'Cheaper than Chips' Ham Hock - and what to do with it!

The ham 'hock' or 'knuckle' is literally the ankle of the pig. Although there may be a lot of bone in this cut, you can get lucky and find one with quite a lot of meat on the bone!
Ham hocks are readily available and extremely popular around here, but you may have to ask your butcher. They come in both smoked and salt cured varieties. I don't think you will ever find one that is not cured in some form or other.
Although you will always have to buy your hock with the bone in, you couldn't ask for anything more reasonable in cost, the joint I bought above cost the grand sum of £1.49! and with enough meat to feed 4 people.....amazing!
But the ham hock has other uses than just it's delicious meat. It will always come with the skin attached which you can use to make that scrumptious delicacy 'crackling', and once your hock is cooked you will have a fabulous stock that makes a great base for a tasty sauce or a soup such as green pea & ham, or bacon, butternut squash & lentil.

So how do we go about treating this cheap as chips delicacy?....... firstly when you get it home I advise you to soak it overnight in cold water.....and do store it in the fridge whilst doing this!
A good bit of the curing salt will then seep out, if you did decide to cook it without soaking, you will find it and your stock extremely salty and possibly unusable.....so be warned.  If you don't have the time or space to allow it to steep then you can just put it in a deep pot, cover with cold water, bring to the boil then pour off this salty excess and begin again as below.........

Next we place it in a large deep saucepan and add 2 carrots, 2 sticks of celery, 1 large onion all cut in large dice, 6 whole peeled cloves garlic, a few black peppercorns, a bay-leaf or two, and maybe cloves if you like the flavour.
Cover with cold water, bring to the boil then simmer for approx 1 hour or until the meat is tender enough to pierce with a fork easily.

Remove your hock from its bath and place on a roasting tray.....you can let it cool and enjoy it like this, but I do love it roasted!
Remove the outer skin and place on a chopping board, allow to cool so it can be handled.
As that is cooling, you can place your hock in a pre-heated oven 180oC and let it roast until brown and crisp all over. This will just finish the cooking of your joint and you will be left with a deliciously crispy outer coating and a melt in the mouth meaty interior.
To make the crackling, scrape away any excess fat then cut the skin into thin strips, place on a baking sheet and put on the lower shelf of the oven, cook until crisp.......eat them hot or cold, whatever is your pleasure!
When your joint has finished roasting the meat will be so tender it will fall apart, so scrape and shred the meat while still warm and eat straight away or chill for later. You can enjoy it with gravy, try it in a pie, a quiche, add it to an omelette or a pasta dish.....even have it cold in a sandwich......YUM!

Strain the vegetables from your stock, the stock may still be quite salty so I advise you to taste it....then you can chill and freeze the stock in small amounts or even in ice cube trays which make convenient cubes that you can just drop into a sauce, a soup or even a casserole to add a touch extra flavour.
See my next post to find out what I used the delicious meat for!