Pork

Meatballs are the ultimate comfort food. And while these are satisfyingly delicious, they also pack a spicy punch. The chipotles add an unexpected smoky heat to the tomato sauce, which only gets better with time. So make them in advance for a no-stress meal, and make sure to make extra so you can have some for leftovers.

This recipe was inspired by the traditional pibil-style barbecued pork, in which entire pigs are marinated in an achiote marinade and cooked in an underground pit lined with banana leaves. While you won’t need a pit or an entire pig, these pork skewers evoke the same smoky citrus flavor with much less time and effort. Note: You will need eight 6-inch wooden skewers for this recipe.

These succulent pork chops are perfect for a small dinner party or family dinner at home. If you have the Red Chile Paste and Fresh Tomatillo Sauce made ahead of time, you will have dinner on the table before you know it. I like to serve these with the Shredded Cabbage & Radish Slaw (page 24). Comforting and flavorful—this is sure to become a family favorite.

This is a superb date dish because all of the prep can be done and the mess cleaned up long before your date arrives. Then just bake and serve. We use pork tenderloin because it is all dark meat and it stays moist even if it’s a little overcooked. With this classic combination of pork, apples, and sweet potatoes, even the most inexperienced cook can look like a pro.

Nothing says home to me more than pork chops and mashed potatoes. My mom always made these with the thick-cut boneless loin chops, but when I have to pay for them, it’s the variety pack of thinner cut bone-in chops that always seem to be on sale. The good news is they cook faster and because of the gravy they don’t get dried out.

Meatloaf is one of my dad’s self-professed specialties. He will spend an hour putting it together, and I swear he adds a pinch of just about every spice in the cabinet. Here we have narrowed down the list substantially, but it is still every bit as good as his. Sorry Dad.

This is the way the rest of my family makes of wonton soup. When I make this for myself, I use vegetable broth and sauté a cup of cabbage to use instead of the pork. I also like to whisk in a beaten egg before the wontons go in for my own version of egg drop–wonton soup.

Pot stickers are one of my family’s favorite appetizers. In fact, my cousins even eat them as the main course. My problem with ordering them from a restaurant is that they never have a vegetarian option, so I prefer to make them at home, where I can sauté chopped cabbage to substitute for the pork.

Garlicky and savory-sweet, this roasted pork is a mainstay of Cantonese barbecue shops and dim sum houses.

A perfect taro puff (pictured) is ethereal; its gossamer shell crisp and not greasy. The underside of the dough is rich and creamy, enveloping a well-seasoned filling. I eagerly look for wu gok, as taro puffs are called in Cantonese, at dim sum restaurants. Unfortunately, most versions are lackluster and leaden by the time I pick them off the cart. Homemade ones are significantly better because they are consistently tasty and hold their crispness for hours. The dough and filling can be prepared in advance and refrigerated for a couple of days. Dumpling assembly is easy, and the deep-frying is fast. Brown and barrel-shaped with distinctive rings, taro is sold at Asian and Latin markets, often near other tubers like sweet potato. For this recipe, the large variety is used because its flesh is much drier than that of the small taro. Select a firm, full one with no signs of shriveling or molding. When cut open, taro should smell fresh; its flesh should be bright and feel firm like coconut. Store taro in a cool, dry spot and use it within a few days of purchase. Peeled and trimmed taro sold in Cryovac packaging works great. Feel free to substitute chicken thigh for the pork. Finely chopped bamboo shoots, water chestnut, or rehydrated shiitake mushrooms can replace the shrimp. Weighing the wheat starch and cooked taro and frying at moderately high heat ensures that the puff will hold together.

Whereas fried sticky rice dumplings have their alluring crispy-chewy skins, steamed sticky rice dumplings are as soft and comforting as a well-worn pair of jeans. They retain the charming soft texture and natural sweetness of sticky rice. I grew up break-fasting on Vietnamese bánh ít (“small dumplings”), though they can certainly be a satisfying brunch, lunch, or snack food. Filled with a surf-and-turf mixture of shrimp, pork, and wood ear and shiitake mushrooms, these dumplings are enjoyed warm, dipped in a pool of soy sauce and pepper. The banana leaf imparts a wonderfully tea-like quality to the dumplings during the cooking process. These are easy to make, especially when the filling is prepared a day in advance. Viet cooks often use boiling water to create glutinous rice dough, but the dough is easier to handle and control when cold water is used. I combine two kinds of glutinous rice flour (see page 15) to arrive at a texture that is pleasantly chewy, not overly sticky. The rice flours are available at Asian markets, as is fresh or frozen banana leaf.

Earthy and well-seasoned, this filling features char siu pork and shiitake mushrooms. The five-spice power adds sweet perfume, while the dried shrimp injects a note of the sea. Feel free to vary this filling by substituting a combination of chopped raw pork and shrimp for the roasted pork below.

Thai food is full of bold juxtapositions of flavor and texture. For these crystalline dumplings, the chewy skin is made from tapioca pearls (saku in Thai). The filling of pork, peanuts, shallot, palm sugar, and fish sauce is crumbly, sweet, salty, and savory. To eat, the dumplings are wrapped in lettuce leaves with fresh herbs and hot chiles. Saku sai mu is a popular street food in Thailand; here in the States, I have purchased them at Thai markets and snack shops. Making the dumplings at home ensures freshness and availability, and the ingredients can be found at most supermarkets. Hard-core cooks may handmince pork shoulder or chicken thigh and seek out cilantro root and palm sugar from Southeast Asian markets, but ground meat (avoid superlean pork or chicken), cilantro stems, and brown sugar are terrific stand-ins.

