I cooked the ham hock for 8 hours, mashed the roasted sesame sweet potato, and made pickles with capsicum, red onion, and spring onions.
Yummy Lummy Slow cooker Ham Hock recipe
This slow cooker ham hock is prolonging my porcine cravings. I thought about making pea and ham soup but instead pulled pork from the ham hock with some roughly mashed sweet potato and pickled vegetables.
Recipe
Yummy Lummy slow cooker ham hock with mashed sweet potato and pickled vegetables
Here’s a comforting slow cooker ham hock with mashed sweet potato and pickled vegetables meal for one with enough leftover for lunches.
Ham hock bits
- Ham hock
- Chicken stock
Sweet potato bits
- Sweet potato
- Sesame oil
- Sesame seeds
- Poppy seeds
- Olive oil
- Iodised salt
- Black pepper
- Sour cream
Pickled vegetable bits
- Capsicum
- Spring onions
- Red onion
- Lime juice
- Vinegar
- Iodised salt
- Brown sugar
Ham hock part
- Put the ham hock into the slow cooker
- Cover the ham hock with about 1 litre of chicken stock
- Cook the ham hock for 8 hours
- When the ham hock has cooked remove it from the cooking vessel and discard the liquid
- Remove and discard the skin and fat
- Shred the meat and leave in a bowl
Sweet potato part
- Wash the sweet potato
Cut the sweet potato into cubes roughly 1 cm3
- Put them into a mixing bowl and add a good spurt of sesame oil and a slug of olive oil
- Use your hands to make sure you coat all the surfaces of the cubed sweet potato with the oil
- Add in the sesame seeds, poppy seeds, iodised salt and black pepper and use your hands to mix it all thoroughly
- Spread the sweet potato out on a baking tray and place it into a hot oven (250 °C/480 °F) for 35 minutes or until the sweet potato is soft enough so a butter knife penetrates it easily with almost no resistance
- Put the the sweet potato into a mixing bowl and mash it roughly
- You can do it smoothly if you like but I like being rough with my mashed starches
- It’s quite satisfying to have a rough mash, the mouthfeel in my opinion is better
Pickled vegetables part
- Wash a green capsicum and them roughly dice it
- Chop a red onion into small pieces
- Slice a spring onion
- Put the capsicum, red onion and spring onion into a sealable container
- Add some white vinegar
- Add some lime juice
- Add some iodised salt
- Add some brown sugar
- I did this a few hours ahead of time and made enough so I’d have some for the following night for dinner
The plating up part
- Spoon some mashed sweet potato onto a dinner plate
- Add the pulled pork from the ham hock on top of the mashed sweet potato
- Spoon some of the pickled vegetables and place next to the mashed sweet potato
- As an option add a dollop of sour cream
The blogging part
- Shoot a photograph
- Eat the meal
- Wash the dishes
- Write the recipe
- Write the blog post
- Hope your friends and readers share the post on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest
Disclaimer
I have no culinary training nor qualifications.
This post is not intended to convey any health or medical advice. If you have any health concerns about anything you read, please contact your registered medical practitioner.
The quantities are indicative. Feel free to vary the quantities to suit your taste.
I deliberately do not calculate energy for dishes. I deliberately default to 500 Calories or 500,000 calories because I do not make these calculations.
Photographs
This is a gallery of photographs. Click on one thumbnail to open the gallery and then scroll through the photos.
Questions and answers
Why rough rather than smooth?
It’s like peanut paste; I always go for crunchy rather than smooth. Smooth suggests fancy. I’m not fancy. Rough is also tough. Rough gonococci, unlike smooth gonococci, can evade the complement system and go on to cause disseminated gonococcal infection (DGI) and create havoc in joints, the heart and occasionally the brain.
Final thoughts
Do you like eating ham hock?
Do you like it rough?
Did you ever think I’d mention gonococci in a recipe post?
Funny, I’ve never thought of doing ham hough in a slow cooker but it makes perfect sense. Great recipe! And ten out of ten for managing to squeeze gonococci into a blog post…
Hehe, I’m a big fan of the gonococcus. It’s such a pretty bacterium.
Do you prefer baking your taters before mashing instead of boiling the heck out of them? I can imagine baked ones would make for a rougher texture. Yours sound delicious and I’m not a fan of sweet taters!
Baking means less absorbed water, so the sweet potatoes are stiffer. I do the same for pumpkin too.
Potatoes aren’t so bad because they don’t absorb as much water when they are boiled.
Baking also means getting some caramelisation on the sweet potatoes or pumpkin, especially if they are tossed in a little oil first.
I must have missed your punkin baking. I bake mine then puree it for freezing.
I love mashed pumpkin. I also like mashing sweet potato and pumpkin together.
sweet taters sort of look like squash anyway! :o)
Haven’t had a smoked pork hock in ages. My mom would make and serve it with sauerkraut … of which I am not a fan. I enjoy the pork hops in bean soup.
PS: Not a fan of crunchy peanut butter but a nice piece of ham sliced off the bone in a sandwich spread with smooth peanut butter is delicious. 🙂
I didn’t think of sauerkraut for this pork. I don’t mind it.
Now I need to try a ham and peanut paste sandwich. I reckon I’d want to add a slice of cheese and grill it too.
‘peanut paste’ … you Aussies have such funny names for things. 🙂
See picture at bottom of this page.
https://aboleyn01.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/tri-colour-quinoa-honey-whole-wheat-sourdough-loaf-and-sd-english-muffins/
Because I’m an older Australian (not yet a senior Australian) I remember when some states (including Queensland where I grew up) had legislation prohibiting the use of the word butter for anything other than real butter. It was legislation promulgated by the strong dairy interests in the early 20th century. Being a curmudgeon-in-training, I don’t change with the times, I persist in using old-fashioned terms. It annoys many people I speak with 😂
I like using old fashioned terms … means you’ve got experience. (And I’m a word snob.)
😂😂😂
I do like the idea of peanut paste and ham.
For ham hock and meats, I like it rough. But I like it smooth when it comes to pastes like peanut butter or chocolate spreads. And ice-cream too 😀
I always have a jar of crunchy peanut paste at work with a big spoon. Lately, I’ve been enjoying a couple of spoons every day.
It’s true, for Nutella, I like it smooth 😃
Nutella needs to be smooth. No questions asked. Some things the smoother, the better 😃
I think I may have shared before how I like to dip a spoonful of crunchy peanut paste into some soft Nutella and then lick it like an ice cream 😃😃😃
I think you did. How about peanut paste, Nutella and ice-cream all combined as one dessert 😃
Oh yea baby, I’m down for that. A little whipped cream and it’s a perfect sundae.
Sauce of your choice. Topped with sprinkles and nuts 😃
Caramel, always caramel with crushed Queensland nuts. Now I want ice cream. Mabel the Temptress has done it again 😂😂😂