I’m starting to realise that since I started trying to improve my cooking game my father started to drop by suspiciously more frequently at launch time.
So today I made this bourguignon style pork cheeks with puréed potatoes and snow peas and green asparagus.
It was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone :)
Bah! I just woke up and now I want dinner.
What’s the recipe, what are pork cheeks, and where does one obtain said pork cheeks?
Since every one already covered the cheeks I’ll share the recipe :)
Ingredients:
- 1.2 kg of pork cheeks
- 50 cl of okay-ish red wine
- 40 cl of veal / beef stock
- 200 gr of smoked pork belly
- 2 carrots
- 2 shallots
- some celeri
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 1 ts of tomato puree
- thyme, laurel
Instructions: It’s actually super simple. Lightly salt the cheeks and let them in the fridge for a while (preferably a night) to dry. Then pat dry the cheeks and brown them HARD then set them aside. Then you mince carrots, shallots, celeri and garlic and you heat them in the same pot in which you roasted the cheeks till shallots are translucent. Add the tomato puree, cook a bit. Deglaze with the wine, let it boil so alchool gets removed and then add the stock. Add the thyme & laurel, shove the pot to the oven for 3h at 145°c.
Once done, remove the cheeks, mix the sauce & reduce. Once reduced enough remove from the heat and add a bit of butter to make is brilliant and absolutely delicious.
It’s one of the cheapest meat around these days (about 10€ a kg), seemingly not popular but cooked long and slow it’s super nice.
As a bonus, the next day you can super easily turn the reminders into a shepered’s pie of some sort by layering pureed potatos with the cheeks in sauce.
Pork cheeks are literally the cheeks of a pig. Obtain from a butcher.
Are we talking cheeks the old fashioned term, or cheeks in the common vernacular.
The facial cheeks.
Interestingly the meaning of “cheek” to mean buttock seems to be a play on words - Chaucer describes Samson as having “no wepen but an asses’ cheek” - because at the time (1400) - the word cheek meant face, jaw and chin interchangeably.
We get ours from a butcher in the UK, and we also get cows cheek.
I’ve done pork cheek curry as they really suit a slow cook so as you eat them they just fall apart.
Cows cheek makes brilliant bolognaise or chilli, again cooked slowly and they just fall apart.
