Odd Food—Pig Trotter pt. 2: Basic prep

The plan:

You have no idea how excited I am just typing this. Marco Pierre White and Pierre Koffman described this as “the greatest main course of all time”. They are correct. There is nothing like it on earth or in the heavens above, but that doesn’t mean everybody will like it. It's just the king. If you don’t, there’s nothing wrong with you; you have your textures and flavors you like and that’s fine. Make no mistake, the trotter is offal—understand that going in.

Here we go.

Soak the trotter for a few hours to soften the skin and bleed it out:

Soak the trotter for a few hours to soften the skin and bleed it out.

Boning out a trotter:

This is the only part that requires something of you. Get a small, thin knife (longer than a paring knife and not serrated). This is your only tool besides the blowtorch. Take the torch, singe the hairs as best you can, and scrape them off with a knife. Do your best, and you probably can’t make it immaculate.

Now let’s take a look at the little fellow:

Pretty cute. Boning this out is not a big deal. The solid line is an external cut, and the dotted lines are inside.

NOTE: Everything I'm about to tell you is simple and intuitive. Removing skin is exactly what it sounds like. The only part that requires a little looking is finding the joints, but frankly, once you do one you'll know the entire anatomy and you will know all the tricks that would be lost on you if I tried to explain them anyway. Remember: the anatomy of a pig trotter is essentially that of your hand. Use it as a reference. Weird.

1. Cut all the way through the skin from the back to the dotted circle. This is the same as the joint where your fingers meet the hand. (Dotted circle)

2. Work your way around the skin with the knife, and slowly flence (skin it—love that word) it. The technique is simple. Start with the bottom flap and skin an inch or two on both sides. When you can get to the top with the knife and peel it back, skim the knife under the skin and repeat. Essentially, you are removing a glove. With a fresh trotter you can be fairly rough. Frozen trotter be gentle. You don't want to puncture the skin.

3. Eventually you will get it back to where you can see the ligaments across the top of the foot, and you'll be stuck. Time to cut the two dotted finger joints inside.Wiggle the toe, and the joint is akin to where your thumb meets the hand if you had only one bone. Work the knife around the joint until it cuts free and repeat on the other side. This will open up the palm. The toe remains attached to the skin you are keeping. Do not cut the skin, just the joint.

4. The final dotted circle is where the big bone (it's actually two, but comes off in one piece) connects to the top toes. It is a pain in the ass to get the bone off until you've done it once. Keep removing the skin until you can see the big joint. It's a bit of work, but the technique is simple. Find the gap, and slice around it until all the relevant tissue is removed from the joint. There is one last ligament right in the middle that you can't get to yet.

5. Get a towel, grab the bone and the part of the trotter above it, and twist the shit out of it until it spins. Cut the cord and congratulations. You now own a meat sock. That was the hardest part.