It is easy to overindulge in these chewy-soft dumplings because they slip right down your throat. Just as you are savoring the rich scallion oil, well-seasoned filling, and tangy-sweet-spicy dipping sauce, the dumpling is gone, and you must eat another. The skin of this central Vietnamese specialty is traditionally made of tapioca starch; I add a little wheat starch for firmness, lest the dough become unpleasantly rubbery. Some Viet cooks laboriously wrap each bánh bot loc in a banana leaf and steam them. I don’t have such patience and boil mine for the “naked” (tran) version. When peeling the shrimp, save the shells for a stock to use in the sauce.

The Cantonese dim sum repertoire would be incomplete without this wonderful contribution from the Chiu Chow, a seafaring people from a region located on the Taiwan Strait. Robustly flavored by briny dried shrimp, this dumpling also tastes light because it’s packed with vegetables, including jicama and shiitake mushrooms, and peanuts. The varied texture of the filling gets rounded out by a touch of pork, though you can use any meat. Because there is lots of chopping involved with the filling, make it a couple days in advance to minimize last-minute pressures. I first enjoyed these nearly twenty years ago in Hong Kong and they instantaneously became one of my favorites. Good renditions were hard to find in the United States, so I began making them myself. Enjoy them alone or with soy sauce and an Asian chile garlic sauce of your choice. If jicama is not available, substitute canned water chestnuts.

Well known by their Cantonese name har gow, these delightful pinkish-white morsels are among the most popular offerings at dim sum houses. They go fast, and I’ve chased down my fair share of dim sum ladies to get a fresh order. When I started making my own and realized that they can be kept refrigerated and frozen, my fear of har gow scarcity diminished. These are difficult to prepare only if you aim to produce exemplary diminutive ones, which most dim sum places don’t. Start out with ones that are a little bigger and scale down as you gain dexterity. You can even make these dumplings as half-moons, and they’ll taste swell. Use the best shrimp possible, and immerse the canned bamboo shoots in boiling water to rid it of its tinny flavor before chopping. To make the pork fat easier to mince, blanch it in boiling water for 1 minute, or until firm. Obtain the fat from fatback (I go to a Latino butcher counter) or cut it off a pork chop. Fatty bacon works well, too.

Certain childhood treats stick with you, and for me these crisp turnovers are a tasty reminder of our life in Saigon. Sister Thien, our cook, and a family friend whom we called Uncle Thu, would make the dough and fill it with this delectable mixture of shrimp, pork, and jicama. Although they were hot right out of the oil, I could barely wait to dive in. My piggishness often led to a burned tongue. These are not easy to find abroad in expatriate Vietnamese enclaves, and I wasn’t able to rediscover the flavor and texture from my youth until I made them myself. For a baked version, substitute this filling for the one in the empanada recipe (page 111). Note that in the central region of Vietnam, bánh quai vac is the name of unrelated rice-or tapioca-based dumplings.

If you like pot stickers and steamed buns, you’ll love these spongy-crisp panfried treats from Shanghai, where typically they are cooked in humongous shallow pans (much like large paella pans) with wooden lids. These buns are made of yeast dough that is filled with an aromatic pork mixture and then fried and steamed in a skillet. Cooking under cover with a bit of water delivers plenty of moisture to puff up the buns. Ground beef chuck or chicken thigh can stand in for the pork in this recipe. A bāozi is a mini bāo (bun) and for that reason, I like to keep these true to their name and shape small ones. However, you can elect to form sixteen medium-size (2 3/4-inch) buns. Roll the dough circles out to 3 1/4 inches in diameter and use about 4 teaspoons of filling for each bun; increase the water and cooking time a tad.

Whether steamed or baked, buns stuffed with Cantonese char siu pork are among my favorite dim sum. I rarely pass up the opportunity to savor how the spongy, slightly sweet dough complements the savory-sweet, rich meat. For spectacular buns, make this filling with homemade roast pork (page 224); in fact you can prepare a triple batch of filling from a single recipe of roast pork. If you elect to use store-bought pork, wait to salt the filling until after it is done and you can taste it to see what it needs; the meat is often well seasoned already.

Many Asian cooks have incorporated Chinese spring rolls into their repertoires, but those of Filipino descent have embraced the rolls with the most zeal and flair. Derived from lūnpiá, a term from the Fujian (Hokkien) Chinese dialect, lumpia are one of the quintessential foods of the Philippines. In fact, I’ve seldom been to a Filipino celebration where there isn’t a platter of crisp lumpia, whether it be large ones like these or the diminutive finger-size lumpia Shanghai, which is obviously named after its Chinese parent. Banana-filled lumpia is a deliciously popular sweet snack called turon (page 194). Unfried lumpia sariwa are made by rolling up a lettuce leaf and filling of vegetables and meat in a spring roll skin. Fillings for fried lumpia vary from cook to cook, but they often have trademark Filipino touches, such as lots of fried garlic and onion. Simply seasoned, the meat (pork, chicken, or beef), shrimp, and vegetable mixture is precooked but not bound by cornstarch. Thinly sliced green beans are particularly pretty in the rolls and a touch of patis (fish sauce) adds another Filipino note. Vinegar is a favorite seasoning in the Philippines, so it’s apropos to dip the finished rolls in a tangy soy and garlic sauce. But if you’d like extra tropical flair, dunk the rolls in the Sweet and Sour Sauce on page 217 made with pineapple juice, ginger, and chile.