My favourite meal when I was aged 6 wasn't fish fingers and chips, nor was it alphabetti spaghetti (which didn't exist 50 years ago!), nor was it a McDisgusting burger - they weren't in the UK 50 years ago!
No, it was the glorious Pig's Trotter!
Mom could buy a trotter for 3d (three old pennies) from the butcher and one would feed a hungry little girl for tea, with some stew veg cooked in the broth. I used to love sucking the little bones. The skin tasted so good!
When you buy the trotter, ask the butcher to split it down the middle. At home, put it in a bowl and pour a kettle of boiling water over it. This will make sure there are no nasties there. The butcher washes all the muck and grot off before the pig is cut up anyway.
Put it into a large saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil. Scum will rise to the top, and you have to skim it off with a spoon. Throw it away. To be on the safe side you can also throw this water away and put more into the pan. Add an onion halved, a couple of carrots chopped into 4, and some bayleaves and peppercorns if you have them. Bring back to the boil and simmer for about 3 hours.
That's it: the trotter is cooked. Don't pour the cooking liquid away, just use a slotted spoon to take it out of the pan. Now you could put it into a soup dish and sit and eat it. Or another thing you could do is take the meat off the bones and put the meat into a bowl. Pour some of the stock from the pot over it, and you have a basic brawn. When it goes cold, have it in sandwiches.
If you don't like the idea of eating a pig's foot, then use something called a "hock". This is the part of the leg just up from the pig's ankle. It's a bit like a lamb shank, and we all know how delicious they are! My favourite way of serving a hock is with butter beans and cabbage. You can get ham hocks, which are cured. They are even more tasty. (Morrisons sell them for £2. They are so delicious!)
By the way, if you think the £2 is expensive, you will be feeding more than one person for more than one meal with this ingredient. You've only used one pot, one ring. You haven't had to put the whole oven on. It's always worth spending more on something that goes further. Besides which it's the price of a burger and fries which feeds one person for a snack. And you've cooked it yourself, which gives you a bit of a glow!
Love this page. We also used to have pigs trotters... a few years ago they were so out of fashion that I had to order them and then the butcher gave them to me free of charge. There's a way the rich and famous have trotters double cooked... prepared as above, but then with a honey glaze poured over them and then roasted for 3/4 hour.
ReplyDeleteHOCK
ReplyDeleteI love to cook a hock, then use the liquor to cook the potatoes and shredded cabbage which will go with the meat. The flavour is brilliant.