Mc ALLEN, TEXAS
Heading south from San Antonio on Highway 281, the temperature rises steadily, the leafy horizon flattens to a hard line, the countryside fades from green to brush brown. Soon only patches of dried grass, cactus, Texas persimmon, and scruffy mesquite punctuate the vast sweep of hard-baked red dirt. It is 105 degrees dry. In the Rio Grande Valley, you do what the land demands: You eat meat.
The Wild Horse Desert, the tract of land that stretches from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande, was the birthplace of the American cowboy. With the help of Hollywood, this iconic image—a curious composite of Mexican vaquero, Civil War veteran, freed slave, and assorted desperados—remains deeply lodged in the American imagination. Beef plays a large role in the cowboy myth. Some visitors start to swagger and develop a lonesome prairie–size bloodthirst at the scent of sizzling meat and smoke. Locals, many of whom are descendants of the original cowboys, see meat-eating as a crucial link in the dance between a harsh land and survival.
“We are not salad people,” says Melissa McAllen Guerra, firmly. “Pound for pound, it takes a heck of a lot more water to grow tomatoes than it does to grow cattle around here. Vegetable gardens are a luxury.”
The daughter of a seventh-generation cattle rancher, Melissa now lives on a corner of her husband’s family ranch. She hosts a television series, The Texas Provincial Kitchen, owns her own culinary store, and is the author of two cookbooks. A freckle-faced redhead, she looks far more Mount Holyoke (where she studied music) than Wild West. She drives a soccer mom’s SUV, is the wife of a Mexican-born artist who grew up on the ranch next door, and is the working mother of three adolescent sons. But the closer she gets to her childhood home—the McAllen Ranch, a few miles east, which was settled by her ancestors in 1791 and is the oldest continuously operating cattle farm in the United States—the more she becomes a daughter, a sister, a McAllen.
“Nobody wants to be the generation that loses the ranch,” she says. “We’ll do about anything to avoid that. Turn Grandma’s house into a B&B, work day jobs, learn to manage the mineral rights, put up forty miles of game-proof fence and offer hunting parties, run birding trips, write cookbooks, give cooking classes.
“Cattle’s been a losing proposition for as long as I can remember. Heck, ranches like ours would have been gone if people hadn’t found oil on their land in the 1940s. But oil’s not a renewable resource and it’s not a way of life. Someday it’ll dry up. My father believed in Beefmaster. Now my brother’s breeding Japanese Akaushi into the line. They can’t help it. They were raised to believe that no matter what happens, the solution is breeding better beef.”
“You could ranch a thousand acres to death and still be broke,” says Melissa’s father, Jim McAllen, as he sits in his daughter’s big kitchen with its hand-painted Mexican tiles and polished mesquite cabinetry. Like a coach assessing the odds, Mr. McAllen Sr. is just stating the facts, and after six decades, he still expects to beat them. Barrel-chested, with fair hair and skin, he favors his great-grandfather, John McAllen, who came from Glasgow in 1848, more than he does his great-grandmother, Salome Balli, who was the daughter of a Mexican colonel and the owner of a 95,000-acre Spanish land grant. Mr. McAllen Sr. is a well-polished and well-pressed cowboy and one of the best beef breeders and traders of his generation.
The quest for breeding perfect beef is a constantly shifting calculus between the land and climate, the realities of business and, increasingly, marketing and food fashion. Given the time it takes to breed cattle for a specific characteristic, a successful breeder is a cross between soothsayer and scientist. Mr. McAllen Sr. is thought to have a sixth sense for beef trends. By the time the public was demanding highly marbled meat, bigger rib-eyes, heftier ribs, or lean meat, he had long since honed his herd for those characteristics.
The story of beef in America was written first by the land, then by transportation, then by centralization, and now, he says with a hint of sneer, “by marketing.” The iconic Texas longhorn—a descendant of European draft and dairy cattle and the wild Spanish fighting bull, introduced to the desert that was then known as Norteño or “north” of Mexico—had been bred to thrive in heat and drought.
Fences were few, and feral cattle were considered public property. Between 1866 to 1890, nearly 10 million longhorns were herded up to New Mexico, Colorado, and the Midwest. The longhorn’s popularity did not come from the taste of its beef, but rather from the toughness of the breed. Its meat is stringy—“You have to salt it, hang it, and dry it and make macacado, dry shredded beef,” says Mrs. Guerra—but there was a high demand for longhorn beef, hides, and tallow. If they managed to avoid the Comanches, thievery, shoot-outs, rattlesnakes, wolves, hunger, sunstroke, dehydration, and short change, cowboys stood to make a small fortune.
“Had the railroad never come, we’d still be eating longhorn,” says Jim Sr. “It’s the only breed that could tolerate the long cattle drives.” But the train arrived in 1904 and the cowboys switched from herding and trailing cattle to buying and breeding. Since it was no longer necessary to hone the breed for hiking ability, ranchers such as Mr. McAllen’s grandfather began crossing shorthorns and longhorns to create meatier cattle.
Even as feedlots and processing plants began springing up in the Midwest at major railroad junctions, and profits and sovereignty over beef breeding and feeding shifted from ranchers to industrialists, cattlemen in the Wild Horse Desert remained convinced that if they could breed better beef, they could stem the tide of industry and restore the proper order of civilized carnivorousness: land, cattle, dinner.
“Breeding for a particular characteristic takes twelve generations,” Jim Sr. said.
“We’re a little slow,” drawled his daughter, sliding a plate of puffy tacos onto the kitchen table.
When Jim Sr. was five years old, his father made the daring move of buying a new breed of cattle called Beefmaster. They were bred from the unlikely cross of Indian Brahman with Hereford and milking shorthorn. For young Jim McAllen, it was love at first sight—“I don’t know what it is about those motley-faced fellas, but I still can’t stop looking at them” he says—and for at least the past half-century, he has been honing the breed to the local landscape, the market, and food fashions. It’s always a gamble. “You could invest all that time, effort, and money, breed a magnificent animal and it won’t be what the industrial cattle buyer wants that year.”
You can also be blindsided, as the dean of Beefmaster was by the rage for Certified Angus. “That’s not a cattle breed, it’s a cattle brand and it’s got no business in Texas. Would you walk around out there in a black coat? I bought twelve Certified Angus and a year later only six were alive. They can’t take this heat!” he says. Pausing, he adds, “You got to hand it to them. These guys invented a brand that is basically nothing but a black cow with a trace of Aberdeen-Angus genetic matter and they marketed it to the point that it’s all Angus, all the time, everywhere you look.”
If he has his way, choice Certified Angus beef will fill up the grocery stores and leave a hole at the high end of the beef market that he and his son, James McAllen Jr., can fill. “James is working with the Akaushi breed from Japan, real rare, real risky, and real interesting. One of my bulls made cover boy of Beefmaster Cowman magazine.”
Melissa McAllen Guerra shares her father’s squared-jaw determination and love of the Rio Grande Valley. A superb publicity wrangler, she is rapidly becoming the Martha Stewart of the Wild Horse Desert. She opened a culinary store in San Antonio to market the charm and style of the Rio Grande’s Norteño culture—a meld of Mexican and Texan traditions—to the masses. She also wanted a place to sell her brother’s beef.
“The Akaushi consistently grade prime or above prime,” she shouts from the backseat as her brother James Jr. chauffeurs us in his big Ford pickup. We bounce across the desert on our way to see cattle. We are searching for the McAllens’ single longhorn and Mr. McAllen Sr.’s motley-faced Beefmasters. His best bulls have sold for upwards of $35,000, ten times the typical price. Barbecue, a small calf who was the sole survivor of a recent grassfire that claimed fifty thousand acres, earned himself a lifelong dispensation as well as a close and affectionate relationship with the McAllen patriarch. We are also looking for James McAllen Jr.’s redheaded Akaushi.
The youngest of Jim McAllen’s five children and the only son, James Jr. is tall and dark, but he wouldn’t stand a chance as a Hollywood cowboy. His profile is too finely chiseled, his voice too gentle, his manner too considered. A talented painter, he had a double major—fine arts and business—at Texas Christian University. He was an entrepreneur for ten years, but when his first child was born in 2008, he suddenly felt an irresistible pull back to the ranch and to the dream that began more than three hundred years ago.
Mr. McAllen Jr. is a modern rancher. His cattle have electronic monitoring tags that contain their description and pedigree. Using a mobile ultrasound machine and infrared scanner, he collects and stores dozens of facts, including the animal’s average daily weight gain and measurements of the carcass, rib-eye, and intramuscular fat.
Like Japanese Kobe, which sells for $150 to $500 a pound and melts in the mouth like foie gras, Akaushi are densely packed with fine layers of fat. Unlike Kobe, Akaushi have a high percentage of monounsaturated fat, the highest of any beef in the United States today.
“The hope is to keep the incredible carcass, heat resistance, and consistency characteristics of our Beefmaster and breed an animal that consistently produces prime grade meat with healthy fat,” says Mr. McAllen Jr., steering around rattail cacti. It is late afternoon and he is driving through a 15,000-acre pasture to a watering hole. A covey of startled vermilion flycatchers rise from a grove of gnarled mesquite as he pulls close to the trees and stops the truck. Next to him on the seat is an orderly stack of graph paper. “At this point we have data on about fifteen thousand animals.”
Across the horizon, a line of his first AkaushiBeefmaster cattle mosey away from the sunset and toward the water. They look like a living landscape painting—straight backs, staunch legs, firm muscles, coats the color of the desert sand.
“Aren’t they gorgeous? Dad and I are blown away by these calves, they’re way beyond anything we dreamed of. But we are way, way out there. This breeding is either lunatic fringe or cutting edge.”
Mc ALLEN, TEXAS
When Kiko Guerra’s family came from Spain to ranch the land they’d been granted by the crown, their property between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande was considered northern Mexico. After the border war of 1846, the land became part of south Texas. Mr. Guerra cannot imagine living anywhere else, and he cannot imagine cooking meat over anything but mesquite. The dense, oily wood burns very hot and issues a mellow, spicy smoke that is to Norteño cooking what olive oil is to Italian cuisine.
Mr. Guerra, an artist, is a fire master. He uses two fire pits, which allows him to control the size and intensity of his cooking fire. In one he builds a mesquite fire and when the flames die to glowing embers, he transfers them to the other pit for cooking.
Fajita is his favorite meal for a crowd. Long before it was a trendy restaurant concept, fajita was simply the cuts of belly meat that cover a cow’s rib; they are also called skirt or hanger steaks, and are usually about eighteen inches long and an inch thick. “It was cheap and good, so fajita cooked over an open fire was cowboy food long before it was party food. Some people like the inside cut, which tends to be tougher and needs a lime or beer marinade. The outside skirt is tender and needs only to be seasoned. You should turn the meat six to eight times as you cook it, remove it from the grill, rest it a little, slice it thin and on a diagonal and serve it with nothing more than pico de gallo and corn tortilla.” He adds, “Though we sometimes put out a pot of beans, sliced tomatoes, shredded lettuce, guacamole, even a couple extra salsas. It’s not traditional, but I love to eat steak or fajita with the Texas peach chutney I make, too.”
One 2-pound skirt or hanger steak
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 white onion, minced
2 medium-size ripe tomatoes, or 8 tomatillos, or a combination of the two, chopped
½ avocado, peeled, pitted, and cut into bite-size cubes
2 to 4 serrano chiles, stems removed, minced
2 tablespoons minced cilantro
12 fresh corn tortillas, warmed
Guacamole, salsa, hot sauce, lemon wedges, or other desired garnishes
1. Build a mesquite fire. While you are waiting for the flames to die down (20 to 30 minutes) remove the meat from the refrigerator, and season well on all sides with salt and pepper.
2. When you have burning embers, grill the steak for approximately 10 minutes per side, turning often. When the internal temperature reaches 135°F on an instant-read thermometer, remove from heat, loosely cover on a platter and allow to rest for 20 minutes.
3. While the meat is resting, make the pico de gallo by combining the onion, tomatoes and/or tomatillos, avocado, chiles, and cilantro in a bowl. Start with 2 chiles and add more if you want a hotter sauce.
4. Slice the steak, set it out surrounded by the pico de gallo, tortillas, and garnishes, and allow guests to make their own tacos.
SERVES 4
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA
Korean barbecue is known as bulgogi or bool kogi and comes from two words meaning “fire” and “meat.” The bulgogi grill is perforated tin and looks like a half-globe or an inverted wok, and can easily be improvised. Says Zhey Yang, “That was the first thing I noticed when I came to this country: Korean people punching holes in tin cans and cookie sheets, even one metal light shade, and then making fires under them and making bulgogi.” The grill can be used indoors over a gas flame or outdoors over a coal fire.
Unlike Western barbecue, which tends to cook slowly, the Korean version, of marinated wafers of beef, chicken, shrimp, squid, or tofu is seared quickly on the brazier. The meat or fish is served with dozens of condiments, dips, hot sauces, pickled vegetables, fish or crab, sticky rice, soups, and kimchi (Korea’s pickled cabbage dish that is said to have more than two hundred variations). The bite-size pieces of meat or seafood are rolled in rice pancakes or lettuce leaves. Peppery greens, particularly meenari (Korean watercress), add crunch. Medium-grain white rice, completely unseasoned, is an essential buffer to the hot, fermented chili paste, gochu jang, which is as important to the Korean table as salt is elsewhere.
Four 14-ounce pieces beef short ribs, cut flanken style (across the bone), or four 9-ounce rib-eye steaks, sliced into very thin strips
1 medium papaya, peeled, seeded, and pureed
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon fresh ginger juice
1 onion, coarsely chopped
¼ cup peeled and chopped pear
¼ cup chopped pineapple
2 tablespoons dry sake
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 scallions, green and white parts, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
¼ cup toasted sesame oil
1. In a large bowl, cover the meat with cold water and refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours. Remove the meat from the water, dry well, and transfer to another large bowl. Strain the soaking water, reserving ⅓ cup.
2. In a small saucepan, bring the reserved ⅓ cup water, the papaya, soy sauce, and honey to a simmer over low heat and cook about 10 minutes, until thickened. Transfer to a medium bowl and cool to room temperature.
3. In a blender, process ¾ cup of the papaya mixture, the onion, pear, pineapple, sake, garlic, pepper, scallions, and sugar together until smooth. Return the mixture to the saucepan. Bring to a simmer, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes, until thick. Stir in the sesame seeds.
4. Pour ¾ cup of the marinade and the sesame oil over the beef, toss to coat, and let sit for 10 minutes.
5. Heat a grill over high heat. Place the meat on the grill and cook about 4 minutes per side, until well browned and serve.
SERVES 4
TACOMA, WASHINGTON
Born in Korea, Angela Warnick Buchdahl was 5 years old when her parents moved to Tacoma, Washington. She grew up in the city’s Jewish community in the 1980s and eventually became the first Asian American to be ordained in North America as a cantor and a rabbi.
A pioneer in celebrating her two heritages, she is now passing on her biculturalism to her three children in dishes such as this one, which adapts her mother’s traditional recipe for Korean bulgogi marinade to the brisket cut often favored by American Jewish cooks. Ms. Buchdahl has replaced her mother’s mirin with a sweet kosher wine and added Korean-style heat with jalapeño peppers.
¾ cup soy sauce
⅓ cup kosher sweet wine, such as Manischewitz
⅓ cup water
¼ cup toasted sesame oil
¼ cup honey
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
One 5- to 7-pound flat-cut (or “first cut”) kosher beef brisket, trimmed
1 large onion, halved and thinly sliced
2 celery stalks, thinly sliced
2 jalapeño chiles, stemmed, seeded, and thinly sliced (optional)
1. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 375°F. In a medium bowl, whisk the soy sauce, wine, water, sesame oil, honey, sesame seeds, garlic, and pepper together.
2. Place the brisket fat side up in a roasting pan and cover with the onion, celery, and jalapeños. Pour the soy sauce mixture over the brisket and cover with foil. Bake for 1 hour.
3. Uncover, reduce the oven temperature to 350°F, and cook about 5 hours longer, until the brisket is tender.
4. Transfer the brisket to a carving board and let rest for 15 minutes. Skim the fat from the pan juices. Cut the brisket across the grain into ¼-inch-thick slices. Return the sliced brisket to the roasting pan and spoon the juices over the top. Cover with foil and bake about 20 minutes, until heated through. Serve.
SERVES 8 TO 10
IT WAS PROBABLY GERMAN AND CZECH IMMIGRANTS WHO ELEVATED BRISKET— a stringy, fatty cut from the lower chest of beef—from ground meat for hamburger to an icon of Texas barbecue. The Germans and Czechs who arrived in west Texas in droves in the eighteenth century operated the meat shops, built smokers for their sausages and hams, and likely made the short leap from long, slow simmering (as in sauerbraten or cholent) to long, slow smoking (as in Texas brisket).
The legendary pit masters of Texas reign over wood-fired brick furnaces that seem large enough to forge steel. They say that the “art” of barbecue lies primarily in maintaining a consistent temperature of 250°F for the eight to fourteen hours required to slow-smoke a brisket. Competitors on the national barbecue circuit also require mobility. Smart money tends to be on “offset pits,” enclosed ovens that resemble oil drums with a firebox on one end. The heavy-duty log-burning pits made by David Klose are considered “da bomb.” A former welder, Mr. Klose builds everything from simple kettle grills and drum smokers to gigantic catering rigs. His offset pits are as sculptural as they are functional. Rarely seen without his cowboy hat, he can keep you laughing until the brisket is done. “I built my first pit out of self-defense. I was sick of eating Wendy’s hamburgers. I built a pit so I could barbecue in my welding shop. Family and friends asked me to build them pits. This was early on, 1986. The barbecue industry was in its infancy. The Aztecs have been doing it for two thousand years, the Mexicans have done it for a thousand, Texans have done it for two hundred, and they’ve been doing it for about six years in Oklahoma. I just delivered a rig to California and, I’m telling you, it’ll be another twenty years before it catches on big out there.
“It was a lot more fun to make barbecue pits than fences and gates. I started with making three-eighths-inch steel offset drum smokers. I made one-of-a-kind pits because, well, because I could, I guess. I made a giant beer bottle pit, a chuckwagon pit. People gave me things and I turned them into pits. An 1806 metal baby carriage, a phone booth from Bosnia with bulletproof glass doors. A friend of mine recently got her husband a $100,000 custom-built Orange County chopper. I built him a pit sidecar. His ribs can go a hundred and forty miles per hour.
“I went to my first cookoff to sell my pits, I went back for fun. Barbecue cookoffs are like family reunions for dysfunctional families. You need a twelve- to fourteen-hour attention span to cook good barbecue—that’s not possible if you are not drinking. I learned from the masters. Paul Kirk, seven-time world champion. He was one of the three guys who set up in a parking lot for the first Kansas City Royal competition. I knew him ten years before I knew he could read, and it turns out the guy’s got degrees in history, food science, he’s a teacher. He has me reading books to get the basics and then he tells me I know as much as he does and just get out there, listen to your body and cook. If it’s hot, add salt. If it’s cold, add pepper. Listen, smell, watch, feel it. You have to know it in your bones.
