salt pork

This rich, comforting stew was brought to The Times by Regina Schrambling in 2001, in the dark days immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center. The accompanying article was an ode to the therapeutic benefits of cooking and baking: "Whoever said cooking should be entered into with abandon or not at all had it wrong. Going into it when you have no hope is sometimes just what you need to get to a better place. Long before there were antidepressants, there was stew." This one, while complex in flavor, is not difficult to prepare, but it cannot be rushed. Make it when you have the time to indulge in the meditative qualities of chopping, sautéing, reducing, braising, waiting and tasting. You will be rewarded with an exceptionally flavorful dish that is just as satisfying to eat as it was to cook.

Dijon and Cognac Beef Stew

pork,

1 large onion, finely diced

3 shallots, chopped

unsalted butter

2 pounds beef chuck,

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Kosher salt and black pepper

Cognac

beef stock

Dijon mustard

mustard Dijon mustard

4 large carrots, peeled and cut into half-moon slices

1/2 pound mushrooms, stemmed,

1/4 cup red wine

Place salt pork in a Dutch oven over low heat, and cook until fat is rendered. Remove solid pieces with a slotted spoon, and discard. Raise heat, and add onion and shallots. Cook until softened but not browned, 10 to 15 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer to a large bowl.

If necessary, add 2 tablespoons butter to the pot to augment fat. Dust beef cubes with flour, and season with salt and pepper. Shake off excess flour, and place half the cubes in the pot. Cook over medium-high heat until well browned, almost crusty, on all sides, then transfer to a bowl with onions. Repeat with remaining beef.

Add Cognac to the empty pot, and cook, stirring, until the bottom is deglazed and the crust comes loose. Add stock, Dijon mustard and 1 tablespoon Pommery mustard. Whisk to blend, then return meat and onion mixture to pot. Lower heat, partly cover, and simmer gently until meat is very tender, about 1 1/2 hours.

Add carrots, and continue simmering for 30 minutes, or until slices are tender. As they cook, heat 2 tablespoons butter in a medium skillet over medium-high, and sauté mushrooms until browned.

Stir mushrooms into stew along with remaining mustard and red wine. Simmer 5 minutes, then taste, and adjust seasoning. Serve hot.

This cassoulet packs duck confit, white beans and garlic sausage all into one Instant Pot for a comforting French stew that&#039;s ready in less than an hour.

Instant Pot Cassoulet (Duck Confit And White Bean Stew)

beans

duck

salt pork,

garlic

duck sausage

chicken stock

tomato paste

garlic cloves,

thyme

bay leaf

salt and black pepper,

Make Classic French Cassoulet in Less than an Hour with Your Instant Pot

Instant Pot Cassoulet (Duck Confit and White Bean Stew)

The London chef Fergus Henderson specializes in making British classics even more delicious at his popular restaurant St. John. Here’s his fragrant, richly flavored version of traditional baked beans with salt pork, a dish that evolved into an American staple. Using lots of fresh herbs and a little canned tomato is the key; pass crusty bread at the table to mop up the sauce.

St. John Beans and Bacon

white beans,

duck fat olive oil

garlic cloves, left whole (no need to peel)

rosemary

large white or yellow onions, chopped

leeks, trimmed, white and pale green parts thinly sliced

celery stalks, thinly sliced

Sea salt and black pepper

sage

plum tomatoes

Drain the beans and put them in a medium pot. Cover by about 1 inch of cold water, bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer and cook until beans are thoroughly giving (but not mushy). This will take approximately 1 to 2 hours, depending on the freshness of the beans. Once cooked, remove from the heat, but keep them in their liquor so they do not dry out.

Get a large, deep pan hot and add the duck fat (or oil). Add the lardons and cook over low heat to render the fat, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes.

In a saucepan, combine stock, garlic cloves and bouquet garni. Heat to a simmer then cook, 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and set aside.

