Pork Shoulder

A low, steady simmer is the key to this braise, so keep an eye on the pot.

Letting the roast sit at room temperature will help it cook more evenly; starting it at a higher temperature jump-starts the browning process.

The Christmas season in Puerto Rico is blessed with balmy weather and clear skies. There is nothing like dining under the shade of a gourd tree on Christmas Eve, savoring every morsel of the earthy tamales called pasteles and adobo-flavored pork while looking at the sea. Puerto Rican women get together with their families to prepare pasteles by the hundred, freezing them until needed for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, family reunions, the Fiesta de Reyes, and the religious season called octavas that follows the Feast of the Epiphany. It is the blend of the tiny pepper ají dulce and broad-leaf culantro in the fragrant sofrito (cooking sauce) that gives an unmistakable Puerto Rican identity to these earthy tamales. A dash of vinegar lends the sofrito just the right amount of tang against the mild dough of malanga and plantain tinted orange-yellow with achiote-infused lard. I learned to make these in the traditional kitchen of the Puerto Rican side of my family. While one person took care of trimming the plantain leaves, others were busy grating the vegetables and making the sofrito. There the vegetables are grated by hand, though you can find machines designed specially for this purpose in any market or use a food processor. Puerto Ricans are extremely fussy about the wrapping—it has to be perfect and watertight because pasteles are normally boiled. But I prefer to steam them.

They look unassuming, but these little jars of unctuous spiced meat served with crunchy toast and rich shallots are a decadent and satisfying treat.

Lush pork, toothsome noodles, and a heady broth you can't stop slurping—it's no wonder ramen joints are drawing droves of diners, off-duty chefs, and seemingly everyone on your Instagram feed. Bringing shoyu ramen home takes a trip to an Asian market, three days of work, and your largest pot, but this low-stress (really!) labor of love might be the best soup you'll ever make.

Cuban Sandwich Directly inspired by the cubanos served at Latin American Cafeteria, the Cuban sandwich on the menu at Garces Trading Company is my way of bringing one of the treats of Little Havana to Philadelphia. It took some doing, since the essential Cuban bread is not to be had outside of Miami, but we found a bakery that follows a legit Cuban recipe to make it for us to order. All of the other ingredients are house-made from the roast pork and cured ham to the pickles and mustard. To approximate the cubano at home, follow the recipe to make the absolute key ingredient: the marinated, moist, and deeply flavorful roast pork. (Note: plan for several hours marinating time; you'll end up with enough pork for a second round of sandwiches or the main component of another meal.) For the next-best thing to the real deal pan cubano, get some good crisp-crusted bakery rolls with a light, airy texture. Pick up some best-quality domestic ham, along with Dijon mustard, Swiss cheese, and dill pickles, and you will have yourself some amazing sandwiches.

This is a winning-contestant recipe from Season Four of FOX's MasterChef.

This recipe is excerpted from Cooked by Michael Pollan. Read more about the origin of this recipe in our interview with Michael Pollan.

The pork for this Southern-inspired pasta sauce is studded with garlic, which infuses the meat while it roasts.

Serious about pulled pork? Do it right with this hard-core recipe, which seasons the meat in three stages, so that each bite is flavorful and tender. Serve on a toasted bun with the coleslaw.

This is the stew that made such an impression on the final episode of the first season of Top Chef Masters. Each of us had been asked to create a meal that would be an autobiography told through the dishes we would present to the judges. I immediately thought of baeckeoffe ("baker's oven"). The name refers back to the time when bakers used wood-fired ovens. After the bread was done, this dish would be baked long and slow in the falling temperatures of the cooling oven. Since everyone in town would see the baker every day for the family's daily loaf, each would often bring a casserole to be baked in the oven. It was traditional, particularly on Mondays, when the women went to the river to do their laundry. They would have marinated their meats and vegetables overnight, dropped their casseroles off in the morning on their way, and then picked them up—plus a loaf of bread—on their way home. Even though my father was not the bread baker and had a modern, gasfired oven, people still took their casseroles to him. They liked to drop in because he always had some joke or story to tell. Before the village baker also invested in a modern oven and was still using wood, when my father turned over a fresh loaf of bread to give it the traditional blessing, he would sometimes see pieces of charcoal embedded in the crust. That would send my dad wild, muttering that "he [the baker] did not thoroughly clean his oven!" I make this dish often, both at home and at the restaurant. But these days we tend to increase the vegetables and use less meat, and sometimes we use only vegetables and leave out the meat entirely. While there is never a mushroom in the classic recipe, you can add them or make a vegetarian version with mushrooms and a rich vegetable stock. I've also made this stew as the centerpiece for Christmas dinner, adding plenty of sliced black truffles. The classic dish uses a mix of meats including a pig's foot, which gives a rich, gelatinous texture to the stew. You may be able to special-order a pig's foot. Ask the butcher to slice it crosswise into three pieces. But even at the restaurant I sometimes have trouble ordering them, and your stew will still be delicious without one. You can also use just one or two kinds of meat instead of all three.