“Barbecue is basically three waves of flavor. The first delivers the smoke, the second wave is comprised of your seasonings, the third is a tidal wave, the full body of the meat, it brings it all together. I use oak mostly—hickory is getting hard to find. There’s thirty-two kinds of oak, I like white oak and post oak, nice steady heat, red oak gives a nice color. Pecan’s nice for chicken.
“When competitive barbecue took off, competitors needed solid, movable pits and I started making custom rigs. Trailer-mounted pits, pits in train cars, trucks. I’ve done a few semi-tractor trailers that can do twenty thousand pounds of meat at a time. If you are catering an event for over a million people, you need a bunch of those. Somebody challenged me to do the tallest grill in the world and I did, twenty-three feet tall. I don’t look at the world the way most people do. Most people look at a water tower and see a water tower. I see an elevator up to a pit. The prettiest pit I ever built was the one I made for Continental Airlines. It is a perfect ten-to-one scale model of a 777 wide-body. Does five hundred pounds of meat at a time. I don’t think I can do better. You give me a million dollars and ask me to do better, I am going to have to give you your money back.
“If you know how to barbecue, you don’t need a hundred-thousand-dollar rig. You need a hole in the ground and a grate. But you know, boys and their toys. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve delivered a pit to somebody and the next thing, his neighbor calls: ‘Hey, you know that pit you made for that old boy? I want the same thing. Except two inches bigger.’ Fine with me. I got about twenty-six guys working for me now. They’re all ironworkers and they’re all artists.”
HOUSTON, TEXAS
Most home cooks use the flat of the brisket, which weighs around five pounds. When choosing your meat, Mr. Klose says, “pick it up and see if you can roll it. The more flexible the meat, the more tender it will cook up. The briskets with a thicker small end tend to cook more consistent.” Paul Kirk taught Mr. Klose to reverse the usual order of flavoring the meat: mop it first, then season it. Leftover mop and rub can be stored separately and well covered in the refrigerator for later use.
5 pounds beef brisket in one piece
FOR THE MOP
2 cups prepared yellow mustard (preferably French’s)
¼ cup water
¼ cup melted beef fat
FOR THE RUB
½ cup sea salt
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup brown sugar
½ cup coarsely ground black pepper
½ cup ground white pepper
½ cup sweet paprika
½ cup chili powder
½ cup garlic salt
½ cup onion salt
1. Remove the meat from the cooler and lay it out on a pan or platter to warm up to room temperature. Make a fire using the wood of your choice. Hickory and oak are the traditional choices. Make the mop by combining the mustard, water, and fat. To make the rub, combine the ingredients well.
2. When the fire has died down to 250°F, mop the mustard mixture on the nonfat side of the brisket in a ⅛-inch-thick layer. Place the meat, fat side up, on the grill and then apply a ⅛-inch layer of mop to the fat side. Close the lid.
3. After 1 hour, sprinkle about ¼ cup of the rub on top of the meat and allow it to absorb for 30 minutes.
4. Turn the meat over and apply ¼ cup of the rub to the other side. Cook for approximately 1 hour per pound of meat, until the meat has reached an internal temperature of 175°F, as registered on an instant-read thermometer. Remove from the smoker, wrap in foil, and allow to rest for 30 minutes.
5. Slice the meat at a 45-degree angle against the grain for serving. The remaining mop can be diluted to a milk-like consistency and served on the side for dipping. Or serve the meat with your favorite sauce.
SERVES 8 TO 12, DEPENDING ON WHERE YOU ARE FROM
CAROLYN WELLS, BARBECUE CHAMPION AND CONTEST JUDGE, IS the cofounder and longtime president of the Kansas City Barbecue Society. She figures that she has eaten an average of 150 pounds of barbecue a year for the past thirty years. Her voice is as smoky as a Texas brisket. “I grew up in Tennessee, fell in love, moved to Kansas City to marry the guy, and fell in love again. Kansas City is the crossroads of American barbecue, a big railroad crossing, where the Southerners and Texans and beef cattle all came together and decided to be friends. That sort of open-mindedness was an eye-opener to me. I grew up in the mountainous south where everybody is pigheaded [and] barbecue is pork, hickory, and vinegar sauce—the end. In Texas, it’s mesquite in the south, hickory in the north, and nobody can do it but us. Kansas City is tolerant of all styles of barbecue except bad barbecue.
“That’s why we formed the Kansas City Barbecue Society. A few of us had competed in the American Royal Barbecue competition in 1987—I won the only category I entered, which was ribs, and all I had was two borrowed grills—and we decided we needed a governing body for the study and preservation of fine barbecue. Well, ten thousand members later, we sanction between seven hundred and eight hundred cookoffs a year, we’re international, and we educate and test candidates for PhBs (Doctors of Barbecue Philosophy). It’s a rigorous test. There are only fourteen PhBs alive today. If you let your standards slip, the next thing you know, you’ll be eating barbecued pasta and that’s just not right. This is about meat, and America.
“People barbecue to tell you who they are and where they came from and what’s important to them. It’s all there on your plate, or all over your fingers or down the front of your shirt. You can be a socialite or a plumber and make a mark in American barbecue. It is democratic. It’s the summer game for people who don’t play baseball. On a competitive level, it’s a close world. I never had children, my husband died last year, but the barbecue people are my family. I retired from competition about fifteen years ago. I still judge, but only on special occasions. I never want barbecue to be a job. I never want barbecue to be anything but wild and crazy amateurs having a whole lot of fun.”
KANSAS CITY, KANSAS
Kansas City is the melting pot of American barbecue. People use beef, pork, lamb, game, hot links. They use fruitwood and hardwood. They tend toward a thick, slightly sweet, tomato-based sauce that is not as tangy as a Southern vinegar-based sauce or as aggressively smoky or peppery as Texas sauces. Because of the city’s history as a big beef-packing town, beef ribs are especially popular. Store extra rub in a well-covered container for later use.
2 large racks beef ribs, about 3 pounds each (or 4 racks baby back ribs)
FOR THE DRY RUB
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup smoked paprika
¼ cup sea salt
¼ cup celery salt
3 tablespoons onion powder
3 tablespoons chili powder
2 tablespoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons mustard powder
1 teaspoon ground chile or cayenne pepper
FOR THE SAUCE
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
½ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
2 cups ketchup
¾ cup molasses
½ cup cider vinegar
1. Pat the ribs dry and let them come to room temperature.
2. To make the dry rub: Combine all the ingredients in a glass jar and shake well. Coat the ribs on all sides with the rub, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 1 day.
3. To make the sauce: Combine all ingredients in a 1-quart glass jar, shake well, and store in the refrigerator overnight.
4. To barbecue the ribs, remove them from the refrigerator, brush off the excess dry rub, and bring to room temperature. Meanwhile, prepare a wood fire or preheat the oven to 250°F.
5. Brush the ribs with the sauce and place on the grill over indirect heat. Cover and grill for 2 ½ to 3 hours, turning and brushing with sauce several times until the meat has shrunk away from the bone and is very tender. (If cooking in the oven, place the ribs on a rack in a roasting pan. Cover and roast for 2 ½ to 3 hours.)
6. Ten minutes before the meat is finished, slather generously with the sauce. Serve with additional sauce for dipping.
SERVES 4
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Logan Wilkes was a typical northwestern jock—but shortly after arriving at Brigham Young University, he discovered he had a voice, dance moves, and a serious way with meat. At BYU he became part of a dining group in which each member was required to prepare a meal once a week. With the help of his mother’s recipe blog, he could find recipes at the click of a mouse and began cooking for friends. As he continued to perfect his skills at the grill, he says, he discovered how both music and dance and the preparing and sharing of food break down barriers. This flank steak is his favorite recipe, and the one most requested by fellow diners and girlfriends.
1½ tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
6 garlic cloves, minced
1½ tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon dry sherry
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
2 scallions, green and white parts, thinly sliced
One 1¼-pound flank steak
1. In a large baking dish, mix together the sugar, sesame seeds, garlic, soy sauce, sherry, sesame oil, ginger, and scallions. Lightly score the flank steak on each side in a 1-inch crosshatch pattern. Place the meat in the baking dish and rub the marinade into the scoring. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 and up to 12 hours.
2. Remove the steak from the refrigerator and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, heat a grill to medium-high.
3. Remove the steak from the marinade and let any excess drip off. Place the steak on the grill and cook for 7 to 12 minutes on each side, until browned and an instant-read thermometer registers 125°F for medium rare.
4. Transfer the steak to a carving board and let rest for 10 minutes. Thinly slice the steak against the grain and serve.
SERVES 4
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
Rosalie Fiorino Harpole’s father, William, came from Rome and worked as a butcher his whole life for Italian shops such as Cuccione’s Italian Meat Market and Rallo Meats, and big companies, such as National Foods and Kroger. “My mother was a fabulous baker and my father a terrific cook,” she says. “We ate a lot of meat, had wonderful bread and sweets, and we listened to a lot of baseball on the radio. My father was as committed to the St. Louis Cardinals as he was to his modiga steak.” Once, the Cardinals made him so mad that he turned off the radio three times during the game.
FOR THE SAUCE
¼ cup lightly packed fresh peppermint leaves
1 garlic clove, minced
1 large ripe tomato, cored, peeled, seeded, and finely chopped
¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons water
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
FOR THE STEAKS
1 cup plain dry bread crumbs
1 ounce Parmesan or pecorino Romano cheese, grated (about ¼ cup)
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ cup olive oil
Four 8- to 12-ounce strip sirloin steaks, about 1 inch thick
Garlic salt
1. To make the sauce: Crush the mint and garlic to a paste with a mortar and pestle. Transfer the mixture to a medium bowl and stir in the tomato, olive oil, and water. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
2. To make the steaks: In a shallow dish, combine the bread crumbs, cheese, parsley, garlic, salt, and pepper. Pour the oil into a second shallow dish. Pat the steaks dry and season with the garlic salt. Coat the steaks first in the oil and then the seasoned bread crumbs. Transfer to a wire rack set over a rimmed baking sheet.
3. Heat a grill to medium-high. Grill the steaks for 4 to 6 minutes per side, until an instant-read thermometer reads 125°F for medium-rare.
4. Transfer the steaks to a carving board and let rest for 10 minutes. Slice and serve with the peppermint sauce.
SERVES 4
VALLEY CENTER, CALIFORNIA
In 1998, Ellen Sullivan purchased land in northern San Diego County, California, named it The Lavender Fields, and planted, grew, and harvested fields of lavender. She also searched for culinary uses for the plant, which is still considered more of an aromatic flower than a herb. “The first modern culinary use I saw was a chef’s recipe for lavender crème brûlée, and that got me thinking. Lavender’s flavor is both tangy and floral, so it works as well in savory dishes as it does in sweet ones—I love what it does to beef tenderloin.” This recipe remains one of Ms. Sullivan’s favorite company meals.
2 tablespoons dried food-quality lavender buds
2 tablespoons fennel seeds
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
1 tablespoon whole white peppercorns
1½ teaspoons dried thyme
1 teaspoon kosher salt
One 4 ½-pound whole beef tenderloin, trimmed and silverskin removed
2 tablespoons olive oil
1. The day before serving, grind the lavender, fennel, peppercorns, thyme, and salt to a powder with a mortar and pestle or in a spice grinder. Rub the tenderloin with the spice mixture, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 8 to 24 hours.
2. Remove the tenderloin from the refrigerator and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 425°F. Place a rack inside a roasting pan.
3. Remove the plastic wrap, brush off the spices from the tenderloin, and rub with 1 tablespoon of the oil. Place the tenderloin on the rack and roast for 15 minutes, turning once halfway through.
4. Reduce the heat to 325°F and roast for 5 to 15 minutes longer, to the desired doneness (an instant-read thermometer will read 125°F for medium rare).
5. Transfer the roast to a carving board and let rest, loosely covered with foil, for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, add the remaining olive oil to the roasting pan, scrape well, and stir to combine the drippings.
6. Cut the tenderloin against the grain into ½-inch-thick slices and transfer to a serving platter. Drizzle the pan drippings over the meat and serve.
SERVES 8 TO 10
MATHESON, COLORADO
The Lasater family of Matheson, Colorado, has been raising beef cattle since 1882. Today, the family‘s thirty thousand acres of prairie land is a study in eco-habitation. Beefmaster—the family’s trademarked breed of cattle—roam the flatlands feeding on the grass, fertilizing it with their droppings, and tilling the land with their hooves, just as the buffalo herds once did. Dale Lasater says this sensibly gentle approach to cattle ranching shows the hand of his mother, Mary. She was an avid horsewoman who loved any work involving cattle, he says. She also ran the house, raised six kids, and put a sizable dinner on the table every night.
To keep up with it all, she devised a unique method of making roast beef. She would partially cook the roast in the morning, leave it in the oven with the door closed during the day, then finish the cooking in the late afternoon. Mr. Lasater thinks his mother’s no-fuss cooking method is perfect for the modern working cooks who don’t have the time or energy at the end of a long day for a major cooking project even if it doesn’t involve cattle. That said, this method does keep the meat at a temperature the USDA considers a health risk and should be attempted with only the freshest, cleanest, organic meat available.
One 3-pound beef chuck-eye roast, trimmed
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 375°F.
2. Pat the roast dry and season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a rack in a roasting pan. Roast for 1 hour.
3. Turn off the oven and let the roast sit for 4 to 6 hours. (Do not open the oven door.)4. Forty to 50 minutes before serving, turn on the oven to 300°F. Cook the roast for 25 minutes longer for rare (120°F on an instant-read thermometer) and up to 35 minutes for medium rare (125°F).
5. Transfer the roast to a carving board and let rest for 15 minutes.
6. Cut the roast thinly against the grain and transfer to a serving platter. Serve with any accumulated juices.
SERVES 6
HANNIBAL, MISSOURI
“My grandmother’s family came to Missouri because they knew people there,” says Mrs. Gertrude Pfluger. “They ran a boarding house right here in Hannibal, saved, and got some land over by Sedalia—you could get land by clearing it, grazing or planting it, and living there. The women went into town once a week to buy what they didn’t grow or trade for. It was their social life and it was still going on when I was a girl in the 1920s.
“You went to the Italian for your veal and chicken, the German put your hogs up for you and made the sausage, bacon, and ham and such, the Bohemian did most of the beef cattle. His wife would pickle up your Sunday roast if you wanted and you could pick it up, just like that, all ready to cook overnight,” she says. “The women swapped recipes while they waited for their meat. They did not think of the recipes as ethnic. My grandmother died thinking that veal Parmesan was an American dish. Her neighbor, Roma McBride, thought that sauerbraten was American because she got the recipe from the butcher. They were all in America and everything they ate after they got here was American.”
This version of sauerbraten is distinguished by its warm spices and long, slow marinating. Mrs. Pfluger allows the meat to sit in the liquid for three or four days prior to cooking it. She serves the meat sliced, with potatoes, noodles, or dumplings.
2 ½ cups water
1½ cups red wine vinegar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
½ teaspoon grated fresh ginger
3 bay leaves
15 whole black peppercorns
1 large onion, halved and sliced ¼-inch thick
One 4-pound beef chuck-eye or rump roast, trimmed
1 teaspoon kosher salt
¾ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch chunks
⅔ cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons (¼ stick) unsalted butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
¾ cup raisins
Hannibal, Missouri, 1912.
1. Two to 3 days before serving, combine the water, vinegars, granulated sugar, ginger, bay leaves, and peppercorns in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, arrange the onion in an even layer. Pat the roast dry and rub with the salt and pepper. Place the roast on top of the onion, pour over the marinade and refrigerate for at least 48 hours, up to 4 days.
2. Remove the beef from the marinade and pat dry. Strain the marinade and reserve both the liquid and the onion.
3. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 300°F.
4. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the roast and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until well browned on all sides. Transfer the roast to a plate.
5. Add the reserved marinated onion and the carrots to the Dutch oven and cook for 4 to 6 minutes, until soft. Stir in reserved marinade and the brown sugar and bring to a simmer.
6. Return the beef to the pot, cover, and transfer to the oven. Cook for 3 ½ to 4 hours, until the meat is tender.
7. Transfer the beef to a carving board and the carrots to a serving platter. Cover both loosely with foil.
8. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook for 2 to 4 minutes, until golden brown. Whisk in the cooking liquid, onion, and raisins and cook for 4 to 6 minutes, until thickened.
9. Cut the roast against the grain into ½-inch-thick slices and transfer to the platter. Pour the sauce over the beef and serve.
SERVES 8
FOSTER, VIRGINIA
When Jan Mohr was a teenager in the fifties, she had to be home for Saturday night dinner. “If we had a date, we could either go out later or invite our date to come for dinner,” she says. There was a standard menu for Saturday night: grilled steak, Caesar salad, and some type of potato. “We used chuck-eye steak and it was marinated in a sauce that my father had made up. He even sent it in to Gourmet magazine and they printed it. My mother always made the marinade in the same ceramic beer stein. The steak marinated for twenty-four hours. My father’s formula for timing the cooking of the steak was the amount of time it took him to drink two Old Forester bourbons and soda.”
¾ cup red wine
½ cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons steak sauce
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
8 garlic cloves, minced
Pinch of celery salt
Pinch of sweet paprika Pinch of seasoning salt
One 1½-pound chuck-eye steak, trimmed
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1. The day before serving, in a large bowl, combine the wine, soy sauce, steak sauce, Worcestershire, lemon juice, garlic, celery salt, paprika, and seasoning salt. Add the steak, cover, and refrigerate for 24 hours, turning once.
2. Before cooking, pat the steak dry. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the steak and cook for 6 to 10 minutes per side, until well browned on both sides and the desired doneness.
3. Transfer the steak to a serving platter and let rest for 5 minutes. Slice and serve.
SERVES 4 TO 6
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
Dr. Al Dussault is a psychoanalyst and a photographer—both fields, he says, that “have to do with values, exposure, and intensity.” He and one of his sisters are the keepers of the flame for their third-generation French Canadian clan. His grandparents owned a corner grocery store and his grandmother’s pot roast—one part French and one part Yankee boiled dinner—is the sort of an expansive, inexpensive dish that kept friends and family fed during the Great Depression.
“My grandmother would put it on in the morning before church,” he says. “Every time somebody else stopped by, she added another potato or more carrots. It all cooks so long that you can’t really tell what’s meat and what’s potato, anyway. And no matter how far you stretch it, Memere’s Sunday pot roast always tastes rich and meaty. We serve it with white bread and mayonnaise. I don’t know why.”
One 4- to 5-pound chuck-eye or rump roast, trimmed
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup olive oil
2 large onions, finely chopped
5 garlic cloves, minced
8 cups homemade beef broth or low-sodium store-bought beef broth
2 cups red wine
One 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried sage
1 bay leaf
½ teaspoon ground allspice
1½ pounds small red potatoes, scrubbed
1 pound carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch chunks
3 parsnips, peeled and cut into 2-inch chunks (optional)
3 turnips, peeled and cut into 2-inch chunks (optional)
1. Pat the roast dry, season with salt and pepper, and lightly dredge in the flour. Heat ¼ cup of the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the roast and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until well browned on all sides. Transfer to a plate.
2. Add the onions and cook over medium heat about 4 minutes, until soft. Stir in the garlic and cook about 1 minute, until aromatic. Stir in the broth, wine, tomatoes, oregano, sage, bay leaf, allspice, ½ teaspoon salt, and ½ teaspoon pepper. Bring to a simmer, then return the roast to the pot, cover, and cook for 1 ½ hours, adding water as needed to keep the meat covered by 1 inch.
