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.

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Top 6 salt pork recipes from across the web

The most viewed salt pork recipes by Recipe Cart users, saved from over 20,000 sites. Or, go to our Recipe Search Engineic_arrow_forward_48px

Top Tags

Dijon and Cognac Beef Stew

Instant Pot Cassoulet (Duck Confit ...

St. John Beans and Bacon

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Bean-Hole Baked Beans

The most viewed salt pork recipes by Recipe Cart users, saved from over 20,000 sites. Or, go to our Recipe Search Engine