Pre-cooked pork knuckle. Slowly cooked and packaged for reheating.
While the Coles product is pre-cooked, to get the crackling crispy and crunchy it needs some more cooking.
I went with this because during the week I had a lovely pork belly dinner but the crackling was disappointing. It was soft and limp. I needed some crispy crunchy crackling stat im.
Ingredients
Coles pork knuckle
Queensland nut oil
Flaky iodised salt
Brussels sprouts
Baby green peas
Birds Eye potato mash
Instructions
Pork knuckle
Remove the pork knuckle from the vacuum bag.
Remove all the jelly and solidified fat that is clinging to the pork knuckle.
Put the jelly and fat into a small skillet and gently simmer to reduce to a thin sauce.
Dry the surface of the pork knuckle with absorbent kitchen paper.
Rub a little Queensland nut oil over the surface of the pork knuckle and then liberally season with flaky iodised salt.
Place into a baking tray and then into a hot oven (220 °C) for about 50 minutes.
The endpoint you’re trying to achieve is crackling which feels hard when you tap it with a knife.
When the pork knuckle is ready, remove it from the oven and coddle it with aluminium foil keeping the crackling exposed to avoid it going soft and limp.
Allow the pork knuckle to rest for at least 10 minutes in its “space blanket”.
Remove the aluminium foil and peel off the crackling and then cleave off the muscle bundles and slice.
Keep the remainder of the meat aside and refrigerate for consumption later.
Potato mash
Put the bag onto a plate and then into a microwave radiation oven.
Set the timer for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Because my oven is malfunctioning, in that the “2” button doesn’t work, fiddle and cook in two instalments so the total cooking time is 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Allow the potato mash to rest in the bag for 1 minute.
Cut the bag open and extrude the potato mash onto the pre-warmed dinner plate and spread artistically on the plate.
Vegetables
In the reduced simmering pork knuckle jelly and fat add some Brussels sprouts and baby green peas and cook to your liking.
I also finished mine in the oven because I could.
Plating up
Lay some pork on top of the potato mash.
Top the pork meat with the crackling.
Place the green vegetables next to the potato mash.
Pre-cooked pork knuckle. Slowly cooked and packaged for reheating.
Pork knuckle with crispy crackling, potato mash, Brussels sprouts, and baby green peas.
Pork knuckle with crispy crackling, potato mash, Brussels sprouts, and baby green peas.
Pork knuckle with crispy crackling, potato mash, Brussels sprouts, and baby green peas.
Coles Australian Pork Knuckle
Final thoughts
Do you like pork?
How do you like your pork?
Do you prefer having your pork prepared by someone else before you finish it off and put it in your mouth?
I’ve been struggling with a bad headache all day today. I was meant to go out to dinner with work friends to farewell a couple of colleagues. Unfortunately, later in the afternoon I felt like I was also becoming febrile.
…and no, I have not been to Wuhan recently.
The only thing I had at home to eat was a duck breast and some frozen potato mash.