3. Add the potatoes, carrots, parsnips (if using), and turnips (if using). Cover and simmer about 1 ½ hours longer, until the meat and vegetables are tender.
4. Transfer the roast to a carving board and let rest for 15 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the vegetables to a serving platter and loosely cover with foil. Return the sauce to a simmer and cook for 10 to 15 minutes, until slightly thickened. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
5. Cut the roast against the grain into ½-inch-thick slices and transfer to the serving platter with the vegetables. Pour the sauce over the beef and vegetables and serve.
SERVES 8 TO 10
AUSTIN, TEXAS
“Texas cuisine may be separated into three distinct divisions—barbecue, Mexican food, and that rare and wonderful piece of bucolic fancy, the chicken-fried steak,” claimed the late travel writer Jerry Flemmons.
The dish has its own inherent contradictions. It is, for instance, neither chicken nor exactly steak. It is always served with a white sauce that is called “cream gravy” but made of milk. Like any icon, the finer points of the dish Texans call “CFS” are fiercely debated. The history of the dish has conflicting versions: It may have been inspired by breaded wiener schnitzel and pioneered by the huge German population that arrived in Texas in the late nineteenth century; it may have been a chuckwagon invention—or perhaps it was shaped by both cultures. There is also debate about the precise cut of meat: Most Texans can’t imagine anything but pounded round steak, while a privileged few say that CFS must be made from pounded beef fillet. The proof, of course, is in the CFS itself.
Bob Lemmons, born a slave around 1850, Texas.
“Everybody’s mama’s got a recipe,” says Hoover Alexander, a fifth-generation Texan and the impresario of Hoover’s Cooking in Austin. In his own home, the finer points of CFS are drawn from his parents’ backgrounds—his mother grew up on a farm in the Texas blackland prairie, his father on a ranch in Pilot Knob—and his experience in the cooking corps at Harry Akin’s Night Hawk Restaurants, Austin landmarks from 1932 to the late 1970s and the first restaurants in the city both to serve African-American customers and to offer career-track training to women and people of color. By the time Mr. Alexander began cooking at the Night Hawk, its CFS was the distillation of hundreds of family recipes. This recipe uses the Night Hawk seasonings, but unlike the restaurant, which deep-fries its CFS, Mr. Alexander fries it in a cast-iron skillet as his mother did.
FOR THE STEAKS
4 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons granulated garlic
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 cups milk
4 large eggs
½ cup vegetable oil
Four 6-ounce beef cube steaks, pounded to ¼ inch thick
FOR THE GRAVY
2 cups milk
2 cups homemade chicken broth or low-sodium store-bought chicken broth
2 tablespoons bacon grease or vegetable oil
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. To make the steaks: Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 200°F. Place a wire rack over a baking sheet and place in the oven. Line a plate with paper towels.
2. In a shallow dish, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, granulated garlic, onion powder, and cayenne. In a second shallow dish, whisk together the milk and eggs.
3. Heat the oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat until a deep-fry thermometer registers 350°F. Meanwhile, working with one steak at a time, dredge in the flour mixture and shake off the excess. Dip the steak into the egg mixture, and then back into the flour mixture. Add two of the steaks to the skillet and cook for 4 to 6 minutes, until golden brown on both sides.
4. Transfer the steaks to the paper towel—lined plate to drain briefly, then to the wire rack and keep warm in the oven. Return the oil to 350°F and repeat with the remaining steaks.
5. To make the gravy: In a medium saucepan, bring the milk and broth to a simmer. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the oil from the skillet. Whisk in the bacon grease and flour and cook over medium heat about 2 minutes, until the flour is lightly browned. Slowly whisk in the milk mixture, garlic powder, and onion powder. Bring to a simmer and cook about 20 minutes, until thickened. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
6. To serve, place a warm chicken-fried steak on a plate and pour the gravy over the top.
SERVES 4
DALLAS, TEXAS
In 2001, when her husband got a promotion that moved the family from Jamaica to Chicago, Natalie Marshal-Rose could not boil an egg. While she hunted for work as a paralegal, she decided to teach herself how to cook. “I was raised by my grandparents. My grandmother encouraged schooling and discouraged housekeeping, except cooking, which she promoted as a way to lure a husband, but by then, I would have none of it.” Once in the kitchen, she was amazed to find that she had channeled her grandmother. “I’d get a flash of memory, see her cooking something, saw what she did, smelled the kitchen and from those memories, I taught myself how to cook.” She cooked until her rum cakes were perfect, her coconut drops flawless, her jerk pork pitch-perfect. In addition to her day job, she soon had a sideline selling rum cakes and other Jamaican sweets to Chicagoans. But in her own kitchen, now in Texas, her favorite dish is still her grandmother’s oxtail stew. “This is my gift to her, sharing Jamaican cooking with non–West Indians. She would be amazed.”
Although oxtail can be cooked more quickly in a pressure cooker, Mrs. Marshal-Rose says that the flavor and texture are best when cooked à la Grandma Telly—simmered in a Dutch oven for hours, then served with pigeon peas, rice, carrots, and fried plantains.
2 pounds oxtail
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon onion powder
¼ cup soy sauce
2 medium scallions, white parts only, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
2 fresh thyme sprigs
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups water
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
One 14-ounce can butter beans, drained and rinsed
½ Scotch bonnet chile, stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped
1 teaspoon sugar, plus more to taste
1. In a large bowl, season the oxtail with salt, pepper, and onion powder. Add the soy sauce, scallions, garlic, and thyme and toss to combine. Cover and refrigerate for 1 to 12 hours.
2. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the oxtail and cook about 6 minutes, until well browned on all sides. Stir in the water, bring to a simmer, and cover, and cook about 2 hours, until the meat is tender.
3. Stir in the carrots, beans, Scotch bonnet, sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, and ½ teaspoon pepper and cook for 20 to 30 minutes, until the carrots are tender. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar to taste and serve.
SERVES 4 TO 6
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
“Both of my parents were wonderful cooks,” said Lydia Shire, the chef of Boston’s venerable Locke-Ober’s. “They say the Irish can’t cook. But my father, Edmund Colgan, was one of the exceptions. He would cut recipes from the newspaper, and when I came home from school, the kitchen would be full of the most amazing smells.
“He died before I learned his recipes and it took me a long time to reconstruct his Swiss steak. But here it is, the old 1950s standby, with a couple of flourishes of my own. And now my children swoon for it the same way that my siblings and I did.” Seven-bone chuck roasts (named for the shape of the bone within, not for the number of bones) are hard to find, she notes, but essential to this dish, “important enough to ask your market to order one special for you. The reason I love this cut,” she says, “is because of the proportion of meat to fat, which is perfect for braising.”
Two 2 ½- to 3-pound 7-bone chuck roasts, trimmed
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ cup all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
2 large onions, halved and thinly sliced
One 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 tablespoon canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
One 750-milliliter bottle cream sherry
12 garlic cloves
1 cup chopped fresh parsley
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 325°F.
2. Pat the roasts dry, season generously with salt and pepper, and dredge in the flour. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add one of the roasts and cook until well browned on all sides, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer the roast to a plate. Add 2 tablespoons more oil to the pot and repeat with the remaining roast.
3. Add 2 tablespoons more oil to the pot and lower the heat to medium. Add the onions and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned. Stir in the tomato paste and chipotles and cook about 2 minutes, until beginning to darken. Stir in the sherry and 6 of the garlic cloves, scrape up any browned bits, and bring to a simmer. Return the roasts to the pot and add enough water to come halfway up the sides of the roasts.
4. Cover the pot, transfer to the oven, and cook for 2 to 2 ½ hours, until the roasts are tender, adding water as needed.
5. Transfer the roasts to a carving board and let sit for 15 minutes. Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste. Mince the remaining 6 garlic cloves, transfer to a small bowl, and stir in the parsley and lemon zest. Cut the roasts into ½-inch-thick slices and transfer to a serving platter. Sprinkle the parsley mixture over the top and serve with the sauce.
SERVES 6 TO 8
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Jackie Mintz’s family arrived in Bronxville, New York, from Shanghai in 1941, intending to remain only until the war in China ended. Having grown up in a privileged household, her mother knew nothing about cooking, and there was no Chinese community or Asian grocery near their home. “We both learned to cook Chinese in Bronxville from my older cousin,” says Mrs. Mintz. “My husband, Sid, is an Eastern European Jew who was born in New Jersey. His father was a cook and owned a restaurant. I taught my husband our family’s recipes. He does most of the cooking in our home.”
One 1-pound flank or tenderloin steak, cut across the grain into 1- by 1½-inch strips
½ cup light soy sauce
6 tablespoons dry sherry
4 teaspoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons brandy
2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
1 teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns, toasted and crushed
1 bunch scallions, green and white parts, cut into 2-inch lengths
12 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1. In a medium bowl, toss the beef with ¼ cup of the soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of the sherry, and 3 teaspoons of the cornstarch and let sit for 15 minutes. In a small bowl, combine the remaining ¼ cup soy sauce, remaining ¼ cup sherry, remaining 1 teaspoon cornstarch, and the brandy.
2. Heat the oil in a wok or large nonstick skillet over high heat. Drain the marinade from the beef, add the beef to the wok in an even layer, and cook until well browned on the first side, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir the beef and cook until no longer pink, 30 seconds to 1 minute longer.
3. Stir in the peppercorns, scallions, and garlic and cook about 1 minute, until soft. Mix in the cilantro and soy sauce mixture and cook, stirring constantly, about 30 seconds, until the sauce is thickened. Serve.
SERVES 4
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
The most interesting thing Peter Kaufman learned from tasting three thousand versions of meatloaf in his national meatloaf contest was the secret of great Midwestern meatloaf: “People with German backgrounds told me that if you add a little applesauce, your meatloaf will never dry out,” he says. This addition, plus a mixture of beef, pork, and lamb, Middle Eastern seasonings, and a rich onion and mushroom gravy make his meatloaf “better than anybody else’s.”
Mr. Kaufman uses a Chicago Metallic meatloaf pan, which drains the fat into a pan below.
1¼ pounds 85% lean ground beef
½ pound ground lamb
½ pound ground veal
¼ cup cornflake crumbs
3 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
¼ cup unsweetened applesauce
½ teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
1 large egg
1¼ cups fresh bread crumbs
Peter’s Onion and Mushroom Gravy (recipe follows), for serving
1. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the beef, lamb, and veal. With your hands, mix in the cornflake crumbs, ketchup, mustard, applesauce, cumin, cardamom, pepper, salt, and egg. Slowly mix in the bread crumbs. Transfer the mixture into a 9-inch loaf pan and even it out.
3. Bake for about 1 ½ hours, until an instant-read thermometer registers 155°F.
4. Let the meatloaf rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving with gravy.
SERVES 6 TO 8
This is an upscale spin on the creamy, beefy gravy that makes “blue-plate” meatloaf and mashed potatoes so popular. It also makes a good sauce for roast beef, meatballs, or chopped steak.
½ cup dried mushrooms, such as porcini, candy cap, or morel, chopped
1 cup boiling water
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch chunks and chilled
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
10 ounces white mushrooms, thinly sliced
½ cup crushed tomatoes
3 cups homemade beef broth or low-sodium store-bought beef broth
½ cup heavy cream
1. In a small bowl, cover the dried mushrooms with the boiling water and let sit for 20 minutes.
2. Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and the garlic. Season lightly with salt and pepper and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat to low and continue cooking, stirring frequently to avoid burning, until the onion is medium gold in color. Add the apple cider vinegar, raise heat to medium and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute.
3. Drain the dried mushrooms and reserve the liquid. Add the rehydrated mushrooms and the white mushrooms to the pan, stir, and season with salt and pepper. Add the reserved mushroom liquid, the tomatoes, and the broth. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until reduced by half, about 15 minutes.
4. Add the cream and cook for 5 minutes. Just before serving, increase the heat to high and bring the sauce to a boil. Remove from heat, whisk in the remaining 2 tablespoons butter, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve.
MAKES ABOUT 2 CUPS
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Throughout American history, restaurant chefs have looked to home cooks for inspiration and home cooks have aspired to cook like chefs. Meatloaf is a particular crucible. If elevated too much beyond its roots, it ultimately becomes “pâté.” For chefs like Anne Rosenzweig, whose New York restaurant Arcadia was in the vanguard of the New American Cuisine movement in the 1980s, the challenge of meatloaf is restraining the haute impulse. By using fatty sirloin and lean veal, she gives her version of an old-fashioned, Eastern European rice-and-meat pie a finer texture. Fresh ginger and pistachio nuts enrich the flavor and provide an unexpected twist. The surprises are subtle, but they create a loaf that is special enough for a company dinner and homey enough to sidle up to mashed potatoes and gravy.
1 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled
One 1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 pound ground veal
1 pound ground sirloin
1 cup cooked white rice, cold
1 large egg
½ cup shelled unsalted pistachios
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. In a food processor, process the onion, garlic, and ginger until smooth. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion mixture and cook about 5 minutes, until soft. Remove from the heat and cool.
3. In a large bowl, combine the onion mixture with the veal, sirloin, rice, egg, pistachios, salt, and pepper by hand, taking care to mush the meat as little as possible. Place the mixture in a nonstick 9-inch loaf pan and form into a solid loaf.
4. Bake the meatloaf about 1 hour, until an instant-read thermometer registers 155°F. Let the meatloaf rest for 20 minutes before serving.
SERVES 6 TO 8
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
Helen Gianacakes grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, where her father owned a restaurant. She helped make ice cream, candy, and Greek pastry when she was a young girl, but she learned to make fast family meals after she married, moved to Kentucky, and began a family. Like many, her interest in cooking—as opposed to getting dinner on the table—blossomed after her three children were off on their own. Visiting her son in Dallas, she met Evelyn Semos, who worked at Neiman Marcus for twenty-seven years, rising from sales clerk to one of the store’s leading tastemakers. This recipe for meatballs was inspired by Mrs. Semos, who has since passed away. Mrs. Gianacakes serves it as an appetizer or as an entrée in the traditional Greek feasts she prepares at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The meatballs can be served plain or in a casserole with tomato sauce.
2 slices white sandwich bread, crusts removed
¼ cup ouzo
3 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
½ cup finely chopped onion
1 pound lean ground beef
1 large egg
1 teaspoon minced fresh mint
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh oregano, or ¼ teaspoon dried
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
1. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat oven to 450°F. Lightly grease a rimmed baking sheet.
2. In a small bowl, soak the bread in the ouzo for 5 minutes. Squeeze the bread dry and discard the liquid.
3. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook about 4 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the onions to a large bowl. Cool to room temperature.
4. Add the bread, ground beef, egg, mint, garlic, oregano, salt, and pepper to the onions. Mix and knead until smooth.
5. Shape into 1-inch balls. Roll the balls in the flour and put on the baking sheet.
6. Bake about 20 minutes, shaking the pan to turn the meatballs halfway through, until no longer pink on the inside.
SERVES 4
OAK PARK, ILLINOIS
“We have a big Mexican community here,” Max Menendez says. “The first generation immigrants tend to stay close to their roots, and each other. Their children assimilate and their grandchildren, like me, are interested in the culture that got lost along the way.” When he was in graduate school, Mr. Menendez spent a lot of time in his grandmother’s kitchen, learning her recipes. “These meatballs,” he says, “are great party food, and if you serve them with rice and beans, they are a fine meal.”
FOR THE MEATBALLS
¼ cup fine dry bread crumbs
½ cup milk
½ cup olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped
2 pounds 85% lean ground beef 1 pound ground pork
½ cup cooked white rice, cold
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
FOR THE SAUCE
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
One 28-ounce can whole tomatoes
1 cup water, plus more as needed
¾ teaspoon dried oregano (preferably Mexican)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. To make the meatballs: In a small bowl, combine the bread crumbs with the milk.
2. In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a heavy skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onion and bell pepper and cook about 4 minutes, until soft. Transfer to a large bowl and cool to room temperature.
3. Squeeze the milk from the bread crumbs and add them to the onion mixture. Add the beef, pork, rice, eggs, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Use two forks to combine, working quickly and delicately in order to avoid overworking the meat. Form the mixture into 1-inch balls. Place on a tray, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 1 hour.
4. Meanwhile, make the sauce: In a medium saucepan, heat the oil over low heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring constantly, about 1 minute until aromatic. Using your hands, crush the tomatoes and add them to the pan. Add the water and oregano, bring to a simmer, and cook for 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste, cover, and keep warm.
5. To cook the meatballs, heat the remaining 6 tablespoons oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add the one-third of the meatballs and cook for 6 to 8 minutes, until well browned on all sides. Transfer to a large plate and repeat with the remaining meatballs in two batches.
6. Pour off the fat left in the skillet and return all the meatballs to the pan. Add the sauce. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook over low heat for 20 to 30 minutes, until the meatballs are no longer pink on the inside, adding water as needed if the sauce gets too thick. Serve.
SERVE 8 TO 10
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Michelle Comparetti Zeikert says her German mother learned how to make Italian meatballs and sauce from her mother-in-law, Mary Comparetti—and she learned so well that people in their Italian neighborhood on Long Island never suspected that a non-Italian hand was at work. When she and her husband moved to Chicago, the Italian shopkeepers sized up Ms. Zeikert as one of them, she says, but the things they gave her to taste were different from what she was accustomed to in New York. “We roast chicken with herbs and garlic; in Chicago, they stew chicken with lemon and potatoes on top and call it chicken Vesuvio, which I love.” Meatballs and gravy are more about family than they are about region, she says. “Whenever I get homesick for New York Italian, I make a big pot of my mother’s Sunday ‘gravy’ and a hundred meatballs. I’ve added a few things. I use fresh basil rather than dried, shallots rather than onions, adobo seasoning, anise, and the best grated cheese I can afford. We are on a budget, just as my family was when I was growing up,” Ms. Zeikert says, “but I have learned that spending on cheese is always worth the investment.”
FOR THE BREAD CRUMBS
Two ½-inch slices stale Italian bread
3 tablespoons (⅜ stick) unsalted butter
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon dried Greek oregano
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
FOR THE MEATBALLS
Milk, as needed
½ cup plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
½ cup finely chopped onion
2½ pounds mixed ground beef, veal, and pork
1 to 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup chopped fresh basil
½ teaspoon ground fennel seeds
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Pinch of freshly ground white pepper
1 teaspoon adobo seasoning
½ teaspoon tomato paste
¼ cup grated Parmesan or pecorino Romano cheese
1. To make the bread crumbs: In a food processor, pulse the bread until medium-fine crumbs form. In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the shallot and garlic and cook about 1 minute, until aromatic. Stir in the bread crumbs, oregano, salt, and cayenne and cook for 5 to 7 minutes, until golden brown. Transfer the bread crumbs to a small bowl and cool to room temperature.
2. To make the meatballs: Add milk to the bread crumbs 1 tablespoon at a time at 1-minute intervals, until the crumbs are soft but not soupy. (The mixture should be the consistency of thick Cream of Wheat.)
3. Heat 1 teaspoon of the oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook about 4 minutes, until soft. Cool to room temperature.
