In order to create your favorite dishes whether you are shopping for pork at a supermarket or a local market, pork should be selected for its light pink color. Avoid pork that is pale, greenish, or has white spots scattered throughout, as well as pork that is overly red because it may have been injected with color enhancers. Furthermore, the fat on the pork should be white (if it is yellowish, the pork may be near its expiration date or is no longer fresh. Additionally, when you press on the pork, the meat should feel firm and spring back without leaving a dent. By following these guidelines, you can ensure that you will be able to choose fresh pork for your favorite recipes.
How do various cuts of pork differ from each other, and what recipes are they suited for?
Pork Loin: A cut with a lot of lean meat with a slight amount of marbling, making it moderately tender where it is not too soft nor too tough. Pork loin is ideal for frying, grilling, or roasting, and is commonly cooked as pork steak, tonkatsu, grilled pork, or marinated to tender.
Pork Tenderloin: Long and lean meat with very little marbling, making it the most tender cut. Whether boiled, stir-fried, added to curry, fried, baked, roasted, or grilled, this cut is delicious in any dish. However, it is most commonly cooked into char siu, tenderloin pork steak, or marinated to tender.
Pork Hip: The coarsest, toughest, and most fibrous cut, making it suitable for stewing, stir-frying or finely grounded into minced pork. It can be cooked into different dishes such as pork braised in 5-spices (Pa-lo) stew, sweet pork, and spicy pork soup.
Pork Collar: A cut with marbled fat running through. It is most popularly grilled or made into shabu-shabu or sukiyaki due to the meat’s natural tenderness and juiciness due to the marbling.
Pork Neck: A cut with a lot of marbled fat. It is not used in a wide variety of dishes, but rather mostly grilled into popular dishes such as grilled pork neck and pork neck salad. The fat melts when exposed to heat, creating a particularly aromatic and mouthwatering flavor.
Pork Ribs: A cut that includes the pork bone with some meat attached. Pork ribs can be used in various dishes, such as the popular barbecued spare ribs, sauce-roasted ribs, garlic fried ribs, or boiled to make a sweet broth.
Pork Hock (or Pork Leg): A cut with a lot of tendons, and is commonly stewed into dishes such as braised pork leg with rice. A slow-cooking method allows the meat to become tender, while tendons become soft and gelatinous.
Pork Belly: A cut that consists of skin, fat, and layers of meat, making it a versatile cut that is suitable for various cooking methods such as stir-frying, boiling, steaming, stews and curries, frying, grilling, and hot pot. However, when it comes to pork belly, a signature dish has to be crispy pork belly and soy-braised pork belly.
To enjoy Yakiniku or shabu-shabu at its best, choose sliced pork from the following 3 cuts:
Sliced Pork Loin: Offers moderate tenderness with a slight chew that is not too tough.
Sliced Pork Belly: Provides a soft, tender texture with a mouthwatering, rich aroma from the pork fat.
Sliced Pork Neck: Juicy tenderness due to its marbling coupled with a natural sweetness from the meat.
How does ground pork differ from minced pork?
Many might not be aware that ground pork and minced pork are different in terms of the cuts of meat used. Ground pork often includes fatty parts, resulting in a softer, juicier texture, while minced pork typically uses leaner cuts, making its texture coarser and tougher.
