Comments on: Pork Cheek Ragù

By: Marc Matsumoto

Marc Matsumoto — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 08:05:00 +0000

Hi Becka, I'm glad to hear you've been enjoying it!

By: Becka Sipes

Becka Sipes — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 13:53:00 +0000

Hey, I just wanted to thank you for the amazing recipe. We've done it many times and it has always come out perfectly. We also use the pasta recipe practically on a weekly basis. Terrific. Your recipe makes us look like rockstars when we entertain!

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 02:16:00 +0000

i see, thanks for replying so promptly!

By: Marc Matsumoto

Marc Matsumoto — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:47:00 +0000

Veal tends to be a lot leaner, so braising them might end up making them dry and stringy. That said, I've never used veal cheeks specifically so I'm not sure.

By: Laura

Laura — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 02:54:00 +0000

hi marc, can I do this with veal cheeks? cheers

By: Marc Matsumoto

Marc Matsumoto — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 14:49:00 +0000

Thanks for the heads up, I had my suspicions they were different. In this case, I'm pretty sure this was jowel meat. I asked for cheek at an upscale Italian butcher in NYC and they gave me a frozen bag of really fatty meat labelled "jowel". When I defrosted it there were no big pieces, just a mess of fat and bits of meat. The pork cheeks I usually get at the Japanese butcher are bigger and have more uniform marbling (https://cdn.norecipes.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2009/10/chashu-toroniku-1.jpg).

By: WholeBeastButcher

WholeBeastButcher — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 14:31:00 +0000

Pork jowls and cheeks are not the same thing. You could not do this recipe with jowl's. They are to fatty. More so then belly or shoulder.

By: WholeBeastButcher

WholeBeastButcher — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 10:31:00 +0000

Pork jowls and cheeks are not the same thing. You could not do this recipe with jowl's. They are to fatty. More so then belly or shoulder.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 05:38:00 +0000

I made this last week and it was DELICIOUS! My butcher sells pork cheeks and pork jowls as two different things. So the jowl is almost all fat and skin, but the cheek is very lean. I asked for the jowl but when he showed it to me I knew it wasn't right, so I showed him your recipe and he said, "Oh, cheeks!" They had them frozen only, so he sliced me off to big steak-like pieces. When it thawed each slice was made up of lots of smaller pieces of cheek. The flavour was incredible, very rich, so I'm considering other things I might do with this cut of meat in the future. We had about one and a half cups left over, which I wasn't quite sure what to do with, but since I recently learned to make corn tortillas, I thought I might tun the leftover ragu into good pork taco meat by adding some chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. They were good, but I I think the flavour of the ragu is too strong to and too distinctive to switch gears to that degree. I do think that pork cheek tacos would be AH-MAZING seasoned with that goal in mind. Thanks so much for this wonderful recipe!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:38:00 +0000