4. In a large bowl, break up the meat with a spoon. Put the onion and 1 of the eggs in the center of the meat along with the basil and gently incorporate. Add the fennel, garlic powder, salt, black and white peppers, adobo seasoning, and tomato paste to the meat and mix gently.
5. Gently add the cheese and the bread crumb mixture, adding crumbs only as needed until it is cohesive and smooth. You may not need all the bread crumbs. (If you have added all the crumbs and the mixture is still crumbly or loose, add the remaining egg.) Cover the bowl and let the meat rest in refrigerator for up to 30 minutes.
6. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 350°F.
7. With wet hands, form the meat into 2-inch-balls.
8. Heat the remaining ½ cup oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add half of the meatballs and cook for 6 to 8 minutes, turning until browned on all sides. Transfer the meatballs to a rimmed baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining meatballs.
9. Bake the meatballs about 25 minutes, until they are no longer pink on the inside.
SERVES 6 TO 8
Swift & Co. packing house, Chicago, 1905.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
The son of Sicilian immigrants, Michael Magnelli grew up thinking that “gravy” is red and meaty and is generally served over pasta. After graduating from the Boston Conservatory, he played guitar for Frank Sinatra Jr. and in Broadway shows, and he continues to travel and perform—and cook. “Give me a crowd and a stove and I am going to cook,” he says. “Both my parents cooked. I learned the basics from my mother. After that, my tastes were shaped by living on the road and eating with a lot of different people.” The result has often been riffs on the dishes of his youth, like this gravy. He omits ground beef and pork and uses sliced steak to create a light but intensely meaty tomato sauce.
1 whole head garlic
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound sirloin or flank steak, sliced thinly
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 large Roma (plum) tomatoes, chopped
2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
3 tablespoons capers, rinsed
1 cup water
1 bunch fresh basil, leaves only, finely chopped
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Trim the stem end and remove about ¼-inch from the top of the garlic head. Place the garlic on aluminum foil and drizzle with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Wrap tightly and bake for 30 minutes or until the cloves are soft to the touch. Remove from the oven and let cool.
3. Heat the remaining olive oil in a large, deep pot. Season the steak slices with salt and pepper and add them to the pot in one layer. Cook on medium-high heat, turning occasionally, until lightly browned on all sides, 3 to 4 minutes.
4. Add the tomatoes, red pepper flakes, and capers and lower the heat to medium-low. Simmer for 15 minutes.
5. While the meat is simmering, separate the roasted garlic cloves. Peel them and add to the meat. Stir well.
6. Add the water and simmer 20 minutes more.
7. Remove from the heat and stir in the basil. Serve over your favorite pasta.
SERVES 4 TO 6
COPLEY, OHIO
One Sunday a month, Olga Peters’s thirteen grandchildren (give or take a child) and occasionally their parents descend upon her kitchen to learn her Hungarian recipes. Standing in her small kitchen, a tiny, white-haired beacon in a blizzard of activity, she delights in the chaos. Her wobbly pots that were grocery give-always in the 1950s hold goulash for an army. The steam fogs the window, obscuring the half-acre garden Mrs. Peters has tended since she was married in 1938.
“We see each other regularly now,” says one of Olga’s grandsons, Marty Cingle Jr., who teaches math and coaches basketball at a local junior high and organized the family’s cooking lessons. “It’s become automatic. You don’t have to think about it, you just show up.” But show up hungry. A dozen sets of hands can produce a feast.
2 tablespoons lard
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon sweet Hungarian paprika
3 cups homemade chicken broth or low-sodium store-bought chicken broth
2 pounds pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes
2 cups drained sauerkraut
½ teaspoon caraway seeds
¼ cup tomato juice
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup sour cream
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. Melt the lard in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent, about 6 minutes.
2. Add the paprika and ½ cup of the broth and bring to a boil. Add the pork and simmer, covered, for 1 hour.
3. Add the sauerkraut, caraway seeds, tomato juice, and the remaining broth to the pot. Return to a simmer, cover, and cook for 1 hour more, until the meat is tender.
4. Whisk the flour and sour cream together and carefully stir into the pot. Simmer for 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve.
SERVES 4 TO 6
PHOENIX, ARIZONA
Growing up in a Punjabi household in Pakistan, Shahnaz Ahmad was a reluctant cook. “My mother forced me to learn. She says that you can’t survive if you can’t cook, but cooking was my least favorite thing to do.” When she moved to the United States and began a family of her own, however, she was so frustrated by her “second rate” dishes that she corresponded with her mother and cooked from the letters she received in return. “When my children were young, their favorite dish was keema mattar. It’s easy to make, and if you use a pressure cooker, it can be quick, too. The dish is more like my mother’s when I make it on top of the stove—and now that my children are grown, I cook it that way when they come home to visit. I am still not in love with cooking, but I love to make my family and friends happy—and for some reason, my cooking does that and that is why I cook.”
You can use any sort of ground meat—goat, lamb, even chicken—for this dish.
2 pounds lean ground beef
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Pinch of ground turmeric
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 cups shelled fresh or frozen green peas
2 plum tomatoes, cored and finely chopped
1 serrano chile, stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped
1½ teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1½ teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro, for garnish
1. Combine the ground beef, onion, garlic, salt, cayenne, and turmeric in a heavy-bottomed pot and cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly and breaking up clumps of ground beef. When the texture is fine, cover, and reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes, until the liquid from the meat and onion has cooked away.
2. Add the oil and cook about 5 minutes, stirring to keep it from sticking.
3. Add the peas, tomatoes, chile, and ginger. Cover and cook over medium-low heat for 5 to 7 minutes, until peas are done and tomatoes are incorporated.
4. Stir in the cumin and coriander and remove from the heat. Garnish with cilantro and serve.
SERVES 6 TO 8
WHEN AMERICANS SAY “HAMBURGER,” THEY MEAN THE sandwich, not just the meat patty, and they mean something deeply and uniquely American. In fact, many lay claim to the creation of the hamburger. The Akron County Fair theory, for instance, wherein a 27-year-old concessionaire named Frank Menches supplemented his dwindling supply of sausage by using ground beef in his patties in 1892, ignores the fact that ground beefsteak was popular in Hamburg, Germany, more than fifty years earlier. It also overlooks a similar dish that appears on an 1836 menu from Delmonico’s restaurant in New York City. And what are we to make of the butter-fried beef patty sandwiches that were allegedly served at a fair in Seymour, Wisconsin, in 1885? Locals insist that butter burgers are the ur-burger. People in New Haven, on the other hand, claim that one Louis Lassen served the “first” burger at his New Haven lunch counter in 1900. The people of Missouri insist that burgers were minted at the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904, while the first White Castle (1921) in Wichita, Kansas, seems to give the Jayhawks bragging rights.
George Motz, whose documentary film and book, Hamburger America, established him as one the nation’s preeminent philosophers of burgers, believes that context, more than history, explains the variety in the nation’s burger experience. The exigencies of a backyard grill beg for a thick burger, while the demands of the democratic challenge of feeding the most people the fastest naturally led fast-food chains to develop thin patties and sliders. And what serious chef could lend his name to a burger without first supplying one or more of the following elements: wagu beef, foie gras, farmstead cheese, artisanal bread, homemade ketchup, mayonnaise or mustard, and microgreens.
TESUQUE, NEW MEXICO
Of the hundreds of regional burger variations nationwide, New Mexico’s green chile cheeseburger is the most enduring and irresistible celebration of place. A staple of diners, drive-throughs, filling stations, food trucks, and upscale restaurants, the burger is as ubiquitous as it is audacious. In 2008, Cheryl Jamison studied over 8,000 nominations for the state’s best version, sampled each and then charted her course through the “Land of Enchantment” to create a map of the green chile cheeseburger trail. She also helped inaugurate the Governor’s Green Chile Cheeseburger at the state fair. In addition to writing award-winning cookbooks, such as Smoke & Spice and The Border Cookbook, Mrs. Jamison, along with her husband Bill, teach cooking in their home in Tesuque and claim that the best green chile cheeseburgers are made from hand-cut beef chuck, cheddar cheese, and freshly roasted New Mexico green chiles, the long green Anaheim variety that are sometimes called Hatch for the town where many are grown and roasted. Purists insist that the patty with melted cheese and roasted peppers should be served on a plain bun and state that those who wish to have lettuce or tomato should order a salad. Condiments such as catsup and mayonnaise are, in the green chile cheeseburger ontology, referred to as adulterants.
Winner of 2009 Green Chile Cheeseburger Challenge, Badland’s Burger, Grants, New Mexico.
FOR THE SAUCE
½ cup mayonnaise
½ cup prepared barbecue sauce
FOR THE BURGERS
2¼ pounds freshly ground beef chuck
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
3 ½-inch-thick onion slices
Vegetable oil for basting
3 New Mexico green chiles
12 thin slices cheddar cheese, room temperature
6 hamburger buns, split
1. Prepare a wood-fired barbecue. Whisk mayonnaise and barbecue sauce in small bowl to blend. Cover and chill for thirty minues.
2. Mix the ground chuck with 1 teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper just to blend (do not overmix). Form the meat into six 1½-inch-thick patties. Cover and let stand at room temperature 30 minutes.
3. Run a metal skewer horizontally through center of each onion slice. Brush the onion slices lightly with vegetable oil to coat lightly. Rub the chiles with oil. Transfer the onions and chiles to barbecue. Grill onions until softened and browned, about 5 minutes per side. Remove skewers from onions. Chop onions; transfer to small bowl. Char chiles until blackened on all sides. Enclose chiles in paper bag 10 minutes. Peel, seed, and chop chiles, combine with the onions, and season to taste with salt and pepper.
4. Sprinkle the beef patties with salt and pepper and grill until cooked, about 4 minutes per side for medium. Top each burger with 2 cheese slices during the last minute of cooking. Place bottom halves of rolls on work surface. Divide chile-onion mixture among rolls. Place cheese burgers on top of the chile-onion mixture. Spread 1 tablespoon mayonnaise-barbecue sauce over cheese, cover with bun tops, and serve, passing remaining sauce.
MAKES 6 BURGERS
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
Mamie Meyers, a retired elementary school teacher recalls: “When I was growing up in the 1930s, it was all Italian up on the hill, the tallest point in the city. Back then, you might go to the Italian butcher and vegetable man, but that was the extent of interaction. The lady who helped my mother, Nel Faida, that was her name, went up the hill on Thursday to provision. She got this recipe from the meat cutter up there. Sometimes she served the chop with spaghetti, but I liked it best with salad. Mother had a vegetable garden. We thought it was exotic to have, basically, a schnitzel with the bone on it. When I went to Italy on my honeymoon I was served arugula and I looked at it and said, “Oh, dear, they know we are Americans and they are serving us weeds,” but I liked it better than the red-leaf lettuce we had at home and I’ve used it ever since.”
FOR THE VEAL
1 cup fine dry bread crumbs
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup milk Four 8-ounce bone-in veal loin chops, pounded thin
1 cup olive oil
FOR THE SALAD
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
8 cups lightly packed baby arugula
3 ounces Parmesan cheese, thinly shaved
1. To make the veal: Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 450°F. Place a wire rack on a rimmed baking sheet.
2. In a shallow dish, combine the bread crumbs, parsley, cheese, salt, and pepper. In a second shallow dish, combine the buttermilk and milk. Dip the chops in the milk, then coat with the crumbs. Set aside in a single layer on a large piece of waxed paper until all the chops have been coated.
3. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the chops, working in batches if necessary, and cook about 8 minutes, until golden brown on both sides. Transfer the chops to the wire rack.
4. Bake the chops for 10 minutes, until rosy in the middle. Remove from the oven and let rest on the rack for 5 minutes.
5. To make the salad: In a large bowl, combine the lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Slowly whisk in the oil. Add the arugula and toss to coat with dressing. Add the shaved cheese and combine.
6. To serve, place a veal chop on each dinner plate and a portion of salad on top of the chop.
SERVES 4
SHADDOCK, OKLAHOMA
Lena Litke was born Helena Doroty Knopff in 1900 in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, one of four children. Her parents were of German and Russian descent. She worked as a nurse most of her life and married Gustav Litke in 1918. The couple moved first to Gothenburg, Nebraska, then to Shaddock, Oklahoma, where their descendants still farm and still prepare this rich family recipe.
FOR THE VEAL
4 slices bacon
Four 6-ounce veal sirloin steaks
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ cup all-purpose flour
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 cup sour cream
½ cup tomato sauce, fresh or high quality canned
FOR THE DUMPLINGS
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 large egg, well beaten
3 tablespoons (⅜ stick) unsalted butter, melted
⅔ cup milk
1. To make the veal: Fry the bacon in a large skillet over medium-low heat about 10 minutes, until crisp. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the slices to a paper towel—lined plate.
2. Pat the veal dry and season with salt and pepper. Dredge the meat in the flour and shake off the excess. Reheat the bacon fat in the skillet over medium heat. Add the veal and cook for 4 to 6 minutes, until well browned on both sides.
3. Add the onion and paprika and cook for 6 to 8 minutes, until golden brown. Stir in the sour cream, and tomato sauce. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from the heat.
4. To make the dumplings: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper. Stir in the egg, melted butter, and milk to make a moist but stiff batter.
5. Return the skillet to medium-low heat. Drop tablespoon-size portions of the dumpling batter on top, cover, and cook about 18 minutes, until the dumplings are cooked through. Crumble the bacon and sprinkle it over the top. Serve.
SERVES 4
FOUNDED IN 1967 BY RACE CAR DRIVER AND AUTOMOTIVE designer Carroll Shelby, the three-thousand-member International Chili Society is a nonprofit organization that sanctions chili cookoffs around the United States by providing rules, regulations, and judges. It supports about two hundred qualifying cookoffs a year, in three categories—red chili, salsa, and chili verde (green chili)—all leading up to its World’s Championship Chili Cookoff. The Society felt that comparing green and red chilies was like comparing apples with oranges, so the first Chili Verde competition was organized in New Mexico. Several years ago the chili world was rocked when a chili head from Massachusetts took first place in the annual cookoff.
Traditionally, the chili belt ran from California and Texas, through Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada, then across the Midwest, but like many regional dishes in the post–Food TV era, chili is less about a place than a state of mind. Preferences vary by region: In Florida, the dish is sweeter than others and sports lots of tomato sauce; in Cincinnati, sweet spices like cinnamon and allspice take the stage. Texas, New Mexico, and California like it hot, often adding cayenne and habanero peppers to their brew; while in northern Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Nebraska, chilis are more homey and less spicy. Colorado and New Mexico use peppers that are still green, and green chili is usually made with chicken, lamb, or pork, instead of beef.
DENVER, COLORADO
Before World War II, when they were sent to a relocation camp in Arizona, the Okuno family owned a thriving restaurant, the Holly Ho in Los Angeles. When they were released, in 1945, the family moved to Denver, a city that was working hard to welcome Japanese families. They began rebuilding their life by opening a diner on Twentieth Street and selling roasted nori (seaweed) to fellow Japanese people and slowly wooed the general population with the classics from their Holly Ho days. As the clientele grew, so did requests for meatloaf, macaroni, and chicken fried steak to the menu of the Twentieth Street Café. Today the walls of the café, hung with sixty years’ worth of pictures of politicians, sports figures, and other local heroes, read like a history book. And the huevos rancheros and other dishes inspired by the increasing number of Latino people who have moved into the neighborhood are a testament to how alive and constant history is. Rod Okuno, the third generation at the helm of the café, perfected this green chili, which is a perennial winner of the local Best Cheap Eats Award. Mr. Okuno sees the accolades as less about chili than they are about family—had there been a “best of nori” award, his great-grandfather would certainly have claimed it. His humble opinion does not, however, change the fact that this is a great version of green chili. The recipe makes a large amount and makes a great meal for a crowd. It is also good for smothering burritos, eggs, or other grilled meat.
20 cups water
14–5-pound pork butt (bone in)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 large yellow onion, diced
6 cups roasted and diced green chiles
2 cups tomato sauce (fresh or high quality canned)
1 cup minced jalapeño chiles
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon powdered cumin
1 teaspoons chicken bouillon
Cornstarch for thickening
1. The day before serving, preheat the oven to 400°. Season the pork butt on all sides with salt and freshly ground black pepper and roast for 3½ hours. Remove from the oven and cool, then use a sharp knife to roughly chop the pork. Reserve the meat and the bone.
2. Bring the water and the bone to a simmer in a tall pot. Add the pork, onion, chiles, tomato sauce, jalapeños, garlic powder, oregano, cumin, and bouillon. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to simmer and simmer, uncovered, for one hour. Remove the bone and discard, refrigerate over night.
3. Remove the pot from the refrigerator and lift off excess fat. Return to low heat. Combine one tablespoon of cornstarch with ½ cup of the cool broth and beat well to create a smooth mixture. When the chili is simmering, slowly whisk in the cornstarch, stirring well between each addition, to desired thickness. The Twentieth Street Café prefers the chili soupy.
SERVES UP TO 20
NORTHBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Jerry Buma was the first northeasterner to win the International Chili Society’s World’s Championship. “I got a lot of e-mails asking if I put lobster in my chili,” says the former marine. Lobster, indeed. He caught the chili bug thirteen years ago when he was working as a bartender. “A buddy of mine was a member of the International Chili Society and asked me to go to a cookoff in New Haven.” After sampling a variety of chilis, he decided he could do better.
Mr. Buma, who taught himself how to cook using electric skillets and hot plates in his barracks while serving in the Marine Corps, says that if you plan to serve his prize-winning chili with salted crackers or corn chips, you should add a half teaspoon less salt to the spice mix. And allow the chili to cool down slightly before you serve it. If it’s served steaming hot, he says, some of the complexities of the chiles will be lost. If you prefer your chili with beans, serve them on the side.
One 4-ounce can whole roasted green chiles, drained and seeded
3 garlic cloves
One 10.5-ounce can double-strength beef broth (preferably Campbell’s Condensed Beef Broth)
1½ teaspoons cayenne pepper (or less if you want mild chili)
2 tablespoons mild California or Anaheim chile powder
2 tablespoons hot New Mexico chile powder
2 tablespoons mild New Mexico chile powder
2 tablespoons ancho chile powder
2½ teaspoons kosher salt
1½ teaspoons sugar
2½ teaspoon garlic powder
3 tablespoons onion powder
3 tablespoons freshly ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
Salt-free store-bought chicken broth, as needed
3 pounds beef tri-tip, cut into ⅜-inch dice
One 8-ounce can tomato sauce (preferably Hunt’s)
Tabasco sauce
1. Combine the roasted chiles, garlic, beef broth, cayenne, chile powders, salt, sugar, garlic and onion powders, cumin, and oregano in a blender and liquefy, adding enough chicken broth to keep the process going.
2. Sauté the meat in several batches, stirring almost constantly, until cooked through and no longer pink. Do not brown. Drain and rinse the meat well to remove all cooking solids and ensure a smooth gravy.
3. Transfer the meat to a large, heavy pot and add half of the spice mixture and enough chicken broth to just cover the meat. Cover the pot and cook slowly over low heat for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Add chicken broth as needed to just cover the meat with liquid.
4. Add the rest of the spice mixture and simmer for 30 minutes, again adding broth as necessary.
5. Add tomato sauce and simmer 30 minutes more. The meat should be tender but if necessary, cook a little longer. Add Tabasco to taste.
