A recipe can reveal a lot about its creator. In the case of my Steak Sandwiches with Fennel Slaw, it reveals my preferred way to eat meat: sliced thin. Very thin.
The instructions read: "Slice steak against the grain into as-thin-as-you-can-get-them strips."
I can hear some of you screaming already. How am I supposed to get razor-thin slices? What am I, a butcher? To which I say this: can you just chill?
In fact, I say it right there in the recipe: "This is much easier to do when the steak is cold."
Steak, like cookies, contains a lot of fat, and fat firms up in the cold. So whereas a warm steak is soft and wiggly (read: hard to slice thinly), a firm, cold steak stays still, so you can slice it as thin as you like.
And this method is not just good for cooked meat, but for raw.
Let's say you want to flash-cook some pork tenderloin, like my friend Chris Morocco did when he was developing his Spicy Pork Bowl with Greens and Carrots. Move the tenderloin to the freezer for just 30 minutes—use that time to prep your garlic, ginger, carrots, and kale—and slice it when you take it out. It will be cold, but you won't mind, because your knife will slice off sheets of pork that are are thin as your tee shirt. Because just like a cold cooked steak, a cold raw pork tenderloin is chilled and firm—and thus requires none of the wrangling a soft, warm tenderloin requires.
Freezing-and-slicing raw meat has a ton of benefits. First among them is saved time. The thinly-sliced pork in Morocco's bowl takes just two minutes to cook, and if your pan is hot enough, the slices will take on browned, crispy edges. Thinly-sliced meats also work beautifully (and cook quickly) in soups such as pho; you can cook the slices gently in the broth if you like—it will only take a few minutes. Tacos, stir-fries, Cubanos, wraps—my colleague Anya Hoffman goes into all the ways you can use thinly-sliced meat here.
The slice-and-freeze works with pork, steak, chicken, bacon (especially bacon), and basically every other animal protein. (If you've ever cured your own salmon, you know that it's almost impossible to slice unless you freeze it first.)
But there's one thing you have to keep in mind no matter what animal you're working with. And that's that you shouldn't actually freeze your meat. I know, I know, I just spent several paragraphs talking about the benefit of freezing, but ignore all that. Your meat should stay in the freezer just until chilled and firmed—30 minutes, tops. Any longer, and you risk freezing your meat solid, and that's something you should never try to slice—lest you end up with razor-thin slices of your hand.
