Larding

If you decide to lard your pot roast, it will give a melting juiciness to the finished meat. I highly recommend the technique not only for that reason but because it’s delightfully anachronistic. (How marvelous in this age of ever more lean and tasteless meat to actually add fat!) There are two basic methods used for larding, and a different kind of larding needle is used for each. The method you’ll use for the pot roast requires a larding needle—in French, a lardoir. A larding needle has a heavy handle and a hollow metal tube about 10 inches [25.5 cm] long. You insert a strip of fatback into the tube, slide the tube into the meat, parallel to the grain, and slide out the tube, leaving the strip of fat embedded in the meat. Another method, more properly called interlarding, requires a smaller and thinner larding needle, one about 8 inches [20.5 cm] long, which looks like a small knitting needle with a toothed hinge at one end. This needle—in French, an aiguille à piquer—is used to lard smaller pieces of meat that a lardoir would mangle. To use an aiguille à piquer, you pinch one end of the fatback strip in the little hinge, slide the needle through a section of the meat, and pull the needle through, leaving the fatback strip embedded in the meat. If you have trouble getting the needle through, grip the pointed end with a kitchen towel and pull it through.