SERVES 6 TO 8
NOTE: Unlike the chili powders generally found at the grocery store, pure ground chiles make the meal. See Resources for suppliers.
MORRISON, COLORADO
In the late 1950s, Samuel P. Arnold, an advertising executive in New York City, caught the Wild West bug. The origins of his infatuation have never been clear, but its effect was profound. He left New York City, purchased an ugly, old motel on a gorgeous plot in the red sandstone about an hour outside Denver, built a sprawling adobe replica of Bent’s Fort, Colorado’s first fur-trading post, and began to champion the region’s history, indigenous culture, and cooking with the passion that only an outsider can summon. He soon opened a restaurant that became famous for its buffalo, elk, and other game, and for its historical menus. The food cognoscenti made regular pilgrimages: James Beard and Craig Claiborne and Julia Child sucked on the restaurant’s broiled buffalo marrow bones in the dining room, while upstairs in Arnold’s home, his young daughter, Holly, played with Sissy Bear, their adopted Canadian black bear. After school, Holly made flour porridge with butter, cinnamon, and honey for Sissy Bear and herself. She and her brother, Keith, spent hours scavenging for arrowheads and listening to her father’s friend, Big Cloud, a Lakota Indian chief who lived with the family and was known to most as Toothless Charlie.
When Ms. Arnold was ten, she made her debut as tortilla maker in the restaurant kitchen. By then, her mother was deeply involved with preserving and protecting Native American culture and was building the Tesoro Cultural Center at the Fort. Her father studied with James Beard, amassed three thousand cookbooks, and became the country’s foremost authority on the cooking of the Santa Fe trail.
Since her parents passed away, Holly Arnold Kinney has been running the restaurant and Tesoro Cultural Center. “The Fort serves more than seventy thousand buffalo dinners a year, steaks, prime rib, buffalo hump, tongue, sausage, and ‘Rocky Mountain oysters,’” she says, “but upstairs we ate mostly burgers. Buffalo burgers, with my father’s secret sauce.”
½ cup chili sauce
1½ pounds 88% lean ground buffalo
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 hamburger rolls (preferably sourdough onion)
4 green chiles, roasted, peeled, and stemmed
½ sweet onion such as Vidalia, Walla Walla, Maui, or Texas Sweet, thinly sliced into rings
1. Heat a grill or cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat.
2. In a small bowl, combine the mayonnaise and chili sauce.
3. Form the meat into four equal burgers by hand or using a clean tuna can with the top and bottom removed. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Cook the burgers for 6 to 8 minutes, until well browned on both sides and cooked to the desired doneness. Transfer the burgers to a plate.
5. Grill the buns for 1 to 3 minutes, until lightly browned.
6. Transfer the buns to four individual plates and slather with the sauce. Place a burger on each bun, top each with a green chile and some onion, and serve.
SERVES 4
CEDAR CREEK, TEXAS
Sebastien Bonneau grew up on the outskirts of Bordeaux, France. Like most of their neighbors, his parents had a kitchen garden and raised chickens, rabbits, and pigs. His father was a pastry chef, and after Mr. Bonneau completed his own pastry training, he was offered a job in Texas. Life on the Rio Grande was substantially different from on the Garonne River in southwest France, but after marrying a Texan, his life began to echo that of his parents. Along with his wife, Esther, and their young daughter, Margaux, he moved to an eight-acre farm outside Austin, and the Old World began sliding into the Wild West. The ducks came first. “We wanted a healthy, kind, humane way of life,” says Mr. Bonneau, who speaks country-boy English with a French accent. “Free-range, nonmedicated, hormone-free poultry and rabbit.” Two years later, rabbits, guinea hens, geese, turkey, quail, pheasant, and peacocks joined the ranks, and the couple’s Creekside Farm had become a fixture in the Austin farmers’ market.
“You can panfry the rabbit pieces in a cast-iron skillet in this recipe,” he says, “but grilling is more fun.”
One 3- to 3 ½-pound rabbit, cut into 6 pieces
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup olive oil
¾ cup chopped fresh parsley
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, melted
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1. Preheat a grill to medium. Liberally sprinkle the rabbit with salt and pepper.
2. When the fire is ready, rub the rabbit pieces with olive oil and place on the grill. Cook on one side for 5 to 10 minutes until they begin to brown, turn pieces and grill other side for 5 to 10 minutes. Cook until meat is browned and cooked through. (Smaller pieces such as the front legs will take less time than larger loin pieces.)
3. Transfer the rabbit to a platter, cover loosely with foil, and let rest for 5 minutes.
4. In a small bowl, combine the parsley, butter, garlic, lemon juice, and 1 teaspoon salt. Spoon the sauce over the rabbit and serve.
SERVES 4
WHITE CASTLE, LOUISIANA
“What others use as bait or try to exterminate,” Guy Hymel Jr. says, “Louisianans use as the main ingredient in bayou delicacies” such as crawfish, opossum, raccoon, nutria, and tree perch [squirrel, for the uninitiated]. “We cook it all, Boo! If we don’t know what it is, we just heat up a pot of rice and put it on top. I grew up, went to school, learned to hunt, and I learned to cook from Guy Sr.; I taught Guy III; and he’s teaching Guy IV. Wild game cooking in Louisiana is generational. It’s in our DNA.”
He grew up eating squirrel, wood ducks, and deer. Though Mr. Hymel prefers to hunt deer because he “gets more for the bang,” everything is fair game. Smothered rabbit with brown gravy and onions, rabbit sauce piquant, and rabbit spaghetti are just a few of his specialties. But he only cooks swamp rabbits, he says, not the cottontails, because he prefers the larger size.
One 3- to 3 ½-pound rabbit, cut into 6 pieces, backbone reserved and cut into 4 pieces
6 garlic cloves, peeled
Creole seasoning (preferably Tony Chachere’s)
1 cup vegetable oil
½ cup all-purpose flour
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 celery stalks, finely chopped
¼ cup finely chopped green bell pepper
1 quart water
1 tablespoon tomato paste (optional)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. Make a small slit on each piece of meat and stuff it with garlic. Pat the rabbit dry and season with the Creole seasoning.
2. Heat ½ cup of the vegetable oil in a cast-iron pot over medium-high heat. Add the rabbit and cook for 4 to 6 minutes, until dark brown on both sides. Transfer to a plate. Pour off the oil in the pan.
3. Heat the remaining ½ cup oil in the pot over medium-high heat. Whisk in the flour and cook about 10 minutes, stirring constantly, until dark brown.
4. Add the onion, celery, bell pepper, water, and tomato paste (if using) and bring to a simmer.
5. Return the rabbit to the pan, cover the pan with foil and the lid, and cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve.
SERVES 4
ELDORADO SPRINGS, MISSOURI
Like his father, Mike Longerhofer is a self-proclaimed cowboy who spent twenty-five years herding cattle in the rolling hills of western Missouri. He’s lived in rural areas most of his life and started hunting as a child. It’s always been about survival, not sport. Bow hunting, he says, equalizes the hunter and the hunted. His voice becomes emotional as he continues. “By its very nature, [it] forces the hunter to step back in time, to rely on his hunter-gatherer instincts. I am far more dependent upon my skills for my success and safety, more vulnerable than when I rifle hunt. Bow hunting makes me appreciate the vastness and power of the natural world, how small, yet connected, I am. I feel the woods on a misty morning the way a surfer feels waves on the ocean or a climber feels the mountain. Bow hunting teaches you who you are. I bow hunted for three years before I got my first kill. You feel like you earn the kill when you hunt with a bow; you also feel connected to something primal, an ancient rite. Dressing the animal is part of the ritual, an act of respect. I don’t kill unless I am going to eat it.
“I’ve started to teach bow hunting and a few of us now are hunting and taking the meat to food banks. This crisis in unemployment, more people need food, but food donations are down. What a privilege it is to make a difference that way. I don’t believe I’ve ever dressed an animal that wouldn’t be proud to feed hungry people.”
Mr. Longerhofer adds this advice: “I don’t cook venison unless I’ve marinated it. My wife Carla and I figured that out. We cook together.”
1 cup olive oil
2 carrots, finely chopped
2 celery stalks, finely chopped
½ cup finely chopped onion
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 fresh thyme sprigs
2 bay leaves
One 3-pound bone-in venison loin
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons clarified butter or vegetable oil
FOR THE SAUCE
3 cups homemade beef broth or low-sodium store-bought beef broth
2 tablespoon (¼ stick) unsalted butter 1 shallot, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 fresh thyme sprig
2 tomatoes, cored and coarsely chopped
¼ cup port
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
2 tablespoons red currant jelly
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. To make the marinade: The day before serving, combine the oil, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, thyme, and bay leaves, in a large baking dish.
2. Bone the venison loin. Trim and discard the fat and sinew. With a cleaver, chop the bone into 1-inch pieces and reserve for the sauce. Slice the loin against the grain into six pieces. Arrange them in a single layer in the baking dish, turn to coat with the marinade, cover, and refrigerate for 24 hours.
3. To make the sauce: In a small saucepan, bring the broth to a boil, reduce the heat, and cook until reduced by half.
4. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over high heat. Add the reserved bones and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until well browned. Add the shallot, garlic, and thyme and cook until soft and lightly colored. Add the tomatoes and cook for 2 minutes. Add the port and vinegar, bring to boil, and reduce by half. Add the reduced broth and the currant jelly. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 1 hour, skimming as necessary.
5. Remove from the heat and strain. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate until needed.
6. To cook the venison, place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 400°F.
7. Remove the venison from the marinade, pat dry, and season with salt and pepper. Heat the clarified butter in a large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add the venison and cook for 6 to 8 minutes or until well browned on both sides. Transfer the pan to the oven and roast for 5 to 7 minutes, to the desired doneness (110°F on an instant-read thermometer for rare; 120°F for medium rare).
8. Transfer the venison to a carving board and let rest for 5 minutes. Gently reheat the sauce. Slice each piece of meat against the grain into three or four pieces and serve with the sauce.
SERVES 6
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
Josip Jakšic was born in Wisconsin, but his license plate reads croat. Croatian music booms through the cab of his pickup when he drives to his hunting grounds about forty-five minutes outside Milwaukee. The fields are inhabited by the same type of whitetail deer as those found in Croatia, and like most Croatian ex-pats, Josip hunts in November and December. His father, Mico, stays in town to run Domines Deer Processing, one of the few shops that can still skin, cut, grind, and wrap deer, bear, elk, caribou, moose, and antelope. Samples of each usually show up at the Croatian Eagles Soccer Club’s annual wild game banquet, often as goulash. “It is the ultimate comfort food,” says Josip. “You can use about any cut of tough meat, make it in big quantities for big parties—and it freezes well, too.” He likes venison best of all and enjoys stirring the simmering pot to keep the gulaš from burning. The stew is best served over soft polenta. But he wouldn’t complain about gulaš on mashed potatoes or egg noodles.
Vegeta (a product of Podravka, a company from Koprivnica, Croatia) is a universal seasoning.
3 pounds venison roast, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes
3 large onions, finely chopped
6 garlic cloves, minced
¾ cup olive oil
2 bay leaves Water, as needed
¼ to ⅓ cup Hungarian sweet paprika
¼ cup Vegeta 2 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
2½ pounds wild and domestic mushrooms, thickly sliced (optional)
1½ teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1½ teaspoons freshly ground white pepper
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Kosher salt
1. The day before serving, in a large bowl, combine the venison, onions, garlic, oil, and bay leaves. Cover and refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours.
2. Transfer the meat and its marinade to a large Dutch oven and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally and adding water as needed, about 2 hours, until the meat is almost tender.
3. Stir in the paprika, cover, and continue cooking over the lowest possible heat until the meat is tender, about 30 minutes. Discard the bay leaves. Stir in the Vegeta, carrots, mushrooms, black and white peppers, and cayenne. Cover and cook for another hour, adding water as needed, until the vegetables and meat are very tender. Season with salt to taste and serve.
SERVES 6 TO 8
OXFORD, OHIO
Nick and Kathy Forrest do not live far from the dairy farm where he grew up in the southwest corner of Ohio. But today their five-acre spread is surrounded by suburbs—and back in 1985, when several of the couple’s seven children lobbied to raise lambs to show at the county fair, other parents (most of whom were former city dwellers) had certain “aesthetic concerns.” Livestock-showing quickly became the Forrest family sport. With the children raising up to thirty animals at a time from infancy to county fair time, the family had to rent two additional five-acre plots and was producing several thousand pounds more meat than they could eat—but the children refused to send the animals to auction. “The lamb is all grass-fed, it’s too good for that,” says Mr. Forrest.
So the couple tried to find an appreciative audience, and when that failed, they began to build one, and started a lamb-cooking road show. “People around here had no idea of all the things that can be done with lamb,” says Mr. Forrest. He and his wife were among the lamb ignorati at first, but their earliest customers taught them. “There were hundreds of people from Italy, Greece, Jordan, West Africa, the Middle East who had come to Ohio to work or study or teach—and they were so desperate to find the sort of lamb they had back home that they would drive around looking for grazing lamb. Eventually they found us.” Mr. Forrest became the president of the first grass-fed lamb society in the country.
The Forrests don’t tour much anymore. “We don’t have to,” he says. “I could sell ten times the lamb I can raise here. And now, when spring comes, all the soccer parents are calling, asking when the lambs are coming. They want to see them running around and jumping. It’s good for property values! They can’t wait to stand on their decks and watch the view.”
One 3 ½- to 4-pound boneless half leg of lamb
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
20 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 cups basil leaves
1¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup high quality grated Parmesan cheese
1. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 425°F.
2. Pat the lamb dry and season with salt and pepper. Use a sharp knife to make ½-inch diagonal slits that are about 2 inches apart all over the lamb. Press half of the sliced garlic into the slits.
3. In a food processor, pulse the remaining garlic with the basil, olive oil, cheese, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper to form a paste. Rub this paste all over the lamb. Place the meat on the rack in the roasting pan and roast for 30 minutes.
4. Reduce the temperature to 325°F and roast for 40 to 50 minutes more, until the desired doneness (125°F on an instant-read thermometer for medium-rare; 135°F for medium).
5. Transfer the roast to a carving board and let rest for 10 minutes. Carve and serve.
SERVES 6 TO 8
OXFORD, OHIO
This is another Forrest road show recipe, inspired by a customer, Eli Ahmed, that brings rave reviews.
One 4- to 5-pound bone-in leg of lamb, trimmed
4 garlic cloves, minced
¼ cup Greek-style yogurt
¼ cup chopped fresh mint leaves
1 scallion, green and white parts, finely chopped
2 teaspoons ground turmeric
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1. Cut ½-inch, diagonal slits about 2 inches apart on all sides of the lamb. Combine the garlic, yogurt, mint, scallion, turmeric, cardamom, ginger, paprika, salt, and pepper and rub two-thirds of it into the meat, massaging it well into the slits. Cover loosely and refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours. Refrigerate the reserved marinade.
2. Bring the meat to room temperature. Heat a charcoal grill with a rotisserie to medium or preheat the oven to 325°F. If using a grill, skewer the lamb securely on the rotisserie rod and set it medium distance from the coals. Grill, turning from time to time and basting with additional marinade, for 1 ½ to 2 hours, until the meat is well browned and cooked to the desired doneness (125°F on an instant-read thermometer for medium rare; 135°F for medium).
3. If using the oven, place the lamb in a baking dish, cover with foil, and bake for 2 to 2 ½ hours, to the desired doneness.
4. Transfer the lamb to a carving board (if you have used the oven method, rub it with the reserved marinade) and let rest for 10 minutes. Carve and serve.
SERVES 6
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Behroush Sharifi is a large man with a small ponytail. His bulk belies his agility on the mountain bike that he races through Manhattan, delivering small packets of Persian saffron to chefs at the city’s elite restaurants. At $88 an ounce, the spice is precious stuff. He was a child émigré who fled Iran with his mother, a nurse, just after the Iranian Revolution, landing first in England and then in Arkansas. In Mr. Sharifi’s mother’s kitchen, like that of most Iranians, saffron played a large role no matter how hard it was to procure.
Now, Mr. Sharifi mixes saffron with butter to finish off the grilled kebabs that are Iran’s most popular fast food or picnic fare, especially during the Sizdah Bedar (13th Day) celebration marking the end of the Iranian New Year festivities that begin on the first day of spring. Although the Sharifi family prefers lean ground beef for their kebabs, a mix of beef and lamb or simply lamb are equally traditional and offer a richer depth of flavor.
4 medium onions
¾ pound 90% lean ground beef (preferably ground twice)
¾ pound ground lamb (preferably ground twice)
3 large egg yolks
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
12 long, flat, metal kebab skewers
Pinch of saffron threads
Pinch of sugar
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
1 tablespoon ground sumac
Pita bread or lavash, for serving
1. Grate the onions on the large holes of a box grater. Squeeze out excess liquid by hand or press out in a strainer with a wooden spoon. Transfer the onions to a medium bowl and add the ground beef and lamb, egg yolks, salt, and pepper. Using your hands or an electric mixer, blend the ingredients until the mixture is sticky. Cover and refrigerate for 4 to 5 hours.
2. Remove the meat mixture from the refrigerator. Dampen hands, divide the meat into 12 even portions, and shape into 5-inch cylinders. Slide them onto flat, metal kebab skewers and flatten each into a kebab about 8 inches long and ¼ inch thick. (If the skewers are unavailable, shape each portion of meat into an 8 x 1 ½-inch rectangle.)
3. In a mortar and pestle, grind the saffron and sugar together until the saffron threads are pulverized. Stir into the butter.
4. Heat a grill to high. (If not using skewers, heat a grill pan over high heat.) Grill the kebabs—or unskewered portions—for 2 to 3 minutes, brush with saffron butter, and flip. Grill on the second side for 2 to 3 minutes more, until the meat is cooked through.
5. Brush with saffron butter, remove from the skewers, sprinkle with the sumac, and serve with the bread.
SERVES 6
EUREKA SPRINGS, ARKANSAS
Paul Angelo’s great-grandfather was a stonemason who came to New York to build bridges. He developed rheumatism at a young age and moved to Eureka Springs to “take the cure.” Unable to work stone, he cooked and gardened. After he’d saved enough to buy a little farm, he moved his family to the Ozarks and their healthier way of life. But, says Mr. Angelo, “they hated it and as soon as he could, my grandfather moved up to Ohio to learn butchering there.” The family went back to the Ozarks in the summer, and he and his sisters loved it, as do his children now.
“My great-grandfather was pretty busted up and gnarled but he lived to be eighty-seven years old and he was one heck of a cook. All the men in my family cook. Whenever we get together, all we do is cook—cook and drink and sing.”
His great-grandfather used a lot more olive oil and made these chops in a skillet, partially covered. His grandfather and father started them on the stove and finished them in the oven. He adapted the recipe to use on the grill.
Eight 4-ounce thick-cut lamb loin chops, tied with string
1 cup oil-cured black olives, drained, pitted, and coarsely chopped
¾ cup olive oil
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Soft polenta (such as Arthur Zampaglione’s Polenta, page 618), for serving
1. Place the chops in a shallow dish. In a small bowl, combine the olives, oil, zest, and pepper flakes and pour over the chops. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 24.
