It's great to see that Waitrose has started stocking pig's trotters and pig's cheeks!

If people start to eat offal, there won't be so much waste in the industry - and maybe people will appreciate their farmers more.

Just one problem - I have absolutely no idea what to do with a pig's trotter...

Recipes? 

Just been looking at a very old edition of Farmhouse Fare (a recipe book that was first published in the 1930s by Farmers Weekly).

It includes a recipe for Pig's Feet and Parsley Sauce:

Wash thoroughly four pig's feet. Put them in a saucepan with enough water to cover. Bring to the boil, skim and simmer gently for two-and-a-half hours. Mark a parsley sauce with half a pint of milk, one tablespoonful chopped parsley, one tablespoonful cornflour (or plain flour), a piece of butter or margerine, salt and papper. Serve with the pig's feet. This is sufficient for six people. A good soup can be made with the addition of vegetables to the stock in which the feet were boiled.

Frankly, that sounds disgusting!

Wow - that redefines unappealing!

I like this website - www.waitrose.com/forgottencuts.

It's a new cookery page encouraging us all to eat offal in the credit-crunch.  

lucyb:

Wow - that redefines unappealing!

To be honest, I picked the least unappealing of the two recipes involving pig's feet. The other one is a recipe for pig's feet and ears which says:

Cleanse the feet and ears very thoroughly, soaking for some hours. Boil them in salted water until tender. Take our of the water and dry them; cut the feet in two, slice the ears, then dip in frying batter and fry in hot fat. serve with a little melted butter seasoned with mustard, and vinegar poured over.

well perhaps we could get waitrose to market badger hams as well, that may get rid of a few !

Try adding a pigs' trotter to a beef stew to get that lovely gelatinous gravy Mmmmmm.....

Lambs liver, and thats as far as I am going down the offal route, thankyou!

I once ate tongue which was cooked in a really nice creamy sauce and I really liked it until I worked out what it was. Funny stuff offal, its quite pleasant until you dwell upon its origin or previous function....................

Tim, you don't have to think about where the feet have been and troden, in the recipe you mention salt, this was no doubt to extract as much water as possible from the trotter and ears then they would hot fry them till almost crisp. If you remember cows hooves were the prime ingredient of glue, and the jelatine and jelly fravoured with strawberry, came from pigs trotters and the like.

I can remember mother boiling pigs trotter, its only after they had been simmering for an hour that you skim off the scum and froth off the top, then continue simmering until the skin and bones can be lifted out clean leaving the flesh in the stock, when all the veg ( that pigs eat) was put in( the same with rabbit pie you include all veg that rabbits eat) simmer again until the vegetables are cooked and serve, it is the most tender of meat that melts in your mouth.

With the pigs head, that was done the same the most meat was on the cheeks, boil then skim, then simmer again until the flesh is left in the pot after lifting out the bones and skin eyes and hairy ears.

This was again reduced by simmering until the stock is noticeably thicker, all the flesh was ladled into big basins, then the stock poured in enough to cover it all, a plate or saucer what ever was a good fit to the basin was placed on each basin and a weight was applied to hold it down firm.  They were taken into the pantry and left to go cold, the stock then set like a jelly. The jelly round the edge of the saucer set and formed a seal excluding all the air.

After a couple of days mother would turn one out onto a plate and slice it for sandwiches or slices on the plate along with salads as you would with ham, but this was called BRAWN. The other basins as I recall kept quite well in the winter time in the cool of the pantry ( no use by date in them days) for up to a month. It was a treat that we always looked forward to.

I know one time the butches used to make brawn and sell it sliced over the counter, when we ran out occasionally mother would reluctantly buy some in and moan like hell about what he charged.

Boveril, I remember al the old thin cows that went through Uttoxeter market were cooked and sqeezed out hard to make Bovril at Burton on Trent

That's really interesting Owd Fred. Like you say, it probably tastes better if you don't think too much about it!

Tell me, have you eaten trotters since you were a kid? Are you inclined to try them again now? You'll have to let us all know how you find them if you do!

No Tim, not had troters for years, it was only when you kill your own pig at home they were there to be used when nothing got wasted, we never had the inclination to go out to look for or buy them. Mother used to use the jelly from the trotters to pour into her pork pies throgh a hole in the top. She used to clean the intestines and make black pudding which had large cubes of pure white fat in from the leaf fat insde the belly of the pig. Pigs in them days were fat, bacon was always 50/50 fat and lean. Frying pan would have half an inch of fat in when she cooked all the bacon, then float thick rounds of usualy stale bread to make fried bread, her way of useing up the old bread.  But fat is frowned upon now. 

That's fascinating...

It seems that if it's your own pig you put hard work into raising, you take the time to process every bit.

But are people going to voluntarily buy the nasty bits? That's a good question...

During the war and for quite a while after there was food rationing, people would literally "eat every thing except it's squeal" and no one was so fusy about the nasty bits as you put it,  but no I do not purchase any bits that I would not eat or fancy, but with your own pig no one ever threw anything away , there was always someone in the village who would want it. When hunger was about you were'nt too fussy, we had rabbit pie every week and that cost nowt.

The next piglet was in the sty as soon as the previous one was killed, very rarely purchased any "pig food" it was always fed on scraps from the farm or the garden. No hard work in that any more than growing your own vegetables in the garden, it was essential, same as you may find it essential to go shopping to Tesco.