Short of investing in a vertical broiler, this hack is the closest you’ll get to al pastor tacos at home.
No one has recorded a better version of this ultimate southwestern French dish, nor is it likely anyone ever will. Paula [Wolfert] learned it in the dining room of Pierrette Lejanou, a local Toulouse woman known to make the best. This is a three-day project, made more pleasurable if you can collaborate with a friend. The biggest challenges lie in the shopping: in addition to Tarbais beans and duck confit, the dish contains six kinds of pork. It’s an ideal excuse to visit that new nose-to-tail butcher shop that just opened. The staff will be excited to hear you are tackling this and should have most items.
This is your quintessential morning sausage, perfect alongside pancakes or stacked with a fried egg on a flaky biscuit.
Viet cooks love to grill thinly sliced pork; it's no wonder banh mi thit nuong is one of the ubiquitous options at Viet delis.
It's a classic dish from Mexico's Yucatan but a bit on the unusual side for non-Hispanic palates.
Here is Samin Nosrat's recipe for sugo, the classic Italian meat sauce that, depending on the region, is also known as Bolognese or ragu. This might not at first seem like a braise -- there's no featured chunk of animal protein -- but the principles are the same: a dice of onions, carrots, and celery; browned meat; a long, slow simmer in liquid. Making this recipe takes a few hours, so I usually prepare a big batch and freeze some of it in containers. Samin's recipe calls for pork and beef, but it can be made with any kind of meat, including chicken, duck, rabbit, or game.
Ingredients
Over the years, I've made mental notes of interesting recipes I've read for pork shoulder rubbed with various combinations of garlic and chiles and slowly roasted in a covered casserole until the meat was falling off the bone. The spoon-soft meat was then rolled in tortillas, Mexican style, with cilantro and avocado. An organic pork shoulder at my local market inspired me to finally experiment with the idea. I rubbed the pork in an improvised seasoning mix with the flavors of mole sauce—ancho chile, cinnamon, and clove—and roasted it slowly in a sealed pot. The pork was delectable: succulent, tender, utterly satisfying, a practically effortless way to serve a crowd. If affirmed my love of slow roasting as a great technique for cooking meat.