2. When ready to cook, remove the chops from the marinade and place on a plate. Transfer the marinade to a small saucepan.
3. Heat a grill or the broiler to medium-high heat. Season the chops with salt and pepper and grill or broil 4 inches from the heat, for 6 to 10 minutes, until well browned on both sides and cooked to the desired doneness (125°F on an instant-read thermometer for rare; 130°F for medium-rare).
4. Meanwhile, place the marinade over medium heat and cook just until the oil bubbles. Place a mound of warm polenta on each of four plates and top each with two chops. Using a slotted spoon, remove the olives from the warmed oil and sprinkle them over the chops. Serve.
SERVES 4
4-H Club member, Pocahontas County, West Virginia, 1921.
MOLLY AND ANTONIO MANZANARES RANCH SHEEP MUCH AS THEIR ANCESTORS DID, riding horseback to move their flock from one high desert pasture to another to graze on lush mountain grasses and mountain mahogany and snowberry. While on summer pasture, the flock and the shepherd’s camp are moved to a new location weekly, allowing the ewes and lambs to have access to fresh feed at all times and ensuring the long-term health of the range.
Although there are now few full-time sheep ranchers in this part of northern New Mexico, the area used to be the world’s lamb capital. “Once upon a time, there were more lambs shipped out on the railroad from Chama than from anywhere in the world,” Mr. Manzanares says. Then lamb consumption in the United States began to drop. To survive, ranchers with small flocks needed to find markets for both the wool and the meat from their animals. To preserve tradition as well as make ends meet, Mr. and Mrs. Manzanares helped found Ganados del Valle, a community-based economic development organization for the primarily Hispanic, low-income community. Mrs. Manzanares, a master weaver, is a founding member of Tierra Wools. Shepherd’s Lamb, their family business, is the first certified organic lamb supplier in New Mexico. She has little time to cook but when she makes chili she uses lamb for the traditional beef in green chili. (See recipe for green chili, page 463.)
BIG TIMBER, MONTANA
Rick Jarrett is a fifth-generation Montana rancher whose ancestors homesteaded in Sweet Grass County in the late 1880s. His Norwegian ancestors rode from Illinois to Big Timber, and 120 years later the Jarretts continue to farm and shepherd there. Mr. Jarrett is convinced that where you eat a meal affects the way it tastes, or at least the memory of its taste. He remembers going to sheep camp once a week during summers with his father. The gatherings were one of the few opportunities that sheepherders had to talk to anyone but their four-legged charges. There was always a communal meal, and he loved the lamb stew. “Just as soon as we opened the door of the sheep wagon, the smell of the lamb stew would make my mouth water,” he says. Part of the ritual was eating the stew on chipped enameled tin plates and drinking coffee from tin cups. It seemed to echo the untamed roughness of the country. Shepherd’s stew served on Limoges china doesn’t taste the same.
1½ pounds boneless lamb shoulder, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes
Freshly ground black pepper
Garlic salt
½ cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 rutabagas, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces
3 potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces
1 pound carrots, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces
1 large onion, finely chopped
8 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and thinly sliced
8 cups homemade chicken broth or low-sodium store-bought chicken broth
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
2 bay leaves
Kosher salt
1. Season the lamb with pepper and garlic salt. Dredge the lamb in the flour and shake off the excess. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the lamb and cook for 6 to 8 minutes, until well browned on all sides.
2. Add rutabagas, potatoes, carrots, onion, mushrooms, broth, basil, red pepper flakes, and bay leaves. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook about 3 hours, stirring occasionally, until the lamb is tender.
3. Remove the bay leaves, season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve.
SERVES 4
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
Attending graduate school, Gwen and John Tabor lived in Morocco for several years before. “Learning to cook from the women helped me get to know them, and so that is what I did,” Gwen says. “This particular dish is so rich and sweet that even our children, who normally are not big on lamb, look forward to it. We generally serve it with couscous or rice. But John also keeps a winter garden and we love serving kale sautéed in olive oil with a few drops of balsamic vinegar with this lamb dish as well.”
Olive oil
2 ½ pounds boneless lamb shoulder, trimmed and cut into 1½-inch pieces
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
½ teaspoon crushed saffron threads, steeped in ½ cup hot water
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 medium onion, grated
1½ cups homemade chicken broth or low-sodium store-bought chicken broth or water
One 28-ounce can whole tomatoes, pureed with their juices
2 tablespoons tomato paste
¼ cup dark honey, such as buckwheat
3 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
1. Heat a film of olive oil in a skillet or sauté pan over high heat and brown the lamb pieces, sprinkling each with salt and pepper as you go.
2. Combine the lamb, garlic, saffron infusion, 1 teaspoon of the cinnamon, the ginger, onion, and broth in a tagine or large Dutch oven. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 1 hour.
3. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, and season with salt. Simmer uncovered until the lamb is tender and the sauce has thickened, about 30 minutes. Add the honey and the remaining 1 teaspoon cinnamon and cook for 2 minutes.
4. Season with salt and pepper to taste, sprinkle with the sesame seeds, and serve.
SERVES 4 TO 6
Sheep on White House lawn, 1910.
BOISE, IDAHO
Mr. and Mrs. Cenarrusa are living history books of the Basque experience in Idaho. Mrs. Cenarrusa, the progeny of English, Scots, Danish, and Cherokee Indians, grew up on an Idaho ranch where her family raised and herded sheep, milked cows, and harvested crops. Pete Cenarrusa, ten years her senior, is the child of Basque immigrants. He served nine terms in the Idaho House of Representatives and was Idaho’s secretary of state for thirty-five years. The family runs sheep, and Mrs. Cenarrusa has managed the business for the past half century.
To raise money to support Basque historical projects such as the restoration of one of the boardinghouses that became “home away from home” for sheepherders as well as the social center of the Basque immigrant community, the couple give a lamb barbecue each year. In the colder weather, they serve guests these slow-simmered lamb shanks.
Nonstick cooking spray
4 lamb shanks, fat trimmed
2 to 4 garlic cloves, minced
1 large onion, finely chopped
Kosher salt
Seasoned pepper (preferably Lawry’s)
½ cup fruity red wine, like beaujolais
Water or chicken broth
Cooked rice or noodles, for serving
1. Spray a Dutch oven with nonstick cooking spray and brown the shanks over medium heat. Stir in the garlic and onion and sauté until brown. Add salt and seasoned pepper to taste.
2. Turn the heat to low, add the wine, and cover. Cook on low heat for at least 4 hours, stirring occasionally and adding water or meat broth if necessary to keep the shanks barely covered.
3. After 4 hours, remove from the heat. Transfer the lamb shanks to a plate, and when they are cool enough to handle, remove the bones and the gristle and discard. Defat the meat juices, return the meat and juices to the pot, and simmer over low heat uncovered for about 3 minutes to allow the gravy to thicken. Taste and adjust the seasoning with additional salt or black pepper. Serve the meat and gravy over rice or noodles.
SERVES 4
NATICK, MASSACHUSETTS
Awave of Macedonian immigrants coming to North America began in the late 1880s. Marina Markos Kluter’s family emigrated to Toronto, and worked in restaurants and eventually opened one of their own. Her mother’s simple recipes made a lot for a little. “She cooked the way she’d been shown,” Ms. Kluter says, “and that is the way she showed me.” Knowing that the recipes she makes embrace her family history each time they are prepared is something Ms. Kluter finds comforting, especially after she moved to Massachusetts as a young bride.
She likes keeping her lamb recipe “as is,” and prepares it only occasionally, primarily at Easter. “What I have discovered in the course of the years is that if you have a dish once in a while, it is really special. If you make it more often, it is not so special anymore.”
One 6- to 8-pound bone-in leg of lamb
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon kosher salt
⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon dried mint
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
3 cups boiling water
8 potatoes, peeled and quartered lengthwise
4 carrots, peeled and cut on the bias into 1½-inch lengths
1. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 425°F. Pat the meat dry and place in a roasting pan or shallow baking dish, fat side up. Use a small knife to make incisions into the top of the lamb and insert the sliced garlic cloves in each one.
2. Mix the salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, and mint in a small bowl. Rub this on the surface of the lamb and into the slits with the garlic.
3. Place roasting pan with the lamb in oven and roast for 30 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350°F and roast for 2 hours more. Thirty minutes before the end of the roasting period, mix together lemon juice and boiling water and pour over the lamb.
4. While the lamb finishes cooking, place the potatoes and carrots in a large pot, cover with water, bring to a boil, and cook about 10 minutes, until almost tender.
5. Transfer the lamb to a carving board to rest for 20 minutes. Skim most of the fat that accumulated in the pan. Increase the oven temperature to 400°F.
6. Drain the partially cooked vegetables and add to the pan juices, spooning the juices over the vegetables. Return to the oven and cook for 20 minutes, until golden brown.
7. Carve the lamb and serve with the vegetables and gravy.
SERVES 8 TO 10
ALAN BENTON MEANT TO BE A HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER. BUT IN 1973, THE REALITY OF raising a family on a teacher’s salary and the sight of a for sale sign in front of a local roadside hamand bacon-making operation changed his life. The confluence may also have saved bacon and restored the dignity of American country ham: Mr. Benton’s dry-aged ham and smoky bacon are considered by connoisseurs to be the best of their kind. “There are two crucibles of country ham,” he says. “Patience and good pork are what it’s really about. You cannot make an incredible ham out of a sad little skinny pig and you can’t rush it.”
As he explains, there are some false distinctions in American country ham. “We’re all lying when we call those hams ‘Virginia’ or ‘Kentucky’ or ‘Tennessee’ hams. The current point of origin of a particular American country ham doesn’t describe the meat. Understanding that all American country hams are descended from the European Black Forest, prosciutto, and Serrano hams tells you that the hams are dense, well-aged, with nutty, salty tones.”
Christopher Columbus brought pigs to the New World on his second voyage. Within a decade, pork was raised in every Spanish settlement throughout the Caribbean. The Jamestown colony in Virginia had so many pigs and such difficulty penning them that they relocated the porcine population offshore and created Hog Island. Pigs wandered the streets of Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston until departments of sanitation were established in the latter half of the nineteenth century. By then, slave ships had long since delivered African pigs to the United States. Thomas Jefferson may (or may not) have imported pigs from Calcutta, and Yorkshire pigs from England were taking Pennsylvania and Ohio by storm.
There were different pigs for different people, but most households raised and slaughtered a few each year. Fresh pork was a luxury of “hog killing time,” usually late fall, when neighbors gathered to butcher the animals and turn the meat into hams, sausages, bacon, pickled meat, and lard, often the most important protein in the rural inland winter diet.
The Ohio River and a strong German community made Cincinnati a great hog-trading, sausage-making town and earned it the name Porkopolis. Because there are different pigs for different purposes, a number of distinct breeds—Berkshire, Duroc, Gloucestershire Old Spot, Large Black, Tamworth, or Red Wattle—were raised and traded.
Mr. Benton is a native Virginian. “My mom’s people built the first house in Scott County in the southwestern hills of the state, and they cured things in straight salt,” he says. “My father’s family built on the adjoining piece of land and they used salt, brown sugar, and black and red pepper. And that is how I cure my hams to this day. But I live in Tennessee and I’m proud of it and I call my hams ‘Smoky Mountain Country ham.’
“When I started out in 1973,” Mr. Benton continues, “you could still get some pretty good pork from a processor right in Knoxville, all grown within a hundred-mile radius of my shop. Not long after that it started to change. The local processor went broke, and I had to go to the other side of the state. It happened again and again. I’d find a good little processor and a year later they’d close, and I’d have to move farther away and every time I did, the pork got a little worse. By the 1980s, I was going all the way to the Midwest to buy, and that meat was bad. It was all quick-buck pork. I am not saying it would make you sick, but I’ll tell you, it wouldn’t make good ham.”
But just before he threw in the towel, a group of pig farmers across the country began to raise and revitalize the classic American breeds. “The first time I tasted Berkshire pork was an epiphany. It was tender and silky and tasted like pork,” Mr. Benton says. “I know the heritage hogs are better. I can’t tell you that pasture raising really makes a difference and I don’t know whether or not using antibiotics affects the character of pork, but I want natural pork, just in case it does.”
Crouched over a small campfire on the bank of a mountain stream, the Prince of Pigs was warming a cast-iron skillet the size of a manhole cover. It was Sunday, and he and his wife, Sherry, and their daughter had spent the afternoon hiking and digging wild ramps. Mrs. Benton was cleaning the wild leeks in the stream, and Mr. Benton was cooking the fat from some of his bacon and peeling potatoes. Between potatoes, he glanced at the chunk of twenty-four-month-old country ham that he’d brought in his knapsack. Soon he would slice the meat thin, fry it in the skillet, and serve it over the potatoes and ramps.
“You taste that and you know two things for sure,” he says. “You know it’s spring in the Smoky Mountains and you know that ol’ hillbillies can make a country ham that’s right up there with the ones made by our European cousins.”
MADISONVILLE, TENNESSEE
2 slices thick-cut bacon (preferably Benton Bacon), cut into ½-inch pieces
4 large russet potatoes, peeled and cut into ¾-inch chunks
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds ramps, cleaned, trimmed, and coarsely chopped
1½ to 2 pounds 24-month dry-aged country ham, thinly sliced
1. Cook the bacon in a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat until the fat has rendered. Transfer the bacon to a plate.
2. Increase the heat to high, add the potatoes, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Cook for 6 to 8 minutes, until golden brown on all sides. Reduce the heat to low, add the ramps, and shake the pan. Continue shaking and cooking about 10 minutes, until the ramps and potatoes are soft. Remove from the heat, adjust the seasoning with additional salt and pepper if desired and divide among 6 plates.
3. Return the skillet to the fire and when it is very hot, lay the ham slices in the skillet for less than a minute to warm, then place over the hash on each plate and serve.
SERVES 6
SURRY COUNTY, VIRGINIA
The southeast United States, particularly the hills of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, have been the epicenter of the nation’s hams for more than three hundred years. The mild winters and hot summers are ideal for dry-curing. After a long, slow cure, the hams are smoked and hung to age. The finest of these are hung for nearly two years and have a flavor and texture that is like Italian prosciutto. The artisans who create the country’s finest hams tend to call well-aged hams “country hams,” and regard the sweeter, more familiar brine-cured ham as “city hams.” Like Alan Benton in Tennessee, Sam Edwards, of S. Wallace Edwards and Sons in Surry County, Virginia, and Nancy Newsom, whose family makes Colonel Bill Newsom’s Aged Kentucky Ham, prefer not to boil or bake a whole country ham.
Putting a quick (three-week) cure on a fresh ham is another option. This recipe is the result of dozens of interviews with ham makers and ham bakers. The slow poaching, bourbon-honey glaze, and baking work well for store-bought brine-cured ham as well. (This recipe uses pink salt, a curing salt that contains nitrites to protect from botulism.)
FOR THE CURING SOLUTION
1 gallon spring water
½ cup kosher salt
2 cups brown sugar
2 ½ tablespoons pink salt, such as DQ Curing Salt or Insta Cure No. 1
One 5- to 8-pound bone-in fresh ham (½ rear leg of pig), skin on if possible
FOR THE HAM
1 quart water
2 quarts unfiltered apple juice or cider
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
6 whole black peppercorns
3 cups bourbon
FOR THE GLAZE
2 tablespoons sorghum
2 tablespoons honey
1½ tablespoons Dijon mustard
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1. To cure the ham: Three weeks before serving, combine the water, kosher salt, brown sugar, and pink salt in a large nonreactive pot and bring to a simmer over high heat until the salts and sugar are dissolved. Remove from the heat and cool completely.
2. Add the pork, weight down with a heavy plate in order to cover the meat completely, and refrigerate for 2 weeks.
3. Rinse the cured pork under cold running water. Place in a smoker or over cooling hardwood coals for 12 to 24 hours. Then hang the ham to dry in a cool, well-ventilated place for 3 to 5 days.
4. To cook the ham: The day before serving, rinse the ham and put it in a large stockpot. Add the water, apple juice, vinegar, peppercorns, and 1 ½ cups of the bourbon and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a bare simmer and cook uncovered for 3 to 4 hours, until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the ham registers 150°F.
5. Remove the pot from the heat and cool the ham in the broth to room temperature. Refrigerate in the broth for 8 to 24 hours, until chilled.
6. About 4 hours before serving, preheat the oven to 450°F. Remove the ham from the broth. Discard the broth. Place the ham on a rack in a large roasting pan, skin (or fat) side up. Use a sharp knife to remove the skin from the ham, leaving as much fat as possible on the meat. Score the fat in a diamond pattern.
7. To make the glaze: Simmer the remaining 1 ½ cups bourbon in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat until reduced to ½ cup. Stir in the sorghum, honey, mustard, and butter. Bring to a simmer, then remove from the heat. Brush the glaze on all sides of the ham, taking care to dab the brush into the cuts.
8. Roast the ham for 20 minutes.
9. Baste the ham with the glaze, reduce the oven temperature to 300°F, and roast, basting every 30 minutes, for 2 to 3 hours, until the surface has a brown crust and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the ham registers 150°F.
10. Transfer to a carving board and let rest for 30 minutes before carving and serving.
SERVES 12
COMBS, GEORGIA
Carbonated water with fruit juices and herbal distillations were first sold on street corners in large American cities during the late eighteenth century, but it wasn’t until the 1870s—when doctors, dentists, and pharmacists began experimenting with various flavor and curative compounds—that soda pop became big business.
A Philadelphia pharmacist, Charles E. Hires, created root beer, and after being challenged by prohibitionists, succeeded in building an empire by advertising it as “The National Temperance Drink.” By the 1880s, two new ingredients—an extract from the coca plant and an extract of the cola, or kola, nut—appeared, and by 1886, John Stith Pemberton, a pharmacist in Atlanta, Georgia, compounded a syrup from caffeine, cola nut extract, and several other oils, called it Coca-Cola, and marketed it as a headache cure. The syrup was a hit and soon Mr. Pemberton was using an oar to stir up vats of it in his backyard.
Fizzy pops provide a natural lift to baked goods and extra muscle to marinades. Soda pop cakes and marinades seem to have risen from the American South, although the precise time and point of origin for the latter use is debated. Dr Pepper and Coca-Cola are used with baby back ribs and tough cuts of beef. Marinades like this one with 7UP are used to tenderize pork and give it a hint of spice and lemon.
1 cup soy sauce
1 cup oil (vegetable, safflower, or canola)
2 cups 7UP
1 teaspoon powdered horseradish
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
Combine all ingredients. Pour over meat—fresh ham, cured ham, large joints of lamb, or beef brisket—and marinate in the refrigerator overnight. If using sliced turkey breast, marinate for 2 hours prior to barbecuing. Remove from the marinade—discarding the liquid—and pat dry. Bake, grill, or roast the meat according to taste.
MAKES ENOUGH TO MARINATE 3 TO 5 POUNDS OF MEAT
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA
Laurent Roffe loves to make this pork roast. It can be served year-round, and is easy to prepare, forgiving of mistakes, and great for sandwiches the next day. “It just keeps on giving,” he says. But most of all, he likes the rich, sweet, spicy smell that fills the house while the roast cooks, and the kudos he gets every time he serves it.