When the lardons are golden, remove with a slotted spoon. To the fat in the pan, add onions, leeks and celery, season with salt and cook until softened, about 10 minutes. Add the sage and the entire tin of tomatoes and their juices, crushing the tomatoes in your hands as you do so. Let this cook down for 15 minutes to thicken the tomatoes, stirring to remove all the good lardon bits that might adhere to the pan. Stir in 1 cup of the simmered stock. Season to taste.

Drain the beans and add them to the pan with the tomato mixture. Add the lardons and 1 more cup stock and gently mix everything together. Season very well with salt and pepper. Cover and let cook over low heat for 10 to 20 minutes, adding stock a ladleful at a time if the mixture seems to be drying out. Serve hot.

Cooking is not always about simplicity and ease. Sometimes what you want in the kitchen is a project, a culinary jigsaw puzzle to solve. There is no greater one than cassoulet. I developed the recipe that follows at the shoulder of Phillipe Bertineau, the chef at Alain Ducasse’s Benoit bistro in New York City: rich and creamy, sticky with duck and pork, brightly spiced, with an astonishing depth of flavor. Feel free to tweak the list of ingredients to match what you can find in the market, but if you can manage the Tarbais beans and the duck fat for the confit, you really won’t be sorry. Start the preparation on the evening before you have a day off. A few hours of cooking the next day yields a dinner of remarkable heft and deliciousness, one that pairs well with red wine and good friends.

Cassoulet

Tarbais beans, beans

baking soda

unsmoked pork hocks, sometimes sold as ‘‘knuckles’’

pork

pig ears (optional)

duck legs

French four-spice powder, nutmeg

cardamom

coriander

nutmeg

sweet paprika

cayenne pepper

salt

white pepper

duck fat

bay leaves

star anise

bouquet garni celery

pork garlic sausages

trimmed,

celery,

celery root, trimmed,

turnip,

Put beans in a large bowl, and cover with cold water, then add baking soda, and allow to soak overnight.

Place the pork hocks, sliced pork belly, reserved pork skin and, if using, the pig ears into a stockpot, and fill with water to cover them by several inches, then set over high heat to come to a boil. Let the meats and skin blanch for 5 to 6 minutes, then remove from the water and allow to cool. Put the slices of pork belly on a plate, then dice the pork skin and, if using, julienne the pig ears, and add these to the plate. Cover, and place in the refrigerator overnight.

Now turn to the cooled pork hocks and the duck legs. In a small bowl, combine four-spice powder with ground cardamom, ground coriander, additional nutmeg, paprika, cayenne, salt and pepper, and stir to combine. Use this spice mixture to season the duck legs and the cooled pork hocks, then put them on a platter, cover and place in the refrigerator overnight.

Day 1:

Heat oven to 350. Melt the duck fat or duck fat and lard in a heavy, oven-safe pot deep enough to hold the duck legs, pork hocks and the three heads of garlic, then add the meats and the garlic to it, along with the bay leaves, thyme, rosemary and star anise, then place in the oven to simmer for approximately an hour and a half, or until both the duck and the pork are cooked tender and soft and the heads of garlic have almost collapsed. Remove the meats and the garlic from the fat, and allow to cool slightly. (Strain and reserve the perfumed duck fat for another use — more duck confit, say, or to cook potatoes. It will keep in the refrigerator, covered, for quite some time.)

Drain soaked beans. Put around 5 quarts of water in a large, heavy-bottomed pot, then add the beans, along with the bouquet garni, and bring it to a boil over high heat. Lower heat to a simmer, and cook until the beans are softening but not cooked through, approximately 30 minutes. Reserve the beans and cooking liquid separately. Discard bouquet garni.

Meanwhile, return pot to medium heat, and add to it 2 tablespoons of the reserved duck fat. When it shimmers, add the garlic sausages to the pot, and sauté until lightly browned, approximately 5 minutes, then remove and reserve. Add the diced carrots, celery, celery root, turnip and rutabaga to the pot, and sweat them slowly in the fat, stirring often, until they begin to soften, approximately 10 minutes. Add the partly cooked beans to the pot, along with the reserved diced pork skin and the ears if you’re using them, then the tomato paste, and stir to combine.

