pork

Tasso (Cajun Smoked Pork)

When most people think of cured pork, they think of the two champions of the cured-pork world: bacon and ham. But the Cajun dish Tasso (sometimes referred to as Tasso Ham) beats these two famous counterparts in another way — you can’t beat its affordability and ease. Because Tasso is made with shoulder or loin, it’s much cheaper to prepare than bacon (pork belly) or ham (pork leg), because the former is much more expensive, and the latter is hard to find in its unprocessed state.

This is a two-step process: first, you cure the pork to remove its moisture and to impart its characteristic pink hue. Next, you smoke it at a low heat (under 180F if possible). The process is a little involved, but the end product is super versatile; I use it in my gumbo, jambalaya, or any dish that calls for bacon or salt pork.

You’ll want to cut the shoulder into smaller pieces — my rule of thumb is that each piece should be the size of a baseball. This gives you more surface area to work with, so that you can imbue it with all of that cajuny goodness.

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3-2-1 Smoked Ribs

Can you feel it? Summer is fading fast, thankfully–2019 was quite a scorcher. But that also means our grilling weather is in its death throes, so I wanted to push out to you my favorite ribs recipe. This is by no means an original recipe, the 3-2-1 technique is very well known at this point. I love its simplicity: you smoke the ribs for three hours, wrap and smoke for another two hours, then unwrap, sauce, and smoke for a final hour. All at 225F.

Also, some life updates. The limited hardcover edition of The Heritage Cookbook is complete, and I shipped out all of the orders last week! Who knew that signing and shipping 750 books at once could be so fun? Here are some pictures in case you missed seeing them on Instagram. The end result was 760 pages, 304 recipes, and 4 lbs, 8 ounces.

My next step is to try and find a way to distribute this massive tome for a wider (and international) release. Fingers crossed I will have some good news to share in the coming weeks!

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Tigania (Greek Pan-Fried Pork)

Pork shoulder is great: often one of the most affordable cuts of meat, and it can be used in a variety of dishes, from Kalua Pig, to Pork Adobo, to hearty stews. But most preparations call for extended cooking times, to break down all of that connective tissue and create a very tender bite. We’re going to do things the Greek way this time around, and give them a quick pan-fry, followed by a simmer in a flavorful sauce.

This preparation visits the other end of the pork shoulder spectrum: cooking the meat just through, so it’s still tender and super juicy. We’ll keep the prep and cook time to under an hour, with lots of hands-off time so you can prep a salad and pickled veggies to go with the meal.

In case you missed my post from last week, I’m officially accepting recipe testers for my next cookbook, which will be entitled The Heritage Cookbook! Recipe testing is open to the public until January 28th (which is also when feedback is due), so don’t delay!

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Inihaw na Liempo (Filipino Grilled Pork Belly)

This past weekend was probably one of our last opportunities to grill in nice weather – it was a cool 45F outside, just enough to require my jacket and a careful eye on my charcoal. I’ll likely grill through the winter, but I figured now would be a good time to share this recipe for Inihaw na Liempo (Filipino Grilled Pork Belly).

Pork has a long history in Filipino cuisine; the Tagalog word for pig, baboy, is likely derived from the Indo-Malay babi/bayi, indicating that pork spread to the Philippine archipelago alongside its early inhabitants. For reference, there is evidence of humans living in the Philippines some 67,000 years ago, but they were likely displaced by several other arriving groups until about 6,000 years ago, when Malayo-Polynesians first arrived from East Asia. There is no perfect way to determine whether the pigs are an ancient member of the archipelago, but the fact that pigs have cultural significance on the islands is a good indication; for example, the seafaring Sama-Bajau, an ethnic group who live mostly in the Southern Philippines, used simple pig-shaped constellation clusters to navigate prior to the arrival of Europeans and their more advanced navigational methods.

Inihaw na Liempo is a more modern preparation of pork belly, using ingredients with both short and long histories in the Philippines. Many recipes today call for banana ketchup, which was a replacement for tomato ketchup invented during tomato shortages in World War II. Intrigued by the idea, I decided to mash a couple bananas into my marinade, and was pleasantly surprised by the fruity notes that complemented the crispy pork belly. Just be sure to keep a watchful eye on the grill – the natural sugars in the banana tend to encourage browning. For that reason, I like to slice my pork belly relatively thin, at 1/2″, to ensure the pork cooks through before getting too browned (plus, thinner slices = more crispy surface texture).

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Oven-Roasted Pork Adobo

Greetings from Virginia! We made it to our new home in one piece, and no worse for the wear. I’m still in the process of organizing our new kitchen, and acclimating to my new stovetop and oven, but I figure by next week’s recipe this new kitchen will feel like old hat to me.

Along with our other belongings, we ended up hauling up some frozen meat that we just didn’t have a chance to cook through before the big move. I’ve now made it my personal goal to use them all up by the end of the summer–starting with about 4 lbs of pork shoulder from my friends at ButcherBox, which I used in today’s recipe.

Pork Adobo is one of my favorite pork dishes to make. You’ll find an old recipe here on the blog, and there is a version of Pork Adobo in each of my printed cookbooks. Today’s preparation is easily my simplest: you cover and roast the pork at a low temperature for an hour to keep it tender, then you uncover and roast it at a high temperature for another hour to crisp it up and reduce the sauce.

Here’s a quick synopsis of the dish, from Paleo Takeout:

Adobo, often considered the national dish of the Philippines, is a method of stewing meat in vinegar. The word adobo itself is linked to a Spanish method of preserving raw meat by immersing it in a mixture of vinegar, salt, and paprika. When the Spanish observed an indigenous Philippine cooking method involving vinegar in the 16th century, they referred to it as adobo, and the name stuck. The original name for this dish is no longer known.