Mr. Roffe was born in Casablanca, spent his childhood in Paris, moved to Israel as an adolescent, and served time in the Israeli army before attending Pratt Institute in New York. He cannot remember a time that he was not interested in food. But it was not until he left home for college that his talents began to emerge. A recipe from Jacques Pépin inspired this, his number one meal for company.
1 cup balsamic vinegar
⅓ cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ cup honey
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon ground turmeric
One 2 ½- to 3-pound boneless center-cut pork loin, trimmed
1. In a large bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of the vinegar, the soy sauce, oil, honey, mustard, cayenne, paprika, cumin, and turmeric. Score the loin all over very lightly in a crisscross pattern with a sharp knife and place it in the marinade, turning until it is all coated. Cover and let rest for at least 1 hour in the refrigerator, turning several times.
2. Remove the loin from refrigerator about 20 minutes before cooking. Meanwhile, place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 275°F.
3. Lightly oil a roasting pan and place the loin in the pan. Spoon the marinade on top and place in the oven. Cook, turning and basting the loin every 20 minutes, for about 2 hours or until the inside is slightly pink but not bloody and an instant-read thermometer registers 145°F.
4. Transfer the pork to a carving board, cover loosely with foil, and let rest for 15 minutes.
5. Pour any juices into the roasting pan, along with any leftover marinade. Add the remaining vinegar, bring to a simmer, and cook, scraping up any browned bits, until thickened slightly.
6. Slice the pork, transfer to a serving platter, and spoon some of the sauce on top. Serve, passing the remaining sauce at the table.
SERVES 6
NATCHITOCHES, LOUISIANA
Few words in American English are as misunderstood as “Creole.” For eighteenth-century Louisianans, “Creole” meant born native to the soil. Both black and white children born in the colony were designated as Creole to distinguish them from Louisiana’s European and African settlers. Later, “Creole” referred to children of mixed blood. Today, “Creole” is defined as anyone born on Louisiana soil from the intermarriage of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans.
Lillie Delphin is a soft-spoken Creole who grew up in the little community of Frilot Cove, near Opelousas, Louisiana. “It was a rural community with the church being the center of the activities,” she says. “It was very rural and very independent.” Yeast cakes were handmade and sun-dried on rooftops, then used to bake fresh bread. Some meats hung in the smokehouse while others dried in the sun to create tasso, a seasoning ham. Butter was churned and preserved in jars filled with brine. “We put clabbered milk in a cheesecloth and hung it from the clothesline to drip for a day,” she says, “and you had what we now call cream cheese.” A cream and sugar sauce was poured on top to create a wonderful breakfast food.
At least five meats were prepared for every holiday or special occasions. “This was tradition for everyone in the community,” Ms. Delphin says. “The meats were usually roasted in the oven. We didn’t have any barbecuing or grilling. We had the pork roast, the beef roast, the lamb roast, some type of poultry, turkey usually, and either duck or geese. Back then eating was taken very seriously. There was no fast food. Everything was cooked slowly and everyone ate slowly. A holiday dinner lasted from noon on.”
Ms. Delphin learned the technique of roasting meat overnight from her parents and grandparents, who oven-roasted at least four meats at a time. “The size of the roast was so much larger back then than what I use. I guess it required more heat and a longer cooking time. It was using the heat more efficiently. The meats were always cooked at night. They would not open the oven door at all, but the next day they were just perfect.”
(NOTE: The contemporary food-safety standards that were largely developed to safeguard against microbes that can be found in industrial-raised and processed meat that is shipped great distances condemn this traditional, slow-heat technique. For more information on meat-cooking safety, see www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/meat...fact_sheets/index.asp. If purchasing fresh, naturally raised local meat from a known source, discuss cooking methods with the grower.)
4 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
One 5-pound boneless beef or pork roast, trimmed
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 jalapeño chiles, stemmed and thinly sliced
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces
1. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 500°F. Line a roasting pan with aluminum foil.
2. In a small bowl, combine the salt, pepper, paprika, and cayenne. Sprinkle a tablespoon of the mixture over the bottom of the pan. With a sharp knife, pierce about 36 holes 1 inch deep in the roast. Place an equal amount of the seasoning in each slit, followed with the garlic and jalapeños, divided evenly.
3. Place roast in the pan and dot with the butter. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake about 2 hours if using fresh meat from a known source or follow the meat safety cooking instructions on the link at left.
4. If using the overnight method, turn off the oven and leave the roast inside for 8 to 12 hours.
5. Transfer the roast to a carving board and thinly slice against the grain. Transfer to a serving platter. Skim any fat from the juices in the pan, transfer to a saucepan, and reheat. Pour over the meat and serve.
SERVES 6 TO 8
MYRTLE, MISSOURI
Near the top of the Ozarks just above the Arkansas border, past a big sign on the gate—newman’s heritage—is the lush green haven of Mark and Rita Newman’s pig farm. The Newmans are true believers in the value of small family farms, and breed some of the most succulent heirloom pork around. This dish is one of Rita Newman’s childhood favorites. Her mother used the pan drippings to make the gravy that accompanied the tenderloin and a batch of biscuits.
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
One 7-pound boneless, skin-on Berkshire pork shoulder roast
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1. The day before serving, in a small bowl, combine the garlic, cumin, oregano, salt, and pepper. Stir in oil as needed to make a paste.
2. Poke holes in the flesh side of the roast. Fill the holes with the paste. Pour the lemon juice on the roast and rub it in all over.
3. Let the roast sit on a platter or pan in the refrigerator, skin side up, uncovered, to infuse with the spices about 24 hours.
4. About 1 hour before you want to cook the roast, take it out of the refrigerator to warm up. Place the roast on a rack in a roasting pan. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
5. Roast skin side up until the skin is crispy, about 20 minutes, then turn over.
6. Continue cooking until an instant-read thermometer registers 185°F—about an hour and 20 minutes.
7. Transfer the roast to a cutting board and let rest 20 minutes before carving and serving.
SERVES 12
KANEOHE, HAWAII
Luau is the Hawaiian Islands’ clambake, beanhole dinner, and barbecue: the primordial outdoor feast of a pig roasted in the ground in an imu oven, kalua pork. “You don’t learn to cook it as much as you absorb it,” says Roy Balmilero. “It is part of growing up in Hawaii.” When lacking a pit or visiting his daughter on the mainland, Mr. Balmilero makes kalua pork with pork butt that he rubs with salt and liquid smoke, then roasts about two hours. It isn’t traditional kalua, but the seasoning and slow cooking make the meat tender and full of flavor. With a bit of rice one can almost hear the surf and smell the puakenikeni flowers.
4 to 5 pounds boneless pork butt, trimmed
2½ tablespoons Hawaiian red salt or kosher salt
2 tablespoons liquid smoke or smoked paprika
1 large banana leaf, or 4 to 5 unpeeled bananas
4 to 6 ti leaves or large piece of aluminum foil
1. Place an oven rack in the bottom position and preheat the oven to 325°F.
2. Make several shallow, long cuts along the roast and rub with the salt and liquid smoke. Wrap the roast with the banana leaf. (If using bananas, place them on top of the roast.) Wrap the pork in the ti leaves or foil and place in a roasting pan.
3. Roast for 3 to 4 hours, until the meat is tender and registers 185°F on an instant-read thermometer.
4. Transfer the meat to a carving board and let rest for 20 minutes. Remove the outer wrapping and the banana leaves or bananas. Shred pork into large pieces. Serve.
SERVES 8 TO 10
THOMPSON, CONNECTICUT
Lana Chen is from Beijing, where she grew up in a traditional courtyard house and was raised by her grandmother. When she was 16, she began medical school and met the man who would become her husband. When they graduated, the couple decided to leave China. After an arduous journey through the south of China, they made it to Macau and then Hong Kong, where Dr. Chen worked as a doctor for a church clinic. In the mid 1960s, the Chens immigrated to the United States, eventually settling in rural New England where they raised three children and built their medical practice.
In her early years in the States, when she was home with her young children, Dr. Chen turned her attention to the kitchen. Having no first-hand experience cooking, she relied on memories of her grandmother, who spent all her waking hours cooking and caring for their traditional Chinese household. She was able to re-create many of her grandmother’s dishes through trial and error—and some ingenuity, since the nearest Asian grocery was in Boston’s Chinatown, about an hour’s drive away.
This dish is a Chinese classic often attributed to Su Dongpo, a Sung dynasty poet and statesman. It’s a favorite recipe of Dr. Chen’s because it’s pretty much foolproof. Once everything’s in the pot, she says, all the work is done. The braising liquid and fat of the pork shoulder create a self-basting system that always results in tender, fall-off-the-bone meat.
1½ cup dark soy sauce
¼ cup hoisin sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder, or 1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon onion powder, or 1 tablespoon minced onion
One 6-pound bone-in pork shoulder, trimmed
3-inch piece fresh ginger, cut into 7 pieces
¼ cup shaoxing wine (Chinese rice wine) or dry sherry
¼ cup vegetable oil
4 scallions, green and white parts, cut into 2-inch lengths
3 star anise pods
4 Sichuan peppercorns
1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed
1. In small bowl, combine ½ cup of the soy sauce, the hoisin, garlic powder, and onion powder. Pat the pork dry and rub with 3 slices of the ginger. Brush the pork shoulder with the wine then generously brush with the soy mixture and set aside about 15 minutes to dry.
2. Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet over high heat. Carefully add the roast to the wok and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, turning frequently, until well browned on all sides. Transfer the roast to a large pot, skin side up.
3. Add the remaining 1 cup soy sauce, 4 slices ginger, the scallions, star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, and smashed garlic. Fill the pot with enough water to cover the pork shoulder completely. Bring to a simmer over high heat, reduce the heat to medium, and cook for 30 minutes.
4. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook about 4 hours more, until the meat is tender and nearly falling off the bone.
5. Transfer the meat to a carving board and let rest for 20 minutes. Shred the meat into large pieces and serve.
SERVES 6 TO 8
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Allan Vernon says, “I grew up in Jamaica and when I moved to New York, I noticed a distinct lack of jerk. It was difficult to believe. You could get anything in that city but jerk chicken or pork. I opened a stand and then a restaurant. After a while, I started to bottle my sauce in this little plant in New Haven where they had some lady doing kosher salad dressing on Monday morning, some guy doing salsa that afternoon, a family doing their Italian tomato sauce, and me doing my jerk. All of us immigrants, trying to do it right, get the kids through school, make a little business, trying to get an edge. Before I went there, I thought the world was divided into Jamaicans and everybody else.
“They called me the King of Jerk; it stuck. I moved to Atlanta because so many of my family has. There is a big Caribbean community here. At home, for my kids and grandchildren, I make this jerk. You can use the sauce on chicken or fish, but I like pork the best. My grandkids call me the King of Jerk, too.”
3 tablespoons whole allspice berries
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
4 teaspoons ground coriander
6 scallions, green and white parts, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 Scotch bonnet chile, with seeds
2 tablespoons dark rum
6 tablespoons water
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Two 1-pound pork tenderloins, trimmed
1. Grind the allspice berries in a spice grinder and transfer to a blender. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander, scallions, garlic, chile, rum, water, salt, and pepper to taste. Blend until a smooth paste forms, scraping down the sides of the jar as needed.
2. Place the pork tenderloins in a shallow baking dish. Wearing rubber gloves, rub the paste all over the pork. Cover and refrigerate for 2 to 12 hours.
3. Preheat the broiler. Place the pork 4 inches under the broiler and broil, turning once, for 12 to 15 minutes, until the pork is only slightly pink in the center and registers 145°F on an instant-read thermometer.
4. Transfer to a carving board and let rest for 5 minutes. Cut into ¼-inch-thick slices and serve.
SERVES 4 TO 6
CINCINNATI, OHIO
Mrs. Ivy Henz was born on a horse farm in southern Ohio in 1921. After marrying and moving to Cincinnati, she became part of a small group of wealthy men’s wives who supervised their children, debated literature, theater, and politics, lobbied for equal rights and against segregation, and hosted Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Henz says: “Don’t ask me where I got the recipe. I remember that Emma Lazarus, God rest her soul, made a pork loin stuffed with prunes for some of her fancy parties. There were a few years, after the war I think it was, everybody was making pork with prunes. I added bacon, it changed the dish considerably and everybody wanted the recipe. That must have been when I wrote it down, but it wouldn’t have been my recipe. It was my idea, that I grant you, but the recipe would have come from Twinkie, the country girl who cooked for us. Twinkie cooked for my mother and came with me when I married Mr. Henz.
When she got the cancer, her daughter took over. Her name was Winnie, but we called her Twinkie Too. She came every day for about twenty-five years and then a few days after Mr. Henz’s funeral in 1988, she stopped coming. Never heard a word. I was sixty-six years old and I’d never cooked a thing in my life. I liked it right away.
“I made this pork for holidays until a couple years ago. I’ll be ninety soon. I still make myself two lovely meals every day and then I drive over to the cemetery. That’s where all my friends are. That’s what happens when you get to be my age. You might want to think about that the next time you go cutting calories, starch, and fat.
“Personally, I would advise doubling the bacon.”
½ teaspoon rubbed dried sage
¼ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon crumbled dried rosemary
½ teaspoon mustard powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
One 4-pound boneless pork loin, trimmed and tied
16 pitted prunes
12 slices bacon
FOR THE SAUCE
3 tablespoons finely chopped red onion
½ cup ruby port
2 cups red wine
1 cup pitted prunes, quartered
1 cup dried figs, quartered
½ cup golden raisins
1 cup homemade chicken broth or low-sodium store-bought chicken broth
⅛ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. To make the pork: The day before serving, combine the sage, thyme, rosemary, mustard, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Pat the pork dry and rub the seasoning blend onto all sides. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 8 to 24 hours.
2. About 2 hours before serving, preheat the oven to 350°F. Remove the pork from the refrigerator. Scrape the seasoning blend off the pork and discard.
3. Run a skewer lengthwise through the center of the pork. Remove the skewer and insert the handle of a wooden spoon into the hole, halfway through the meat. Twist the spoon to enlarge the hole enough to insert the prunes. Repeat at the other end. Push 8 of the whole prunes into the hole from one end and repeat with the remaining prunes at the other end until a tightly packed line runs the length of the pork.
4. Wrap the bacon widthwise around the pork and place in a large roasting pan. Roast about 1 ½ hours, until an instant-read thermometer registers 145°F. Transfer the roast to a carving board and let rest for 10 minutes.
5. To make the sauce: While the pork is roasting, in a medium skillet, bring the onion and port to a simmer and cook until the port has evaporated. Add 1 cup of the red wine and cook until the wine is almost evaporated. Add the quartered prunes, figs, raisins, broth and the remaining wine, and cinnamon and cook, stirring frequently, to thicken. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
6. To serve, slice the pork, transfer to a serving platter, and spoon the sauce over the top.
SERVES 8 TO 10
BREAUX BRIDGE, LOUISIANA
In the old African-American churches of Louisiana, after the congregation has contributed to the collection plate, a preacher dissatisfied with the offering might encourage greater donations by saying, “Thank y’all so much for bringing me the pig tails and feet, but we need to get a little higher up on that hog.” Well, a pork chop is about as high on the hog as you can get.
Floyd Poche’s great-grandparents immigrated to New Orleans in 1859 from the German-French border. They moved west to settle in the village of Poché Bridge, an isolated farming community near the Atchafalaya Swamp. Their grandson Lug Poche established a slaughterhouse there in 1962. Today, Lug’s son Floyd operates the family business, which includes a USDA processing plant that makes and ships specialty meats such as chaurice (spicy pork sausage, similar to chorizo), hog head cheese, marinated pork, marinated turkey, stuffed chaudin or ponce (stuffed pork stomach), stuffed pork chops, tasso ham, boudin, smoked sausage, and andouille.
While Monday is red beans and rice day in New Orleans, Tuesdays in Poché Bridge is dedicated to smothered pork chops. Though pork chops are flavorful and need little to tenderize them, smothering (or étoufféeing) them is a favorite Cajun preparation technique.
Locals refer to the smothered pork chop gravy as sauce brûlée or “burned sauce,” because you “kind of let the gravy stick on the bottom,” Mr. Poche says. “The more you stick and unstick, the better the gravy is going to be.”
Four 8-ounce bone-in pork rib chops, ½ to ¾ inch thick
Poché Bridge Cajun Seasoning, or kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, onion powder, and celery salt
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 medium onions, finely chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 quart homemade chicken broth, low-sodium store-bought chicken broth, or water, plus more as needed
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. Pat the pork dry and season with Poché Bridge Cajun Seasoning or suggested mix. Heat the oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the chops until golden brown on both sides, then transfer to a plate.
2. Add onions, bell pepper, and garlic to the fat in the pan. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are wilted. Add ½ cup of the broth to deglaze the bottom of the skillet, scraping up the brown bits.
3. Return the meat to the skillet, add the remaining 3 ½ cups broth, bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for 1 hour, until the chops are tender. Add more broth as needed. Season to taste and serve.
SERVES 4
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
“It’s tiresome to hear about how we can’t cook. Of course some Irish can’t cook, but neither can some French,” said Mrs. Janet Tilden O’Brien. She grew up on the “Irish Gold Coast” in New Jersey and moved to Las Vegas twenty years ago. “Cooking is not about nationality, it’s about ingredients or the absence of them, fuel or a shortage of it, time or the lack of it. The Irish like a good meal as well as the next nationality, and a lot more than the English, I might add. It’s just that so many came after the great famine and got stuck in a joke that they can’t get out of. This pork chop recipe came with my great-great-grandmother who migrated from Mayo just after the Civil War. She used lard, I use olive oil. She served it with butter mashed potato and turnip, I like garlic mashed potato and some nice crisply steamed greens.”
½ cup packed dark brown sugar
¼ cup kosher salt
10 whole black peppercorns
5 juniper berries
5 bay leaves
2 tablespoons fennel seeds
1 cup mixed fresh herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano)
Peel of 1 orange
1 quart boiling water
3 quarts cold water
Twelve 4-ounce bone-in center-cut pork chops
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, salt, peppercorns, juniper berries, bay leaves, fennel seeds, herbs, orange peel, and boiling water. Stir to completely dissolve the sugar and salt. Stir in the cold water to cool the brine.
2. Lay the chops in a single layer in a large nonreactive pan and completely cover them with the brine. If a chop floats to the surface, weigh it down with a plate. Cover and refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours.
3. Heat a grill or broiler. Drain the pork chops, discarding the brine, and pat dry. Brush with oil and grill or broil for 10 to 12 minutes, until well browned on both sides and an instant-read thermometer registers 145°F. Transfer the chops to a serving platter and let rest for 5 minutes before serving.
SERVES 6
SPOKANE, WASHINGTON
“You cannot understand the importance of having one showstopping recipe unless you have a Filipino mother and an African-American Jewish father,” said Thalia Pe-Benito Freidan. “Without a dish that makes them all greedy and glassy-eyed, you are a ghost at family gatherings. Aunts and cousins are nice to you, but no one remembers your name because it’s all about the food and who makes the best chicken and whose noodles are gone first and whose cake is the envy of all. We have over a hundred people when both sides of the family converge, and word of brownies made from a mix travels fast. When I was in college, I dated an Indian pre-med guy, which to my family was as bad as brownies from a box, though I do not really understand why, but his mother was an amazing cook. I learned these pork chops from her and brought them the year I brought Saleem to the family picnic back in 2001. One whiff and the whole crowd was ready to announce my marriage, which never happened mostly because one afternoon with my tribe was enough for him. Eventually he married an only child! I still make the pork chops. The same recipe works well for lamb chops, too.”
