Pork

This dish is full of a bewitching fragrance that comes from steaming it under a generous cap of fermented greens, exchanging aromas and flavors.

Spicy honey helps the chops get nicely caramelized on the grill. A spoonful of peaches mixed with red onion, jalapeño, lime juice, and cilantro completes the dish.

These griddled masa disks get a little crispy on the edges but stay tender on the inside. Top them with black beans, salsa, and queso fresco or any other toppings you love.

These extra-thick cousins of the tortilla are toasted on a comal or griddle and split open before they’re stuffed with a wide array of flavorful fillings.

Low and slow is more than just grillmaster jargon; it’s also an invaluable currency when it comes to grilling truly tender pork spareribs.

Chances are, if you're not Oaxaqueño and grew up in this last generation in Mexico or the United States, you’ve probably been taught to think that pork fat like aciento—Oaxacan-style chicharrón paste—is not good for you, and that you should always cook and eat things made with a plant-based oil instead. It’s normal to think this way. That is, until you go to Oaxaca and see that aciento is a way of life and that a lot of elders live to be more than one hundred years old eating the stuff on a daily basis. You’ll also realize that it is amazingly flavorful and really completes a lot of masa-based Oaxacan dishes such as tlayudas, memelas, empanadas, and chochoyotes. Think of it as a Oaxacan brown butter. If you do it right, it should taste nutty and toasty, not like lard or like fat. I also understand that a lot of people may not have the time to properly render chicharrón into a paste, so this shortcut version using olive oil is much quicker and tastes almost as good. If you can’t find or don’t have access to fresh chicharrón, American-style pork rinds also work well.

Sinuglaw is a combination of fish ceviche—in this case, vinegar-cured tuna—plus smoky grilled pork belly. The flavorful dish gets dressed with coconut milk, ginger, red onion, chiles, and tomato.

Pork belly is ubiquitous throughout the Philippines; the fat is glorious and tastes great grilled. Getting a nice char on the fatty bits is important, as it adds another level of flavor to the salty-sour-tart-sweetness of the soy-calamansi marinade.

Shanghainese enjoy rice balls in both sweet and savory preparations. I love both, so I included them here. All Shanghainese buns and pastries have simple identifiers for telling the difference between sweet and savory. Sweet versions are always round and smooth, while savory ones will have a tail hinting at the filling inside.

The crunchiness and juiciness of flowering chives combined with tender, lightly seasoned pork is an unbeatable combination—and this dish is super quick to make.

One great thing about dumplings is that you can use practically anything in the filling—and you can pan-fry them, or boil them, or deep-fry them.

Packed with greens, these boiled dumplings easily go vegetarian by switching out the ground pork for crumbled tofu.

Enough cannot be said of the Sri Lankan delicacy black pork curry. It is a delicious and truly flavorful dish—every family has their own generational recipe. 

This casserole relies on the complementary flavors and textures of taro and pork belly: one meaty, the other earthy; one chewy, the other tender.

You’ll find Korean rice cakes in all kinds of shapes and sizes—from long cylinders to thin, oblong rounds. While their flavor does not change according to shape, textures do. Thin rice cakes work well for this stir-fry, as they quickly absorb flavors and soften into crispy, chewy coins.

This roll can be filled with whatever you like: beef, pork, or vegetables. The combination in this recipe is my favorite.