How America’s Best Pork Chop is Made at NYC's #1 Restaurant

[upbeat music]

This is Paul Carmichael from Kabawa here

in the East Village.

We're about to make our Can Can,

an incredible piece of pork.

Here we go.

[upbeat music]

[bell ringing]

At Kabawa, we do Pan-Caribbean cuisine.

We span the entire region

of English, Dutch, Spanish, French, Caribbean.

Whatever you can find there,

you could find here at any given point.

Can Can is a dish for Puerto Rico.

It is a pork chop.

It's crispy skin, pork belly, pork loin.

It is seasoned with recaito, coriander and black pepper,

then roasted to about medium.

Then we slice it, serve it with a pork jus and culantro oil.

[upbeat music]

This is the Can Can cut.

Every pork chop here starts out with the whole loin.

You have loin, belly, and skin.

And this is one side of a pork barrel.

Our butcher Jin cuts it daily, taking a whole side of pork

and cutting it into chops.

And we aim to get each chop a little bit over a kilo.

This pork, it comes from a small Amish farm in PA.

Shout out Happy Valley.

We get two or three of 'em a week.

Jin is just about to cut chops from it.

There's not a whole lot of butchers that I know

is gonna give us this cut

because it's not like a commercial cut per se.

So doing it yourself is pretty much the only option.

The chops are now off the side.

We're gonna move into scoring the skin,

and I'm gonna take my trusty box cutter,

I'm just gonna score this all the way down.

This fat here will render a bit,

and this skin will get all crispy and puffy.

And once it's cooked,

it becomes frilly to look like a can can dress.

We're all done scoring, and these are ready to be cooked.

[pork sizzling] [upbeat music]

The pork has been cut, scored,

and we'll just season it with salt.

Ah, look at that.

So much better.

Get in between the nooks and the crannies.

We cook this pork chop like this

so that this part, the loin,

isn't overcooked by the time we serve it.

So we're just gonna go in stages.

[pork sizzling]

And this is gonna be the fun bit.

Traditionally, this is a deep fried dish.

This part you wanna go nice and slow

to get the little sections all crispy, crispy crunchy.

But for this, it just takes a little bit of time.

That's it.

You're chasing just getting the skin crispy,

and you don't need a whole lot of heat.

You can see here now that we're going slow,

all these little bubbles, the skin's getting nice and crispy

and we'll just keep going.

You wanna spend as much time as you can on the skin

because that's the hardest part in this whole thing to nail,

is getting the skin nice and crispy.

Most butchers aren't gonna have this cut.

You could probably find this

like in Puerto Rican neighborhoods here in the city.

What I'm doing too is I'm listening

to the water escape from the skin causing the puffing.

So that's gonna inform me on when I need to stop.

Doing this during service is a lot of fun for my meat cook.

[Paul laughing]

So the skin's looking pretty good.

It's all puffy and crispy and golden.

Now we're just gonna go sear it really quickly.

So I'm just gonna make the oil hot,

hotter than it was because we're searing.

As we all know, you've watched a ton of cooking shows.

Once it's golden, we'll flip it,

do the same thing on the other side.

[gentle music]

This is being seared to have a bit of Maillard reaction.

That bit is just very, very tasty.

That's the major reason why it's being seared.

We're just gonna come out back onto our rack.

This is still rare, and it's seasoning time now.

[upbeat music]

So we go recaito.

It is a base seasoning

that starts a lot of dishes in Puerto Rico.

A mixture of onion, aji dulces, garlic, oregano

that we dry and make into a powder.

Get that on there pretty generous.

And then from here is just a mix of black pepper

and coriander.

Other side.

It is pretty raw right now, but the skid's crispy.

It's all seasoned,

and we're just gonna go into the oven at 400 degrees

until the loin right here reaches 145 degrees,

which is about medium.

Then we'll take it out, rest it, slice it, serve it.

[upbeat music]

So the pork's in the oven, this sauce is really simple.

It is just literally pork bones and water.

We just boil it until it's flavorful

and then reduce that liquid, and this is what you get.

Nothing crazy,

and that's just to give the dish a bit of moisture.

[upbeat music]

Pork's out of the oven.

Just pay attention to the temperatures.

So you want this to be 140, 145.

Get a thermometer and monitor it as you go.

The pork has been rested for about seven minutes,

and we'll take the bone off, and now we slice.

This bit's gonna be for me.

Want a piece of pork?

[Rachel] Sure.

You can go, Rachel.

Thank you. [Rachel chewing]

From here, just onto the plate,

all these wonderful juices,

you could pour right back over the pork.

Bone for prosperity.

Now we're back to our pork jus,

add a little bit of culantro oil.

Culantro is a leaf, and it tastes like amped up cilantro.

There are many names for it.

Recao, sawtooth coriander, culantro, and that's it.

Swine at its best.

I love this preparation.

So you have the belly here into the loin,

and I love fat,

so I'll eat the belly bit and get some oil.

This will be crispy, into meaty, into fatty

and [Paul chewing] I'm all in.

The reason why we cook this so slow and so long

is to achieve that crunchiness.

This checks the Kabawa box because one, it's very tasty.

This is a high quality piece of produce

that's been treated really well and kindly,

and we try to honor it here,

and this is very representative of a place

today being Puerto Rico.

I think people don't realize how big it is when they get it.

One good thing is that the people that have had Can Can

in its original form, like this guy.

I really love this dish because as you eat it,

there are different experiences.

Gnawing on the bone's different

than eating a piece of loin, than some belly.

There's just all these joyous moments,

especially if you're a fat lover.

It's true.

I love fat.

Like this, oh my God.

See now I'm like just gnawing on this thing like a psycho.

I love pork, man.

I hope you have fun trying to cook this at home.

I hope you find a butcher that you can get this from.

This will be a joyous experience, both cooking and eating.

[upbeat music]