"There is no point in cooking country ham and burgoo to serve just six," Charles Patteson advises the Derby Day host in Charles Patteson's Kentucky Cooking (1988). "Start with the mandatory mint juleps," he continues. "Burgoo, which is midway between a hearty soup and a stew, succeeds the juleps in the guests' cups as a first course." I hadn't known that. Nor had I known that it's traditional for burgoo to be scooped into silver mint julep cups at the annual Kentucky Colonels' Barbecue the day after the Derby. In Kentucky's Best (1998), Linda Allison-Lewis writes that burgoo must "simmer for twenty-four hours prior to being served," then confides that burgoo chefs used to listen for the splatter of the "mysterious ingredient"—the ingredient that fused all flavors—being added "sometime in the dark of night." Legend has it that that ingredient was a black snake that fell out of a tree into the first batch of burgoo. Historians doubt that but most do agree that burgoo was created during the Civil War by Gus Jaubert, a French chef serving Confederate general John Hunt Morgan. At war's end, Jaubert settled in Lexington, Kentucky, began making burgoo on a massive scale, and soon gained fame as "the burgoo king." On his death, according to Ronni Lundi, author of Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken (1991), Lexington cook J. T. Looney "inherited both Jaubert's pot and his title." While traveling about the Bluegrass State some years ago to research my Grass Roots Cookbook, I ate burgoo every chance I got. I also learned more about this Kentucky classic. Jaubert's original recipe apparently contained blackbirds. Unable to say "blackbird stew" not only because French was his first language but also because he had a hairlip, Jaubert pronounced it "burgoo." Or so I was told. Elsewhere I learned that those early burgoos contained mostly squirrels plus whatever vegetables came to hand. I daresay that there are hundreds of different recipes for Kentucky burgoo today. This downsized version of the burgoo served for years at the Pete Light Springs Restaurant in Cadiz, Kentucky, was given to me by Lois Watkins, whom I profiled in my book. "This burgoo is the best in the world," she said as she handed me the scribbled recipe. I won't quarrel with that.

"The best thing about serving a braise," says chef Cruz Goler, "is that timing isn't critical, making this a great party dish." French in technique but Italian in spirit, the recipe calls for pleasantly bitter Treviso radicchio to act as a foil to the rich pork. Be sure to let the pork cool in its liquid so that the braised meat can continue to soak up the sauce.

In the meat section of Mexican markets are large trays of pork or beef sitting in a thick red chile sauce that acts as both tenderizer and flavoring. This is carne adovada. At home, the mixture is slow-cooked into a stew along with additions like posole and vegetables. The chile sauce is a link back to the days before refrigeration, when chiles were used at the market as a preservative. Bueno Foods makes a delicious sauce using New Mexican red chiles that is perfect for this recipe (see Sources, page 167).

The Sonoran landscape is riddled with mesquite trees, wild chile bushes, and barbecue pits. Not surprisingly, the Sonoran people are known for their fiery barbecued meats. Children and grownups alike gather wild chiltepin chiles from the bosque—the forested banks of rivers and streams—and sell them in the markets or next to the serious speed bumps in the road where you must slow down or lose your transmission. This recipe is typical of ranch-style cooking in northern Mexico except that a modern indoor oven replaces the traditional wood-fired barbecue pit. This recipe makes enough for a crowd. To halve, use two and a half pounds bone-out pork butt or four pounds country-style pork ribs, and halve the remaining ingredients, adjusting the cooking time accordingly. Note that the pork must marinate overnight.

In Spanish, carnitas means “little meats,” and this is probably the most popular taco in Mexican cuisine. The pork pieces are succulent, juicy, and rich with a browned crust from frying—perfect for tacos. The best places in Mexico for this taco are at carnitas restaurants. Every town has one or more, some open only on weekends. You’ll see huge cauldrons—thirty gallons or more—of boiling pork fat holding whole pork loins, shoulders, and other big cuts like ribs. The chef closely monitors the frying temperature, pulling out the meat at just the right moment—when cooked, but still juicy. Customers say which cut they want and how much, always getting a mixture of lean and fatty meats, which make better tacos. The meat is weighed and chopped. Once you’ve paid, you take your carnitas to a table set up with fresh tortillas and bowls of salsa. Order a couple of cold beers and you are in taco heaven. This recipe is much simpler and easier, and the carnitas are great.

Mondongo is usually a thick, spicy stew made with beef tripe and lots of locally grown vegetables, probably Spanish in origin. You can find many versions of it throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. The one I am most familiar with was prepared by our wonderful Mexican chef Daniel Alvarez, who cooked at the Coyote Cantina for over twenty years. His version used pork butt instead of tripe, lots of green chiles, sometimes posole or corn, and other green vegetables. He made this dish often for the staff meal and sometimes as a special at the Cantina. It always sold out quickly.

Tortellini are traditionally served in broth; Basic Chicken Stock (page 41) or Basic Brown Stock (page 50) would be equally delicious.

This recipe employs many classic techniques of braising. To finish the sauce, the liquid is first reduced (a common thickening method) and then a secondary thickener called a beurre manié, a mixture of flour and butter, is added. Beurre manié can be added to most any sauce that seems to need a bit more body. And since the flavor of pork pairs well with apples, hard cider is used to braise the meat. For variation, the standard French mirepoix of onion, carrot, and celery is replaced with parsnip, celery root, and leek. If you don’t have a pot with a tight-fitting lid, cover your pot with aluminum foil lined with parchment paper and then the lid (you can even use the lid from another, similar-size pot or pan). Check 30 minutes after placing the pot in the oven to make sure that the liquid is gently simmering; if not, raise the temperature by 25 degrees, return the liquid to a boil on top of stove, and return the pot to the oven to finish cooking. (If vigorously boiling, decrease temperature by 25 degrees.)