100 Best Recipes Ever: Pork, Beef & Ribs

By Food & Wine
Updated February 27, 2017
F&W's editors combed through the more than 10,000 recipes we've published in our 35 years of existence to find the very best. We only had room for the 20 Best Ever Recipes in print, but here we present the full 100 greatest dishes of all time.
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Pork Cheek and Black-Eyed Pea Chili

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Michael Symon defines himself as a “porketarian,” saying he can’t get enough of the meat. For his luscious chili, he uses incredibly flavorful and succulent pork cheeks—an unusual cut worth seeking out. If pork cheeks aren’t available, pork shoulder (cut into 2-inch pieces) can be substituted.

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Braised Pork with Cherry Gravy

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Michel Nischan’s braised sweet-and-savory pork melts in your mouth. It’s perfect with the creamy leeks and fennel.

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Aleppo-Pepper-Pork-and-Fennel Sandwiches

Credit: © Antonis Achilleos
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For these delicious roast pork sandwiches, Chicago chef Tony Mantuano spreads a rub of garlic and spicy Aleppo pepper on boneless pork shoulder or pork leg.

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Spicy Ginger Pork in Lettuce Leaves

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Annabel Langbein often travels to Hong Kong to meet with the printers who work on her cookbooks. At a Cantonese restaurant opposite her hotel in North Point, she tasted a version of this dish, served with piles of lettuce leaves and bowls of finely minced squab for diners to make their own salad cups. In her riff on that, Langbein uses chopped pork instead of squab; the recipe is also good with any poultry.

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Herb-Roasted Pork Subs with Garlicky Spinach

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To create this outstanding sandwich, Matt Neal rubs pork shoulder with an herb-and-garlic mixture and then slow-roasts it for hours (“Forever,” he says). He piles the meat high with pickled peppers and spinach sautéed with garlic. One key to the sandwich is to slice the pork very thinly; to do so, be sure the pork is very cold and use a deli slicer or a thin, sharp knife.

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Chinese-Style Ribs with Guava Barbecue Sauce

Credit: © Tina Rupp
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Grilling maverick Steven Raichlen created these fragrant spiced ribs that get brushed with a sticky, tropical barbecue sauce.

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Pork Medallions with Onion Marmalade

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Cooking the onions in butter and sugar gives an uncommonly beautiful sheen to this rich, tangy marmalade.

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Chicken-Fried Steak with Redeye Curry Gravy

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Top Chef star Dale Talde serves his outstanding, crispy fried steak with a richly flavored gravy spiked with curry powder, coffee and Sriracha chile sauce.

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Latin Grilled Rib Eye Steak with Green Chile Aioli

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The secret to creating a terrific crust on a well-marbled cut of beef: rubbing on a salty-sweet spice mix and letting the meat air dry before grilling.

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Parmesan and Herb-Crusted Beef Tenderloin

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This glorious, pepper-rubbed roasted beef tenderloin is coated with herbed bread crumbs that have been mixed with anchovies, which add a nice pungent accent to the rich meat. The roast beef is served with a simple, flavorful red wine sauce.

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Beef Sirloin with Piquillo Peppers and Capers

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Meat Loaf Stuffed with Prosciutto and Spinach

Credit: © Quentin Bacon
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This luxurious yet easy take on classic meat loaf gets stuffed with spinach, carrots, prosciutto and cheese. The vegetables can be leftovers, says Mario Batali: “Just make sure they’re cooked long enough to be very soft—if they’re al dente, the meat loaf will tear when you slice it and wreck your day.” Mild and tangy caciocavallo cheese, made in Italy from cow’s milk, is excellent in the filling, but provolone is a fine substitute.

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Honey-Glazed Baby Back Ribs with Whiskey Marinade

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At his restaurants, Andy Ricker roasts these meaty, tender ribs for two to three hours over a low fire for a fabulously smoky flavor. In this easy adaptation, the ribs are slow-cooked in the oven, then finished on the grill.

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Glazed Asian Baby Back Ribs

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Ratha Chau makes the fruity glaze for these irresistible baby back ribs with tamarind paste and shrimp paste, which can be tricky to find. Here, we use mango chutney to re-create the sweetness in the glaze for the ribs, and Asian fish sauce to approximate the flavor of shrimp paste.

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Crispy Deep-Fried Ribs

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One reason these ribs are so impossibly good is that they’re braised for hours and then deep-fried so they’re supercrisp. The sauce—which includes ketchup and plenty of garlic—was originally concocted for chicken wings.

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Tuscan Baby Back Ribs

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