Pork Cheeks - Meishan

What makes cheeks so good? Relatively lean, yet very moist meat. There are few parts of the animal for which this is true. Usually, you need marbled fat to get the same degree of tenderness—say, in the neck region, the shoulders, or in parts of the brisket. But cheek meat is like hock meat—the same kind of lean meat connected by lots of tissues and collagen. Cook it for a long time, and the meat breaks down into hockey-puck-sized nuggets of fork-tender flesh.