Baked knuckle is a favorite Czech dish. There it is called the knee. But even in Russian cuisine they like to cook a pork leg . It looks good on the festive table as the main dish, but is also suitable for everyday life, as the secret of its preparation is simple. True, it is long. Because before baking, the meat needs to be pickled for a day or at least night.
Each housewife has her own recipe for this dish: shank baked in the oven in the "naked" form, in foil or in a culinary sleeve. Someone boils meat before putting it in the oven, and someone is an ardent supporter of simple pickling. By the way, there are about fifteen marinades for pork shanks: in beer, kvass, soy sauce with honey, etc. But the general process of preparing a dish is one. We act in such an algorithm: thoroughly wash the meat, dry it, we stuff with garlic (or garlic and prunes), put in the marinade. After some time, we take out and bake in the oven, preheated to 200 C, about an hour. We try preparedness with a fork with long teeth or a wooden stick: colorless juice, not blood, should stand out from an easily piercing product.
It seems to be simple, but there are still a lot of secrets that you should know so that the baked pork knuckle comes out soft, delicate, but also with a rosy, fried skin.
First, marinade. If you don’t have time to wait for a whole day and you want to bake meat in two or three hours, use salt to coat. Mix it with equal parts of black pepper, rosemary, turmeric, oregano, add mustard (if desired, or soy sauce) to this powder and coat the knee on all sides. But before that, stuff the garlic. To do this, use a knife with a narrow tip. Make shallow cuts on the pork and push a quarter or half of a clove of garlic into the holes formed. Stuffed garlic meat is ready for baking in a few hours.
If you decide to cook the pork the next morning, you don’t need to salt the marinade. The knuckle baked with whole skin will be fatter. In this case, it is not necessary to burn it, but simply put the head of garlic next to it when baking or chop the garlic in the marinade (or grate the meat with garlic mashed with vegetable oil). If you want to get a more dietary product, before sending the knee into the oven, cross-cut incisions on the skin to drain excess fat - pork is fried a little faster in this case.
The
pork knuckle
baked in foil or sleeve does not require regular turning, but then her skin will be pale and ugly. 20 minutes before readiness, you need to get the meat from the "clothes" and bake it already in the "naked form", so that an appetizing tan and even a crispy crust are formed. If you know such a weakness behind your oven that it overcooks dishes from below, lay the pork on a pillow of half the onions or thick slices of chopped potatoes.
And, finally, an economical option: pea soup and shank baked from one piece of meat. Boil the pork in unsalted water with the onion in the husk until cooked, removing the foam. We use the broth as the basis for the soup, and dry the shank with a paper towel, weighed with garlic, rub with salt and put in a mixture of soy sauce (1-2 glasses), liquid honey (a few tablespoons), juice of 1 lemon and pepper sauce. Boiled meat is marinated quickly, enough for half an hour. It should also be baked for a short time - 15-20 minutes, until a golden crust forms.