As the vegetables sweat, remove the bones from the cooled pork hocks, and squeeze the heads of garlic to release the garlic confit within. Add both to the bean pot.

Add enough of the reserved bean-cooking water to the bean pot to just cover the beans, then nestle the duck legs, the sausages and the slices of pork belly on top of the beans. Put the pot in the oven to simmer for 30 minutes to an hour, or until the beans are cooked through.

Increase oven heat to 450, and cook until the beans are bubbling and crusted around the edges and the meats are deeply crisp on top (about 10-15 minutes). Let rest 10 minutes or so before serving.

Day 2:

In Puerto Rico, rice is typically served at Thanksgiving. <a href ="https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1021694-arroz-con-gandules-puerto-rican-rice-with-pigeon-peas">Arroz con gandules</a> is standard, and this twist on classic white rice is also a favorite. Salt pork or bacon is sautéed until crisp, replacing the oil and salt that’s usually added to white rice and giving this staple a decidedly porky essence. While Puerto Ricans often use a lightweight aluminum pot or caldero for rice dishes, a large, light, nonstick saucepan with a lid is a good replacement. Salt pork can vary in saltiness and funk, so rinse well and pat dry with a clean towel before dicing, and adjust the salt to taste. Do not wash the rice before cooking as it will make the rice retain moisture and become mushy. This quick, easy side dish pairs well with saucy beans, greens and stewed meats any day of the week.

Arroz con Tocino (Rice With Salt Pork)

garlic cloves, minced

short grain rice or sushi rice

Salt

Heat a large saucepan with a lid over medium. Add salt pork or bacon, and cook, stirring often, for 7 to 10 minutes until browned and toasty, and a substantial amount of oil has released. Add garlic and sauté for 30 seconds more until fragrant, then add rice and stir until the rice is evenly coated with fat and starts to turn opaque.

Meanwhile, bring 3 cups of water to a boil in a small saucepan or kettle.

Add the boiling water to the rice mixture and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer uncovered until liquid has almost completely evaporated and the surface of the rice is dotted with little bubbly volcanoes, about 7 to 10 minutes.

When there is no more liquid bubbling up from the holes, reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 17 minutes without stirring. Remove from heat and let rest, covered, for at least 10 minutes. Taste to ensure rice is fully cooked, and let sit for 5 to 10 more minutes with the lid on if needed. Fluff with a fork, season with salt to taste and serve.

This recipe is a project that can be time- and labor-intensive. You need to dig a hole in your yard and build a fire in that hole to cook the beans. An important note: Failing to dig the hole, and using your oven instead, will result in beans that lack bona fides but are 98 percent as good as the ones that guy cooked in a hole in his yard.  This recipe will take about 3 hours plus soaking time for the oven method.

Bean-Hole Baked Beans

onions, thinly sliced

molasses

maple syrup

dry mustard

black pepper

Soak beans overnight in water to cover or quick-soak: Put beans in a large pot, add water to cover by 2 inches and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Simmer for 2 minutes, then remove from heat and allow to stand for 1 hour. Drain and rinse.

If you don’t already have a bean hole, dig a hole about half again as large as whatever pot you plan to cook the beans in. (The key is that there be 6 inches between the top of the hole and the top of the pot.) Build a fire in the hole using about 10 pieces of cord wood. When the fire is burning well, add 10 softball-size rocks, then continue to burn until the wood is reduced to embers. You should have a bed of embers 2 to 3 inches deep.

Meanwhile, drain and rinse the beans and put them into a 6-quart Dutch oven or other large, heavy pot along with all remaining ingredients except the salt pork. Stir well to combine. Lay the salt pork slices on top of the beans, then add water to cover by about an inch. Bring just to a simmer over medium-high heat.

Carefully remove the rocks from the bean hole. Put the pot into the hole on top of the embers, cover it with a triple layer of heavy-duty foil, then put the rocks back into the hole around and on top of the pot. Fill in the hole with dirt, covering the pot. Come back 8 hours later, remove the pot from the hole and serve the beans.

