When most people hear about pig trotter vinegar, the word confinement dish instantly pops up. In Asia, most ladies who have just given birth will be eating pig trotters vinegar for at least 1 month as vinegar is believed to remove blood clots while ginger is believed to remove air from the body which is both good for ladies who has just given birth. While it is definitely a dish you find on a confinement menu, there is no rule to say men and woman who has not given birth cannot eat this. In fact, many people love this dish and it can be found in sold in some hawkers and restaurants. I never knew how simple it was to cook this dish until my mum got me to try it so if you like this dish, try cooking it at home.
Ingredients needed:
- 1 full sized pig trotter/leg plus half KG of pork thigh meat
- 3 pieces of ginger
- 200 grams of brown sugar
- 1 bottle of sweet black glutinous rice vinegar
In my picture, you can see 2 bottles as we were trying a new brand of sweet vinegar from Hong Kong and they actually split the sweet vinegar and sour vinegar into 2 bottles. The result was a more watery and light flavoured vinegar gravy. The only brand of vinegar which is usually used is the following Chan Kong Thye brand which has a thicker consistency and more sourish flavour. If you are using this brand, you need to add the equivalent of 1 bottle of water to the pot.
Boil the pig trotters and thigh meat in water, white vinegar and cooking wine to get rid of the raw pork stench and also any blood water. Once you see all the protein scum floating above on the water, you can turn off the fire as we do not want to cook the pork.
Wash the pig trotter clean with tap water and be sure to remove any extra scum on the meat
Prepare a large bowl of water with ice to soak the pig trotters
Soak the clean meat and trotters in the ice water as this gives the meat a better texture and the skin of the trotter will be crunchy and chewy.
Cut the ginger into rough slices and smash them with the chopper for the ginger to release their fragrance when cooking.
Fry the smashed ginger in 2 tablespoon of oil. Fry for 1 to 2 mins until you can smell the fragrance being released by the ginger.
Pour in all the ginger and put the pot on high heat to boil
When the vinegar comes to a boil. lower the heat to low medium and put in the pork meat and trotters. Cover the pot and cook for 45 mins to 1 hours till cooked. Once the vinegar boils, pour in all the sugar and cover the pot to continue cooking. You can choose to add in hard boiled eggs at this point.
The vinegar pig trotters is ready once the pork is cooked.
The pork skin has a nice sheen due to the sugar and also the ice bath. The vinegar pig trotters can be kept in the fridge and eaten over 1 week. The flavour of the vinegar becomes deeper each time you boil it but do keep the vinegar pork in a glass container only. This is a no fuss recipe so happy cooking.
Bear Travels . Bear Eats . Bear Cooks 