HOW TO USE FATS
Fats are just one of my favourite things - they have the ability to lift, texture, deepen, smooth, shadow, accelerate, or slow a dish. Using more than one fat in a recipe is bar far the simplest way to make your food more delicious. Fats are essentially filters of flavour with spice: each fat has an inherent character that spice will move through to result in an end dish that is laid over with a particular aromatic veil.
Put simply: when I start to think about what I want to make, I begin by thinking about which fat will best help me achieve that end result. Below is a little bit of info about my three favourite fats and how they frame flavour. Also a few tips on where to start.
SIMPLE TIPS ON FLAVOUR:
Ghee works to soften spice, draw out the recessed or forward sweetness in any aromatic, and to soften the sharp edges of contrast. I use ghee when I want to make an intensely spiced dish that isn’t confrontational. Or when I have a yen for very soft, nourishing and nurturing spice profiles.
Mustard oil draws forward the hot, pungent and floral qualities in fresh and dried aromatics. It is a very viscose oil and so also contributes a lot of texture to the dish via the coating it creates in the mouth. Mustard oil flames chilli, darkens black pepper and increased the hidden floral quality of black cardamom. I don’t use mustard oil if my spice bed is already weighted on the side of bitter and pungent - sometimes use of mustard oil here can push the dish over the edge.
Coconut oil lightens and lifts the aromatic bed of a dish, providing a real sense of excitement and joy. This is the fat you want to use when a dish feels heavy , or when making a dish that calls for high acid, high tang, or a tropical or street food kind of vibe. When used with this intent, the “coconut” flavour of coconut oil becomes recessed or secondary to its overall effect on the dish: the dominance of that coconut flavour harmonises.
When using multiple fats for the first time, consider a 50-50 ratio whereby you replace one fat with two.
It doesn’t matter at what time you put in the separate fats - both at the start, one half way through cooking, stirring a second fat through with heat at the end. In any of those cases it will make an impact.