PAN SAUCES
You may notice after cooking your steak in a skillet that
you’re left with a brownish residue on the bottom of the
pan. Don’t scrub it out!You see, as meat cooks and shrinks, it exudes juices that are
loaded with proteins. As these juices evaporate, the proteins
end up on the bottom of the pan, where they eventually
stick and brown—exactly like the browned proteins on the
surface of your steak. The French, who seem to have a
fancy-sounding word for everything, call this fond, as in
fondation, or foundation, because it’s the flavor base that all
good pan sauces are built on. Here in America the technical
term is tasty-brown-gunk-on-the-bottom-of-the-pan.