“You could add it to anything where you’d typically want some salty porky flavor notes,” Cho says. Just a few years ago, she noticed that pork floss could be a fluffy substitution for bacon, and something just clicked. Cho, who ate pork floss in traditional Chinese dishes growing up, says she still discovers new uses for it today. Flip through her cookbook Mooncakes and Milkbread, and you’re greeted with a mouth-watering photo of her popular Pork Floss and Seaweed Pull-Apart Rolls. Kristina Cho, a James Beard award-winning cookbook author and voracious home baker, always keeps a spare jar of Formosa pork floss in her kitchen. “And Taiwanese people just like salty and savory things together.” “It’s pasty and binds all the pork floss,” she says. Of all her culinary tests, her most surprising pork floss pairing is peanut butter. These days she manages a busy schedule, so she reaches for store-bought pork floss to season dishes like pineapple fried rice and pineapple pizza. Chef Ivy Chen, who’s taught Taiwanese cooking classes in Taipei since 1997, remembers sneaking bites of her mother’s homemade pork floss directly from the wok and eating it with her congee, Taiwanese sushi, and taro cakes. In Taiwan, pork floss has become a fixture in casual breakfasts and small dishes. So really, it’s no surprise that this preservation technique survives today in these savory, porky tufts.

Folklore aside, what we do know is this: humans have feasted on dried meat since the beginning of civilization.

Mongolian hot pot