This slow-cooked casserole of white beans and several kinds of meat has long been considered the pinnacle of regional French home cooking. It takes planning (you’ll need to find all the ingredients), time and a good deal of culinary stamina. But the voluptuous mix of aromatic beans surrounding rich chunks of duck confit, sausages, roasted pork and lamb and a crisp salt pork crust is well worth the effort. Serve this with a green salad. It doesn’t need any other accompaniment, and you wouldn’t have room for it, anyway. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.

Melissa Clark's Cassoulet

lamb

garlic cloves, peeled, garlic

cloves

bay leaf, torn into pieces

rosemary,

thyme,

duck fat, melted (or goose fat

bouquet garni

carrot,

clove

white onion, cut stem to root end

French garlic sausage

onions,

carrots,

celery stalks, diced

tomato tomatoes

Kosher salt,

bread crumbs

NYT Cooking

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/01/13/dining/COOKING-CASSOULET2/COOKING-CASSOULET2-videoSixteenByNineJumbo1600-v2.jpg

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The night before cooking, marinate the meat and soak the beans. For meat: In a large bowl, combine all ingredients except fat and toss to combine. Cover and refrigerate overnight. For beans: In a large bowl, combine beans, 1 teaspoon salt and enough cold water to cover by 4 inches. Cover and let sit overnight.

The next day, roast the meat: Heat oven to 325 degrees. Pour fat over meat in the bowl and toss to coat. Spread meat in one even layer on a rimmed baking sheet, leaving space between each piece to encourage browning (use two pans if necessary). Top meat with any fat left in bowl. Roast until browned, about 1 hour, then turn pieces, cover with foil, and continue to roast until soft, another 1 1/2 hours. Remove meat from baking sheet, then scrape up all browned bits stuck to the pan. Reserve fat and browned bits.

Meanwhile, cook the beans: Drain beans, add them to a large stockpot and cover with 2 inches water. Add bouquet garni, celery, carrot, 2 garlic cloves, 2 teaspoons salt and the pepper. Stick whole clove into the folds of the onion half and add that as well. Bring to a boil and then simmer over medium heat, stirring often, until beans are cooked through, 1 to 1 1/2 hours, adding garlic sausage after 30 minutes. When beans are cooked, remove bouquet garni and aromatics, including vegetables. Reserving cooking liquid, drain the beans and sausage.

While beans are cooking, bring a medium pot of water to a boil and add salt pork. Simmer for 30 minutes, remove and let cool. Cut off skin, then slice pork into very thin pieces and reserve.

Heat a very large skillet (at least 12 inches) over medium heat and add a drizzle of duck or other fat. Add fresh pork sausages and cook until well browned on all sides, about 20 minutes. Remove to a plate and reserve, leaving any sausage fat in skillet.

In same skillet over medium-high heat, add 1/4 cup of the reserved fat and the browned bits from the roasted meat. Add diced onions, carrots and celery, and cook until softened, about 10 minutes. Add 9 whole garlic cloves and cook until fragrant, another 2 to 4 minutes. Add tomato purée, season with salt to taste, and simmer until thickened to a saucelike consistency, 5 to 10 minutes, if necessary. Add cooked beans and stir to combine. Remove from heat and reserve.

Assemble the cassoulet: Heat oven to 375 degrees. In a large Dutch oven, lay salt pork pieces in an even layer to cover the bottom of the pot. Add a scant third of the bean and garlic sausage mixture, spreading evenly. Top with half of the roasted meat pieces, 2 pork sausages and 2 duck legs. Add another scant third of the bean mixture, and top with remaining meat, sausages and duck legs. Top with remaining beans, spreading them to the edges and covering all meat. Pour reserved bean liquid along the edges of the pot, until liquid comes up to the top layer of beans but does not cover. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top and drizzle with 1/4 cup duck fat.

