Hello! And yess! I’m back and for those wondering, I’m alive!

I apologise for not having uploading anything until now. University has kept me busy with exams and had to write an article about a psychometric analysis of a test, the WHODAS 2.0. It is interesting but it takes a lot of time.

Back to Christmas though, as I was listening to some jazz on Spotify (I do listen the most Coffee Table Jazz playlist of Jazz Classics, I find them enjoyable), I came across to a Youtube video of a guy making ham hocks exactly how I would like to cook them.  An early Christmas presents from the internet universe maybe?

(Ugh…. I’m writing this post in a coffee shop in Barcelona called Sandwichez. The playlist they’re playing is seriously annoying me. I can’t focus with all the ups and downs of the songs. I wish you could listen to them..)

The video it’s called “Pork Knuckles recipe by the BBQ Pit Boys” and, just by the title and seeing some guys walking around with machetes, seems like it’s a very macho video. Nonetheless, it has everything I like… the recipe for the pork shanks I mean.

First, they make a brine of water and salt to inject it in different parts of the meat to help tenderise it, as they say, preferably 10 or 24 hours before you cook them.

Once the time has passed, the ham hocks are ready to cook.  They cut the skin of the pork knuckles first and then put them in a smoker so the skin gets nice, brown and crispy. (As I said on the previous post, there are plenty of recipes and so many ways of doing them so, no need of sticking to only one if you don’t want to).

Instead of just putting them in a smoker to get the skin crispy and then place them in a rectangular oven baking tray or baking dish, big enough to put the ham hocks and pour broth around them, they carry on smoking them but every half an hour, they baste them with a mix of beer, honey and salt to keep them moist.

After four hours have gone by, they fry bacon, onions, green bell pepper in a pan so they get tender and lovely. Once that is done, they mix it with kraut in a baking pan, put the pork knuckles on that mixture for an hour and a half to two hours and it’s ready to go.

As I said, there are plenty of ways of doing them. 

For mine, I’ll do a bit of here and there but, mostly I’ll follow the recipe I wrote above because it has a lot of elements I like.

If you do make them, let me know your results and how everything went please! I really would like to know.

Merry Christmas everyone!! 🎅 🎁 🎄

Here are the links: BBQ Pit Boys recipe for pork knuckles video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI9ZMNoJx-g&t=576s BBQ Pit Boys website https://bbqpitboys.com/
Coffee Table Jazz playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWVqfgj8NZEp1 Jazz Classical playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DXbITWG1ZJKYt