BEER-BRAISED PORK KNUCKLES

BEER-BRAISED PORK KNUCKLES image

Yield 4

Number Of Ingredients 9

2 teaspoons sea salt or 1 teaspoon pouring salt
1 teaspoon caraway seeds (cumin seeds)
2 garlic cloves (I added 3)
2 pork knuckles/hocks, their rind scored
2 onions (I added 3)
2 eating apples, cored and quartered
4 baking potatoes or just under 1 kg main crop potatoes, cut into quarters
500 ml good amber or dark beer
500 ml boiling water (I didn't have to use it)

Steps:

Preheat oven to 220 C. Put salt, caraway seeds, grated garlic and mix everything well together. Rub the mixture into the pork hocks. Peel the onions, slice into rounds and cover the bottom of the roasting tin with them. Sit the hocks on top and cook in the oven for 30 minutes. Take the tin out and quickly arrange apples, potatoes around the hocks and pour half the beer over. Put back into the oven for 2 hours and lover the temperature to 170 C. Turn the oven up again to 220 C, baste the hocks with the rest of the beer and leave to cook at the higher temperature for another 30 minutes. Take the tin out of the oven and transfer the apples and potatoes to a warmed dish. Lift the hocks onto a carving board, leaving the onion and juices in the tin. Put the tin on the hob over a medium heat and add 500 ml boiling water (I had enough juices and didn't have to add water), stirring to de-glaze the pan and make gravy. Nigella doesn't write about that but my Hubby took a sieve and put onions and apples with juices through it - it made nice, thick gravy. Take the crackling off the pork and break into pieces, pull apart or carve the meat and serve with potatoes, gravy and maybe some German mustard. Bon appétit!