Bake until crust is lightly browned, about 30 minutes. Use a large spoon to lightly crack the crust; the bean liquid will bubble up. Use the spoon to drizzle the bean liquid all over the top of the crust. Return to oven and bake 1 hour more, cracking the crust and drizzling with the bean liquid every 20 minutes, until the crust is well browned and liquid is bubbling. (The total baking time should be 1 1/2 hours.) Remove from oven and let cool slightly, then serve.

Prepared it following the directions to the letter with the exception of using a mild pork sausage that I smoked and had in the freezer.  It was delicious.

if I made this on Tuesday and Wednesday, would it still be good to actually serve a few days later?

I know this is nuts but I’m going to make this vegetarian, just once.

I made this for NYE. Despite substantial effort, there was no hope of getting Tarbais beans in Italy, so I used Corona, which were outstandingly creamy. Neither could I get lamb (too early). I used "spezzatino" of pork and veal. We had ten guests, so I upscaled to ten duck legs and ten sausages. It was a lot of work, spread out over several days, and my 41cm cocotte required two people to move. The process was relaxing and calming, especially in the tempest of 2025. The guests loved it.

I found the dish to be just okay. The texture was mushy . The flavor was muddled. None of my guests complimented the dish.

I usually confit a whole duck myself as the first step in making cassoulet. It is time consuming but I am able to control the process and I can get frozen duck at my local Asian market. They also, usually, have all the other ingredients listed. I don’t roast my meats as listed, I only roast them until they’re properly darkened and let the stewing do its job.

2 lbs pork and 2 lbs lamb was a good ratio. I roasted meat for 1 hour as recommended but then did not follow recipe re: continuing to roast covered. 1 hour was plenty. There is additional cooking time once cassoulet is assembled. Other than these two changes, I followed the recipe and it was a big hit. Delicious!

Background music is Cognac S'il Vous Plait by Martin Taylor and Jean-Pierre Fabien

Excellent recipe with standard grocery store ingredients. The comments pertaining to the roasted meats ending up tough. The second time making this recipe, I browned and then braised the pork and lamb in some water for 1.5 hours – fork tender and perfect for the final assembly!

Attempted to make as directed but needed more salt pork to cover bottom of pan. Also, the stew meat ended up being too dry and did not tenderize in baking process. Beans were delicious. I may have cooked them a bit long as they seemed to lose shape in the baking process.I used canned duck confit. Overall, the dish was good. Would try again to make, but only because so many rave about.  Not because mine came out all that great. Next time…larger meat pieces and watch more carefully.

I cooked duck breast and legs, both with skin, along with sausage and the marinade ingredients (no liquids) in a crockpot on high for 3 hours, then low for 2.5.  The meat browns and plenty of fat was rendered. Result was very tender, well-seasoned meat.

I followed Melissa's recipe, but also took ideas from Julia Child's and the results were excellent!!  I made the beans according to Melissa's instructions, adding garlic sausage 30 minutes in.  I cooked the meat with bones on the stove following Julia's recipe, as some commented that the meat dried out in the oven in Melissa's recipe.  I included lamb shoulder, bone-in pork, sausage, and duck.  Added white wine to the tomato pure (Julia's idea), and used bean liquid at the end-both recommended

Use less tomato puree and more bean liquid.  Do not get rid of liquid until fully cooked so you can add more liquid if it becomes dry.  Check cassoulet every 30 minutes.  Probably only needs 1 hour max to cook.

I appreciate everyone who shared their experience with the roasting time for the meat. I came up with a hybrid method - I pan seared it (cut up bone in lamb and pork chops) and then put it in a 350 degree oven for just twenty minutes. Came out perfect.

Since everything is cooked before assembly, I would love to hear if others have frozen this after assembling it but before baking it.  I’d like to freeze some of the duck fat as well as some of the bean liquid to add after defrosting before baking.  I’d also wait to add the topping until ready to bake.  Does this make sense or is it better to bake then freeze?

What size dutch oven would be needed for this dish?

NY Times staff:  can you share what that wonderful background music is in the cassoulet video?

