Ham Hock

Today Chance and I got our Kitchen Groove on and rocked the kitchen like the crazy days of professional cooking. What a blast,we needed the good time and the feeling of getting a job done well.
In my post earlier today I had totally forgotten we had a pork leg, foot and all curing in the fridge.This little piggy made the fridge too full for today's projects of starting the curing of Smoked Salmon and making Caviar so into the smoker it went,it was time any way. Chance had cut the trotter/foot from the leg and left the hock whole.The hock is nice because of the way the leg was cut we actually got part of the lower end of what would be the ham.

This little piggy is for the smoker.


And this little piggy is for soup.





After the trotter came out of the smoker Chance baked it in our oven to make sure it was up to temp.Once it is cool we will cut apart the larger piece,trim the skin away and divide it up into two packages for the freezer.We will keep the trotter which is mostly gristle and fat,will go into a freezer bag with the skin we trim from the hock.Both the trotter and the skin will make a rich soup stock for cold weather meals. People often over look the "trashy" bits of fatty meat but when making soup stock they add a richness to your stock that can't be beat.You can always fish out the fatty bits before you serve your soup if you don't want to eat them.
I am very happy with the Hocks.We paid $3.75 at our local market for the meat a much better buy than buying a good quality ham hock from the butcher shop.I also know there are no nitrates in the meat and well I get to kiss the cook who created these gorgeous bits.
Once we had the hock in the smoker we started in on making the Caviar.I am going to post that separately so I can go over it step by step and not have a huge blog entry for now.

Until tomorrow here's a shot of the roe before we turned it into Caviar.


Cheers, Chance and Rois