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Maple and Bourbon Glazed Pork Loin

We’re just coming out of the stretch of what I like to call “roasting weather”, wherein I adore the comforting smells and radiating warmth of cranking on the oven. This week’s recipe capitalizes on those aromatic smells I like so much, what with its flavors of sauteed onion, roasted apple, and a sweet and tangy maple glaze. The pork isn’t bad, either!

This roast is an excellent opportunity to showcase the types of meats available through my friends at ButcherBox, who contributed the pork sirloin you see in this picture. Pork is one of those meats I have a hard time buying at my local grocery store, since the conditions in which conventional pigs are raised is usually far from ideal. Moreover, it is often difficult to find farmers who raise happy, healthy pigs, since the price of conventionally-raised pork is so cheap that it can discourage farmers from raising animals they know will cost much more at the market. ButcherBox does all that work for us, by sourcing responsibly-raised pork from heritage breeds who are free of antibiotics, ractopamine, and hormones; I also appreciate the fact that they curate their monthly meat boxes, combining familiar and new cuts, which keeps me in a creative mood while in the kitchen.

Today’s recipe looks (and sounds) fancy, but it’s not far from many of my other dry-roast recipes: bring the pork to temperature at a moderately low heat (225F), then add onions, apple, and glaze, and finally finish everything off in a very hot (500F) oven for that perfect external texture.

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Center-Cut Pork Rib Roast

As I mentioned in last week’s recipe for Skillet-Roasted Winter Vegetables, I recently had quite an adventure photographing a couple dishes in the middle of a Florida storm. This week’s recipe for Center-Cut Pork Rib Roast is the last dish I photographed during that session, and I was lucky enough to get a pretty good shot of the meal. In hindsight, a tripod would have helped stabilize the photo above, but I’m so used to shooting by hand that I didn’t think of it in time.

Today’s cooking method will work for most bone-in cuts of meat; try it with beef prime rib or roast. The key is to cook the meat at a low temperature (250F) so that the center reaches an ideal temperature without overcooking the outer layers, then to finish it off in a searing-hot oven after a brief period of rest. The timing works out perfectly, as you can rest the roast while you crank up the oven heat – I’m a big fan of this type of efficiency.

Another reason I like this roast is that it is the counterpoint to my popular Eye of Round Roast recipe (which celebrated its five-year birthday earlier this month). The older recipe starts at a high heat, then finishes the roast at a very low heat; while both methods consistently result in tender roasts, I also like the sense of control that comes with searing the roast at the end, as in today’s recipe.

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Smothered Pork Chops

This month marks my six-year anniversary of food blogging. My mind reels when I think of how much of myself is embedded in this website, in its 400+ recipes.

To be honest, running this site has its ups and downs. Sometimes there’s no better feeling than the flurry that comes with creating a new recipe–the smells and tastes during development, the colors that enliven my photography sessions, the relief that comes from editing terrible first drafts. But there are other sessions where I walk away disheartened, feeling like I’m simply treading water; stuck in the space between better moments.

It’s times like these that I typically revert to old dishes, to prove to myself that I’m making progress in pursuit of that perfect recipe post. Case in point is this week’s recipe for Smothered Pork Chops, a revision of my initial recipe, from over five years ago. The old post horrifies me, especially that first picture – it doesn’t even look like food! But at the same time, a part of me treasures its presence, as a testament to progress.

So, cheers to six years of tasty food. I can’t wait to see how my recipes look in another six. Thanks for sticking around!

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Tirripaisti (Finnish Pork Belly)

As I mentioned in my Chicken in Champagne Sauce recipe earlier this year, I draw inspiration from many sources – online research, reader requests, or from friends. Today’s recipe is inspired by a reader’s recent tip, left in a comment from the Nakkikastike (Finnish Hot Dogs in Sauce) recipe I shared a couple years back.

Like Nakkikastike, Tirripaisti is a staple Finnish comfort food – not quite haute cuisine, but something to warm the belly in all the right ways. In researching the recipe, I found there were two general methods to prepare this dish in Finland; some simply season the pork belly and fry it up as you would bacon, while others insist the pork should be sauteed with onion, then simmered in water to make a sort of gravy. I’ve provided recipes for each preparation – they’re both super easy.

In most cases, Tirripaisti is served with boiled and mashed potatoes (or sometimes boiled turnips) and a vegetable of some kind – like pickled beets or roasted veggies.

If you have any recipe development requests, I’m all ears – feel free to leave them in the comments below. Bear in mind that between this site and my two cookbooks, I’ve covered over 600 recipes, so chances are I’ve already tackled many that you’re looking for! Here are the recipe lists for The Ancestral Table and Paleo Takeout.

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Danish Meatballs (Frikadeller)

I know what you’re thinking. It’s something like this – “Seriously, Russ? You already have an awesome Swedish Meatball recipe in your cookbook. Way to put a new coat of paint on your old favorites.”

First of all, thanks for the compliment. Second, these meatballs are a little different. For example, Danish Frikadeller are often smashed and look more like little patties than those little round balls you might be expecting. Think of them as Denmark’s LEGOs (probably their coolest invention) vs. Sweden’s crescent wrench (also a cool invention); both are useful, but serve slightly different purposes.

The recipe itself differs from Swedish meatballs in that I found that adding a bit of tapioca starch makes the balls stick together really well, and they’re pretty delightfully spongy, too. I also played around with the spices until I found something that delivered a distinctive Old-World taste while using common pantry items.

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