Making cassoulet is a commitment! But the result is an inimitable mix of elegant flavors and textures. Thank goodness D'Artagnan products are so widely available! Their duck fat & garlic sausages are top notch. Ditto for Rancho Gordo's cassoulet (Tarbais) beans. I confess to using chicken thighs, not duck this time. Also bacon instead of salt pork. Added a cup of sauv blanc to the tomato purée. Fabulous result!! A seasonal Must Have in our home every winter!!

I've tried various cassoulet recipes  and while this one  is quite good, something was off.   I marinated and roasted the stew meat from a good butcher exactly  according to instructions but it came out of the oven really tough and dry, and it didn't get much more tender when stewing in the oven. Perhaps a lower roasting temperature and less time?? Also, 5 lbs of stew meat overwhelmed the pot and beans. I would use less stew meat the next time.

A note on ingredients: I got a "Cassoulet Kit" from d'Artagnan which included Tarbais beans, garlic sausage, duck and armagnac sausage, ventrèche (French pancetta), duck confit and duck fat.  I used 6 oz ventrèche instead of the salt pork (no boiling), and the duck sausage instead of the pork sausage.  I found that the fat left in the pan of roasted meat was all I needed to complete the recipe, so I only used 4 oz of duck fat.

If you put a pizza stone on the bottom of you oven or On the lowest rack, and bake your cassoulet on that you will get a great crust on the bottom.

Same experience as Terry (q.v.); the pork and lamb @ 325 for 2.5 hours produced something akin to jerky. I’d ignore the time advice and simply monitor for done-ness.  As for the duck confit, the drumsticks I found were far beyond the budget for most folks; instead I skinned bone-in chicken drumsticks and cooked them slowly in duck fat at 200 degrees in a covered saucepan on the stovetop, then later tucked them into the construction of the cassoulet. Great taste.

1. As requested by another reader, it would be helpful for recipes like this to note the size of dutch oven needed. 2. Altogether this was excellent. However, while the recipe description refers to a "crisp salt pork crust", the salt pork was the opposite of crisp. Given that its boiled, and then sits at the bottom of a pot filled with stock this isnt that surprising. But, I wonder if one might crisp the salt pork a bit before adding all the other layers?

I agree with the other comments regarding the bean to meat ratio.  I used the full amount of beans and half the meat - - and still found there to be plenty of meat.  I also agree the cooking time for the stew meat is too long.  I used lamb riblets and pork spareribs - about 2 lbs total, cooked about 1-1.25 hours.  Meat was perfectly tender.  I used frozen duck legs instead of confit, which is hard to find.  Cooked with the ribs - perfect.  Also used a spicy merguez sausage (lamb & pork) -yummy!

This was very good, and got raves from my guests.  I think it has too much tomato -- next time I'd use 1 1/2 or 2 cups of sauce.  I pressure cooked the beans and garlic sausage in an Instant Pot for 30 minutes, natural pressure release.  I roasted half of a bone-in lamb shoulder and a few bone-in pork country ribs, cooled and de-boned before adding to the beans.  The ratio of meat to beans was quite high and could be reduced.  It filled a Le Creuset #31 Dutch oven (6.75 qt).

I used the Shazam app on my phone and got this for the music: "Cognac S'll Vous Plait" by Martin Taylor and Jean-Pierre Fabien

One of the essential elements of provincial European cooking is that dishes like this are the end result of previous meals, not a venture in and of themselves. It's what you do with a leftover roast, so enjoy that roast lamb or pork dinner which is way too much for one meal, then use the rest in the cassoulet. It's amazing how much more affordable both meals become.

Very delicious! But not a small amount of work, particularly collecting all of the ingredients. I blended a 28 oz. can of Italian tomatoes for the tomato puree. The time roasting the meat was a little too long, and I should have saved the bean liquid after I assembled the cassoulet as the end result could have been a little saucier. Get a Cahors Malbec for the classic pairing. 12 servings is not an exaggeration - there was a ton of food and it's very filling.

https://vp.nyt.com/video/2017/01/11/70605_1_guides-french-cassoulet_wg_480p.mp4

A casserole of aromatic beans baked slowly alongside cured and roasted meats, topped with crisp bread crumbs.

