Cleaning and Cooking Pigs’ Feet
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 200°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare and cure
Trim the lean meat from the pigs' feet and remove the toes.
Soak the cleaned feet in a brine solution with about 6 ounces of saltpetre per 100 pounds of feet for 8 to 10 days.
Cook and pickle
Cook the feet in water, keeping the temperature just below boiling (around 200°F or 93°C).
After cooking, trim and cool the feet thoroughly before packing them in vinegar.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Pigs' feet
- Their collagen softens during long, gentle cooking, giving the finished meat a gelatinous, tender texture.
- Saltpetre
- Cures the meat, helping it keep a pink color and slowing bacterial spoilage during the long soak.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the feet and draws moisture out of the meat while the brine cures it.
The step that matters
Keep the cooking water just below boiling. A gentle simmer lets collagen slowly convert to gelatin while the feet stay tender and intact. A rolling boil toughens the outer meat and can break the feet apart.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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