Pork Hocks - The Must-have Vegetable Seasoning

Pork hocks refer to the joint area between where the foot of the hog is attached to its front leg, around the ankle area. Ham hock refers to the same area on the rear leg, but is now used rather synonymously. Pork hocks consist of mainly skin, tendons and ligaments, so when it comes to cooking pork hocks, it is best cooked for a long time through stewing or braising otherwise it will be difficult to eat it. It is often used as a seasoning as it can create a unique flavor to all sorts of vegetable-based dishes, especially with collard greens, mustard greens, green beans, navy beans, and cabbage.

In fact, it is one of the cheapest ways to season vegetables. You can just throw in a couple of pork hocks into a slow cooker with turnips, collards, kale and mustard greens, and you will find the pleasant salty taste of the pork in the slightly bitter vegetables, without even needing to add additional salt or seasoning. Other foods that pork hocks are commonly used as seasoning for are beans and peas like navy beans and black-eyed peas. Simply place some pork hocks in with the beans or peas in a crock pot for a few hours, and you will find the taste within the beans. Indeed, cooking pork hocks with vegetables and beans is favored as the flavor released from the meat seeping into the vegetable and beans creates a remarkable, complementing taste. However, be sure to keep the skin and bones attached to the pork hocks because that is where most of its flavor is present. And when it comes to serving the dishes, it is up to a person if they would like to serve the pork along with the vegetables or not, where if it is served as part of the dish, one can remove the pork hocks from the dish using a fork, discard its bone, and then put it back with the dish to be served.

Pork hocks are easy to attain as they can be bought from the butcher shop or meat department of a supermarket in different forms, such as raw or fresh, or smoked or cured. Pork hocks that are cured generally have a longer shelf life which makes storing them or use over a period of time possible. However, because there is not much flavour left from the pork after one round of cooking, it is recommended that it is only used once for cooking.