Ham hock | Yummy Lummy

In February I won a competition on radio station 2CC. I won $50 worth of meat from Elite Meats at Kippax Fair in Holt (in the North of Canberra).

Today it felt like a good day to cook the smoked ham hock I chose.

Elite Meats smoked ham hock

This is the ham hock thawing because I forgot to take it out of my freezer last night.

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I looked over a few recipes and while enamoured by many of them I decided to just make it up as I went along based on suggestions from a number of websites.

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This is a heavy duty meal so it needs heavy duty cookware.

My casserole

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I thought I should add some nectar of the gods. It is such a shame I have a liver that cannot metabolise ethanol, otherwise I’d drink this every day for my health. Not to worry I did see a recipe that used beer rather than wine.

XXXX Gold. XXXX sponsor the XXXX Queensland Maroons. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the XXXX Queensland Maroons and state of origin rugby league. By far and away the greatest game of all. The first state of origin game will be soon. Can Queensland make it eight years in a row?

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Of course man cannot live on meat and beer alone so there are vegetables included.

I forgot to include the Brussels sprouts in the image :-/

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It’s a fairly simple dish to make. I chopped onions and added them to some olive oil in a saucepan on a low heat. I waited for the onion to soften nicely before adding some balsamic vinegar and brown sugar. Once that was simmering and well incorporated I added the tomatoes. When the tomatoes were soft I added the chopped celery and mushroom. When everything was really soft I started to prepare the casserole. I lined the bottom with thinly sliced red cabbage and laid the ham hock on top. I then added the contents of the saucepan and poured the stubby of XXXX GOLD into the casserole. I then added the carrots and Brussels sprouts. I put the casserole into a low oven (150 °C) for four hours.

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This is how it looked at about 3 hours

You can see the meat falling off the bones.

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After four hours I pulled the casserole out. My apartment has a delicious sweet smoky aroma to it. I plated up the slow cooked smoked ham hock on a bed of noodles.

Okay, it’s doesn’t look that colourful and I captured the image before I added some continental parsley.

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I didn’t add any salt or seasoning like a stock cube because I knew there would be so much flavour in the ham plus the flavour of the balsamic vinegar, sugar and onion really came through. I expect I may blow the sheets off the bed tonight after eating so much cabbage, onion and Brussels sprouts. It’s a good thing it’s just me

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Voting closes in a couple of days

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Ham hock
Definition
Noun (n) (a small cut of meat from the leg just above the foot)
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_hock

XXXX Queensland Maroons Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/queenslandmaroons

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This week I watched an episode of Nigella’s Kitchen where she cooked pig hocks. While I didn’t have a pig hock it was easy enough to buy a rolled piece of pork with some rind on it. I knew it would require gentle cooking and could not be treated like a hock.

I placed the pork on some onions in a baking tray and then placed into a hot oven (220 °C) for 20 minutes to sear the skin. I pulled the pork out and poured some XXXX Gold ale over it and added a quartered royal gala apple and a potato. I put some foil over this and placed into a moderate oven (160 °C) for 90 minutes. I then pulled the meat out and turned the oven back up to 220 °C, uncovered the meat and returned it to the oven for 20 minutes.

I pulled the meat, apple and potato out and then heated the onion and juices to make a sauce. This was by a simple reduction.

The crackling was crisp and the meat was okay. It wasn’t as tender as I’m sure Nigella’s hock would be. It had a nice flavour.

Next time I’ll use an hock.