The Pork Red chili is all about beef, but with green chili, pork is king I tried a few different cuts, including sirloin, belly, countrystyle ribs, and shoulder The shoulder and sirloin fared the best, maintaining moisture and favor throughout the cooking The belly was simply too fatty, and while parts of the ribs were great, other sections cut nearer to the lean loin of the pig were much too dry Pork shoulder requires a bit more work than sirloin to get ready for stewing (boning, trimming away excess fat), but it’s significantly cheaper, which gives it an edge in my book In my previous chili experiments, I’d found that browning small pieces of meat is a very inefficient method, and that it’s much better to brown whole cuts and cut them up afterward With shoulder, that’s a little more difficult—you basically have to dismantle the whole thing to clean and bone it properly My solution? Use the same method I use for the Texas chili con carne: rather than browning all of the pork, brown only half of it, but allow the pot to develop a rich, deep brown fond before adding the onions and the rest of the pork The coloring built up by the first batch of pork is more than adequate to give the finished dish a rich, meaty flavor On top of that, the tender texture of the unbrowned pork is far superior to that of the browned stuff Stovetop Versus Oven The only question remaining was how to cook the dish Oftentimes, for short-simmered sauces, I’ll ’em directly on the stovetop, just keeping an eye on them as they cook to prevent them from burning However, for braised dishes that need to be cooked for upward of or hours, the oven shows a couple of distinct advantages On the stovetop, the stew cooks only from the bottom, which can lead to food burning on the bottom of the pot if you aren’t careful An oven mitigates this by heating from all sides at the same time Moreover, a gas or electric flame set at a certain heat level is a constant-energy-output system, meaning that at any given time, it is adding energy to the pot above it at a set rate An oven, on the other hand, is a constant-temperature system That is, it’s got a thermostat that controls the temperature of the air inside, adding energy only as needed in order to keep the temperature in the same basic range That means that whether you are cooking a giant pot of stew or the Derek Zoolander Stew for Ants, it’ll ... rich, deep brown fond before adding the onions and the rest of the pork The coloring built up by the first batch of pork is more than adequate to give the finished dish a rich, meaty flavor On top of that, the tender... shows a couple of distinct advantages On the stovetop, the stew cooks only from the bottom, which can lead to food burning on the bottom of the pot if you aren’t careful An oven mitigates this by heating from all sides at the same time... dismantle the whole thing to clean and bone it properly My solution? Use the same method I use for the Texas chili con carne: rather than browning all of the pork, brown only half of it, but allow the