Recipe: Cassoulet

Streak o&#039; Lean has a long history in traditional southern foodways having been used for everything from seasoning to rendering for fat.  This recipe showcases it on its own, dredged in flour and fried.

Streak o’ Lean

salt pork (sliced)

milk

all-purpose flour

peanut oil (for frying (1/4-inch deep))

Place the sliced salt pork in a container and cover with milk or buttermilk. Let sit for several hours to draw out some of the salt. Remove the salt pork from the milk. Discard the milk.

Pepper each slice of salt pork and then dredge lightly in flour.

Add peanut oil to a depth of a ¼ inch to a heavy skillet. Heat the oil over medium high heat. Carefully add the prepared salt pork slices to the hot oil. Cook, turning once, until lightly browned and cooked through (about 7-8 minutes).

Remove to a paper towel lined plate to drain excess oil.

Something I ate all my life. I love it so much with lots of pepper. The best.

My grandma always called it "white side".  I remember her always serving it with white rice with tomato gravy(some sort of stewed tomato combo) and fried cornbread.  She made these little silver dollar sized fried corn cakes that had just the right amount of grated onion in the batter.  I miss her and her cooking.  Thanks for sharing this recipe.

Most always heard it called salt pork or fat back.  Only have it in the fall when the men are making cane syrup.  Fry up a batch and make biscuits for their lunch, I make peppered white gravy with the soaking milk.   This product is in most all grocery stores in our part of FL.

Thank you ….  I am a southern girl …mid 50s, I heard my aunts say streak of lean….I wasn’t exactly sure what it was but I call it salt pork instead of streak of lean .   I used this in collards, peas, cabbage …I just call it different

In the 70s, at the Colonial Restaurant in Morrilton, Ar, we put side-meat on the buffet on Thursdays. My shift started at 6:00 am, and on Thursdays my first task was to slice a side of salt pork and put it in a big bowl to soak in milk for a few hours. When it was time, I took the slices out of the milk and tossed them in flour seasoned with pepper. I cooked the floured slices on the grill. They came off the grill crisp, golden brown, and very tasty. They went into a big pan to go out and stay warm in the buffet. They were very popular with our customers. Whenever we had left-over side meat.

This was my Mother's favorite!! I was so happy when I saw this. Thanks for sharing!

Hi Lana.  I really enjoy your recipes.  I hadn't thought of this one since we moved from Atlanta in 2013. We live in South Texas now and seeing your recipes remind me of the wonderful 18 years we spent in Georgia.  We're a bit Southern and a bit Western here.

There wasn’t a DAY that went by that this wasn’t in my parents refrigerator… My father loved it and so it was always on hand. It was hard to come by when we moved from Eastern North Carolina to Florida, so when we visited my grandparents, my parents would LOAD up the trunk with Salt Pork, Fatback, Streak o’ Lean, Air-dryed sausage and country ham (not to mention all of the fresh and “put up” vegetables from my grandparents farm). What glorious memories. Now when I visit (and I do a few times a year) I do the same thing. There’s a place in Rocky Mount, NC, Ralph’s, that still does a great Southern buffet, Eastern Carolina BBQ, chicken pastry, butter beans, pickled beets and all of the other fixins and sides and of course, Streak o’ Lean…. but you gotta get there early. When it’s gone it gone and it goes quick! God it’s good to be Southern…

This is an old family favorite often served with boiled potatoes and milk gravy. My husband's grandfather passed away in 2019...this was a favorite birthday dinner (even at 104). He passed the love of it on to my son who just turned 16 this week and requested it for his birthday. No one turns down the offer when we tell them what's for dinner.

After frying the streak o lean, I would pour the excess oil off and make a cream gravy with flour and milk to go over biscuits with the drippings left in the skillet, to eat with the streak o lean!! Added plenty of pepper to the pan.  Oh, man, good eating - but only for "once in a while"!!! Thanks for reminding me!!

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Top Tags

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