemeat. You can wrap the forcemeat in caul fat and the fat will help it hold its shape until it cooks and the proteins set up to hold it in shape.

Caul fat is even more excellent for restraining rolled meats, such as these boned saddles of rabbit stuffed with a Kurobuta pork forcemeat. Easy to roll and no fooling around with string. No unsighltly string marks messing with the presentation and no messing around removing the string from a hot product.

Caul fat can be very difficult to find if you are not in the trade. Hopefully you can find a good butcher.