It all started this morning with my craving for a sandwich from The Swinery in West Seattle. When I got there for a late lunch, I was pleasantly surprised the description on the chalk board made me salivate immediately, pork belly roasted with some Bourbon Mustard Glaze and house smoked ham with Gruyere and Dijon all on a house-made sandwich roll. As my sandwich was being assembled, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before in their ‘cured meat’ case, real ham hocks. Most of the times that I’ve seen or bought what was being sold as “ham hocks,” they’ve been two to three-inch little stubs of bone, skin, connective tissue and a tiny bits of meat, and who knew where or how the pigs were raised - the meat cutters never seemed to know.
In the case before me were three real ham hocks, - the entire ‘joint’ of meat the joint between the ham and the foot - and they were from real pigs; Durocs, I believe, raised out on the Olympic Peninsula. I chose the smallest of the three and it was just-under 2-1/2 pounds. When I got home and unwrapped the bundle, it looked like a small ham, and one slice told me that it had been cured for a fairly decent amount of time prior to being smoked with apple wood - I assume that it was wrapped with the cord to hang in the curing room and smoker. The ‘hard’ cure gave it an exquisite taste and texture reminiscent of a traditional southern ham. I had originally envisioned using it as the base for a bean soup, but since it tastes so good and has a fair amount of meat, I may cook it first and then decide later.
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