FOR THE BRINE
1 quart water
¼ cup fresh orange juice
2 teaspoons grated orange zest
¼ cup kosher salt
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
⅛ teaspoon red pepper flakes
Eight 4-ounce bone-in center-cut pork chops
FOR THE GLAZE
¼ cup malt vinegar
¼ cup cider vinegar
½ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup homemade chicken broth or low-sodium store-bought chicken broth
1 plum tomato, cored and chopped
1 tablespoon tamarind paste
1. To make the brine: Combine the water, orange juice, orange zest, salt, brown sugar, soy sauce, ginger, honey, peppercorns, and red pepper flakes in a large saucepan. Bring to a simmer and cook until the sugar and salt have dissolved. Cool to room temperature.
2. Arrange the chops in a shallow glass or ceramic baking dish and cover with the brine. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 hours.
3. To make the glaze: Combine the vinegars, brown sugar, broth, tomato, and tamarind paste in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thick and syrupy. Remove from the heat, strain through a fine-mesh strainer, and cool to room temperature. Reserve ½ cup of the glaze for serving.
4. Preheat the broiler. Remove the chops from the brine and discard the brine. Pat the chops dry and brush with the glaze. Place the chops on a broiler pan and broil about 6 minutes, turning once, until deep brown on both sides and just cooked through but still moist in the center.
5. Transfer the pork chops to a serving platter and let rest for 5 minutes. Spoon the reserved glaze over the top and serve.
SERVES 4
BELMONT, MASSACHUSETTS
“My grandmother kept rabbits in hutches behind her house. No one else had rabbits behind their large Victorian houses on Harvard Street right in the middle of Cambridge. Nobody else had chickens or gardens or grapevines or apple, cherry, pear, peach, and fig trees,” Susan Rosenburg recalled. “The food I ate at my friends’ houses was pallid and limp. Nothing crunched. At home we had vivid green beans that had been cooked briefly with small round new red potatoes, a little chopped onion, a little olive oil, a little water. We had risi e bisi—peas from the garden mixed in with rice just before it had finished cooking. We had potatoes roasted with a chicken. We had peppers, fried quickly in olive oil so hot that their skins blackened. We could peel the skin off and eat them with our fingers, the way we ate the crisp skin from the chicken.”
The idea of using the juice from pickled peppers to marinate pork chops also came from Ms. Rosenburg’s grammy.
¼ cup fine dry bread crumbs
Four 8-ounce bone-in pork rib chops, pounded to an even thickness
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup pickled peppers plus 2 tablespoons pickled pepper juice
¼ cup dry white wine or water
1. In a shallow dish, spread the bread crumbs in an even layer. Pat the pork chops dry and season with salt and pepper. Press all sides of the meat into the bread crumbs and pat them to get the crumbs to stick.
2. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the pork chops and cook for 4 to 6 minutes, until browned on the first side.
3. Flip the pork chops over, add the pickled peppers and their juice and cook for 4 to 6 minutes more, until the second side is browned and an instant-read thermometer registers 145°F.
4. Transfer the pork chops and peppers to serving dish and let rest for 5 minutes. Pour the wine into the pan, scrape up any browned bits, and simmer for 1 minute. Pour the mixture over the pork chops and serve.
SERVES 4
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTES
“My family moved from the Philippines to Boston in 2000, and our go-to dish, like so many other Filipinos living abroad, is adobo,” says Bianca Garcia, who is studying marketing at Harvard. “It does not matter that the dish takes hours to cook and that the smell of it stays in the apartment complex for days—it brings us a taste of home. All Filipino families each have their recipes for adobo. Basically, it is any meat or any combination of meats that is braised and simmered in vinegar, soy sauce, lots of garlic, black peppercorn, and bay leaves. Every family claims their version to be the best. Of course, that cannot be true since my family’s version is the best.”
2 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
2 pounds pork belly
1 cup white vinegar
½ cup soy sauce
4 bay leaves
10 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Red pepper flakes to taste (optional)
1. Put the chicken, pork, vinegar, soy sauce, bay leaves, and 7 garlic cloves in a shallow pot over low heat. Add one cup water, plus more if necessary, to barely cover the meat, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 1 hour.
2. Use slotted spoons to remove the chicken and the pork and set aside. Allow the broth to continue simmering. Warm the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the rest of the garlic. Pat the pork and the chicken dry and sear each piece in the olive oil on all sides until golden brown. Return the chicken and pork to the pot, reduce the sauce by simmering for another hour to an hour and a half, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens.
3. Serve with fried rice.
SERVES 6
YORK, NORTH CAROLINA
Dan Huntley, former political columnist for the Charlotte Observer, winces, rubs his temples, and says, “Meat hangover.” Then he pours himself a tankard of mint sweet tea.
He is sitting on a concrete slab in front of his Pig Palace, the three-thousand-square-foot “classy man cave” that his wife had built for him out of pine “bacon-slab siding.” The Pig Palace houses his library, computers, music collection and files on the right side. But on the other side is a makeshift kitchen where, he says, “the left side of my brain lives.” There, in his current life as itinerant caterer, he prepares the cauldrons of bastes and rubs and sauces that he uses to “spread the love.” He also refers to his business as “insane,” and “a bad living but a nice way of life.” His card reads: dan huntley, barbecue provocateur, outdoor feast catering, whole hog/oyster roasts/crabmeat gumbo.
“I’m seventh-generation North Carolina and the first generation who ever went to college. When I was growing up, barbecue was the lowest of the low. It was poor blacks and whites making the most of poor cuts of meat, tenderizing them with vinegar and pepper and smoke. They had cinder blocks, a fire pit, and an iron grate. The come-lately rich white boys all have meat thermometers. Real barbecue guys don’t take their pig’s temperature. They listen to the meat, they don’t want the pork cooking in its own grease. A 120-pound pig has about two gallons of grease in it. You don’t want to heat it too high so that the grease cooks the flesh and you don’t want it accumulating at the bottom of your rig and starting a fire.
“After college, my wife and I moved to Key West and lived in a conch shack with no refrigerator. I worked as a fisherman. I wanted to be the Ernest Hemingway of the drug generation but I ended up learning to barbecue meat from the Cubans. I turned the mailbox into a firebox, hooked it up to an old busted refrigerator with a stovepipe and smoked fish and meat. It preserved it as well as a refrigerator and it tasted better.
“When the kids came along, we moved back [to North Carolina]. I went to work at this itty bitty weekly, the Pineville Pioneer. After about three years, I heard that the Charlotte Observer was hiring photographers, so I bought a camera and turned myself into one. When the paper figured out I knew a lot of people, they let me write. The local guys all talked to me. But the national guys, the senators, presidential candidates? The only way they are going to talk to some non-Ivy, non–New York Times guy is if I distinguish myself in my first question. I started asking: ‘When you were growing up, who did the cooking in your house?’ They were expecting some question on policy or platform and they’d stop for a second and then they’d start telling me their life stories.
“For five years, I worked in a restaurant with this wonderful chef, a woman from France. She taught me the universality of cooking pork. Doesn’t matter if it is cochon or carne, it’s all about fire and iron. I went to barbecue cookoffs and watched. Eventually I won some pig trophies.
“Barbecue is an expression of life, an American art form. Now, I love a Weber grill, but the Weber has been the great homogenizer. Pound for pound, you are going to eat better if the cook is a contraption maker. I’ve seen some junkyard serendipity you wouldn’t believe. My rig? I put it together for a hundred and sixty-five dollars and it’s built like a Sherman tank. Why would you want to pay more for your rig than you paid for your pig? I’ve seen cooking rigs made out of a satellite dish found by the side of the road, smokers made out of old refrigerators, galvanized trash cans, a backhoe bucket, and a seven-foot rotisserie that one guy put together with the chain from his grandson’s bicycle. You can’t find that in the Yellow Pages. You can’t learn how to do that on the Web. It’s not about a recipe as much as it is about knowing what to do when something happens, like your rig catches fire in four lanes of traffic going seventy miles an hour.
“I invented a barbecue sauce, my Pig Pucker. I studied barbecue formally. I wrote a business plan. When the paper downsized, I started to make sauce and create feasts for people. It’s tough. I don’t want to deliver barbecue to someone I don’t know or don’t like. I put too much of myself into it. That’s not good for business. But you know, this morning at five, I came out here and got the fire going and that smoke, it’s like an aura. It takes me into another zone, some place between, you know, primal man hunting and the shade tree mechanic.”
4 racks baby back pork ribs, 4 to 6 pounds
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
½ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
2 cups ketchup
¾ cup molasses
½ cup cider vinegar
1. Dry the ribs and let them come to room temperature while you prepare the dry rub.
2. To make the dry rub, combine all the dry spices in a glass jar and shake to combine well. Coat the ribs on all sides with the rub, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 24 hours.
3. Make the sauce by combining the Tabasco, ketchup, molasses, and vinegar, in a 1-quart glass jar. Shake well and store in the refrigerator overnight.
4. Three hours before you intend to serve the ribs, remove them from the refrigerator, brush off the excess dry rub, and bring them to room temperature. Prepare a wood fire or preheat the oven to 250°F.
5. Brush the ribs with sauce and place over the heat. Cover and cook for 2 ½ to 3 hours, turning and brushing with sauce several times until the meat has shrunk away from the bone and is very tender.
6. Ten minutes before the meat is finished, slather generously with the sauce. Serve with additional sauce for dipping.
SERVES 4
JIMMY HAGOOD OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, HAS VIP SEATING ON the top of the barbecue RV that he drives around the country, spreading the gospel of Carolina ’Cue. While friends and fellow Carolinians sip and savor above, he offers tastes on the asphalt at the annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party.
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
In Seattle, in the 1940s Torakichi (“Tony”) Tsujikaka’s business partner, and one of his first friends in the United States, was a German man named Bert Mieks. Mr. Mieks taught him everything he needed to know to get started in ceramics manufacturing, and perhaps equally important, how to make these smoked baby back ribs with sauerkraut. Now, Mr. Tsujikaka’s daughter, Grace Boyd, serves the dish with potatoes, mashed or baked, but nothing too rich, as the ribs and sauerkraut are almost a meal in themselves. She has a propane smoker, and adds mesquite wood chips to the lava rocks for flavor.
Two 1½- to 2-pound racks baby back pork ribs, cut into slabs that can fit into your smoker
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons seasoning salt (preferably Johnny’s Seasoning)
8 ounces thick-cut bacon, cut into ½-inch pieces
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 cups sauerkraut, drained well, excess moisture squeezed out
1½ tablespoons brown sugar
2 bay leaves
1½ tablespoons whole black peppercorns
1 cup water
1½ teaspoons caraway seeds
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. Preheat the smoker to medium-high heat. Lightly sprinkle the slabs of ribs on both sides with garlic powder and seasoning salt. Place the slabs of ribs on the smoker racks. Smoke about 5 hours, until the meat pulls away from the bone. Remove from the smoker and keep warm.
2. Cook the bacon in a Dutch oven over medium-low heat about 10 minutes, until crispy. Drain the bacon on paper towels. Add the onion to the fat and cook over medium heat about 4 minutes, until soft.
3. Stir in the sauerkraut, brown sugar, bay leaves, peppercorns, and water. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for 30 minutes. Add caraway seeds and stir to combine.
4. Add the ribs and cook for 5 to 10 minutes, until the liquid is thickened. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve.
SERVES 4 TO 6
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK
George Chew came up with this simple recipe when he was in law school and helping to raise money for the Asian American student group: It is one part bean sauce and three parts hoisin sauce with garlic. “As my cooking evolved, I started to riff on the recipe, adding other ingredients. It is still changing depending on the availability of ingredients, but the essentials remain the bean and hoisin sauces and making people happy that they showed up to eat.”
FOR THE MARINADE
6 tablespoons hoisin sauce
3 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons mirin
2 tablespoons Chinese black bean sauce
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon Asian chili sauce
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Four 2 ½- to 2-pound racks pork spareribs, trimmed
1. One to two days before serving, combine the marinade ingredients in a large glass, ceramic, or enameled baking dish and let sit for 1 hour.
2. Lightly score the meat side of the ribs. Add the ribs to the marinade and rub it in well. Cover, and refrigerate for 1 to 2 days, rubbing the ribs with the marinade every 8 hours.
3. Place the oven racks in the bottom-center and top-center positions and preheat oven to 350°F. Line two large rimmed baking sheets with foil.
4. Place the ribs in a single layer on the baking sheets and roast for 50 minutes. Flip the ribs and cook for 20 minutes, then flip again and cook for 20 to 30 minutes more, until the meat pulls away from the bone.
5. Transfer to a carving board, cut into individual ribs, and serve.
SERVES 6 TO 8
EMBUDO, NEW MEXICO
Ermita Campos farms a strip of dusty land outside Santa Fe. She and her daughter Margarite grow many vegetables but are most famous for the tomatoes that they sell at farmers’ markets and serve with the family’s red chile pork. “I am not sure where the recipe came from, it’s older than dirt, simple, full of flavor. You can use any cut of meat. When we make it for the young chefs and serve it with warm corn tortillas and a nice pot of beans they act like we invented water, like red chile is new,” she says. Looking past the parched riverbanks that frame her fields to the rocky hillside, she smiles. “I guess you could say its new every time you make it. Yes, you could say that.”
2 pounds boneless pork shoulder or butt, trimmed
4 or 5 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 quart water
2 tablespoons bacon drippings or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
½ cup pure red chile powder
Cooked pinto beans, for serving
1. Rinse the meat and pat dry.
2. Put 2 garlic cloves through a press and rub on the all sides of the pork. Sprinkle with ½ teaspoon salt.
3. Place the pork in a slow cooker or pressure cooker and pour in the water. Set the slow cooker for 6 hours or pressure cook for 30 minutes.
4. Cool the meat in the broth.
5. Discard any excess fat from the meat and broth. Shred the meat. Set aside the broth.
6. Finely chop or press the remaining garlic. Heat the bacon drippings in a 2-quart skillet over medium heat. Add flour and stir until smooth. Stir in the garlic and shredded pork and brown lightly.
7. Stir in the chile powder and brown lightly, being careful not to scorch it.
8. Mix in the broth slowly and check that all the chile powder has dissolved. Reduce the heat to very low and simmer until the broth thickens.
9. Serve with beans and as much of the red chile sauce as the eater will brave.
SERVES 4
URBANA, ILLINOIS
When Christy Spackman was a child in Utah her mother taught her to cook. “At one point,” she says, “I realized that I can actually trace this pie recipe back to my great-great grandmother Josephine Giggar, who was born in Sioux City, Iowa. The pie was passed down from her paternal grandfather, Wayne Line, who married into the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, and his daughter Norma made it her own.”
Ms. Spackman says she’s added “a bit more seasoning here, another little flavor there, but this pie defines me as a daughter, granddaughter, sister, and cousin.”
1 recipe Pie Day Committee’s Crust (page 693) or store-bought pie dough
8 ounces boneless pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into ½-inch pieces
1 small onion, finely chopped
1¼ pounds red potatoes, peeled and cut into ¼-inch pieces
½ teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
¾ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground coriander
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. Divide the dough in half and roll each piece out on a lightly floured work surface to a 12-inch circle, about ⅛ inch thick. Fit one dough round into a 9-inch pie plate and transfer the second one to a lightly floured parchment-paper-lined baking sheet. Cover both and refrigerate until needed.
2. Place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 425°F.
3. Bring the pork and 3 cups water to a simmer in a large saucepan. Cook for 30 minutes.
4. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes, until the onion is tender.
5. Drain the pork and onion, reserving ½ cup of the cooking water. Transfer the pork and onion to a large bowl.
6. Meanwhile, in a separate pot, bring the potatoes and 1 quart water to a simmer. Cook for 5 to 7 minutes, until tender. Drain.
7. Add the cloves, cinnamon, allspice, cumin, coriander, and cayenne to the meat and toss to combine. Stir in the potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste, then stir in the reserved ½ cup of liquid.
8. Pour the pork mixture into the dough-lined pie plate. Top with a second dough round and crimp the edges. Cut a couple of slits in the top crust. Bake for 30 minutes, until the crust is golden brown.
9. Let sit for 10 minutes before serving.
SERVES 8
MIAMI, FLORIDA
Elana Garces’s great-grandfather moved from South China to Cuba in 1930 to work the sugarcane, and married the daughter of a Cuban coworker. “They moved to Miami before World War Two and sold vegetables in the market,” Ms. Garces says. “They also sold rice and beans and meat pies and carne. Later, they had a little store and some rental apartments.” Ms. Garces’s great-grandfather played the ukulele and loved to eat everything from Cuba and Miami—but not beef meatloaf, which he said was disgusting.
“One Thanksgiving he made a Chinese steamed meatloaf from a recipe he found in a Chinese American cookbook,” she says. “Then my mother made it better. And I made it better again. My great-grandfather was very proud when I became an ophthalmologist,” she says, “but he was most proud of my Chinese steamed pork loaf. He said that if I didn’t make it for his funeral, he would come back and haunt me. He died last year when he was a hundred and one years old and I have not seen him since.”
2 duck or large chicken eggs
2 tablespoons soy sauce
½ teaspoon rice vinegar
1 pound ground pork
1 pound fresh water chestnuts, scrubbed and peeled, or two 8-ounce cans, rinsed and drained, coarsely chopped
4 scallions, green and white parts, finely chopped
2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon rice wine
2 teaspoons kosher salt
½ teaspoon Chinese red chili oil
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil, plus more for the pan
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon dry sherry
2 tablespoons fermented black beans
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
1. The day before serving, place the eggs in a small pot and cover with cold water by ½ inch. Add 1 tablespoon of the soy sauce and the vinegar and bring to a boil over medium heat. Remove from the heat, cool the eggs in the soy water completely, and refrigerate overnight.
2. Peel and halve the eggs, discard the whites, and chop the yolks.
3. In a large bowl, combine the remaining 1 tablespoon soy sauce with the pork, water chestnuts, scallions, cilantro, rice wine, salt, chili oil, sesame oil, and sugar. Use your hands to combine well. In a small bowl, stir together the cornstarch and sherry, add to the meat, and combine well.
4. Place half the meat on a large sheet of plastic wrap and shape into an 11 x 5-inch rectangle. Sprinkle the egg yolks down the center of the meat. Place the black beans in a column along either side of the egg, then sprinkle the sesame seeds over the meat.
5. Cover with the remaining meat mixture and press gently to seal the edges, then wrap tightly in the plastic wrap, put on a heatproof plate that will fit into a steamer, and refrigerate for 2 hours.
6. If you have a steamer, pour 1 quart of water in the bottom of it and arrange the rack. Or make a steamer by placing a rack or heatproof plate in the bottom of a large pot with a tight-fitting cover. Add enough water to almost reach the bottom of the rack and bring to a boil. Carefully add the meatloaf, cover the pot, and steam over high heat for 20 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer registers 150°F.
7. Transfer the meatloaf to a carving board and let cool. Remove the plastic wrap and slice the pork loaf. Serve.
SERVES 6 TO 8
