Pig's Feet & Head

Pig's Feet:
Pig's feet are extremely tough as they are mostly made of skin, bones and knuckle, with very little meat, so splitting them at home can be difficult and dangerous.

In Puerto Rico, a tomato-based stew of pigs' trotters with chickpeas is called patitas de cerdo. Sometimes potatoes or butternut are added. Chef Marco Pierre White has long served trotters at his restaurants, based on the original recipe of mentor Pierre Koffmann. In the New York City restaurant Hakata Tonton, 33 of the 39 dishes served contain pigs' trotters.

Following the Great Recession, there was a boom in popularity of pigs' trotters in the United Kingdom as a revival in cheap meat recipes occurred. In 2008, British supermarket Waitrose reintroduced trotters to its stores and found that they quickly became popular. In 2009, Pierre Koffmann set up a pop-up restaurant, and found that diners ate an entire month's stock of 500 pigs' trotters in less than a week.

In Norwegian tradition, pigs' feet are salted and boiled and served as syltelabb. This is a pre-Christmas dish because the pig was slaughtered before Christmas, and everything was used. Today syltelabb is for enthusiasts.

Pig's Head:
If you're looking for skin, pig's head has it in abundance. The snout is pure skin and fat; since the entire head is covered with skin, you have, literally, square footage of skin with which to fashion your dishes. The ears, in addition, offer the unique textural crunch of cartilage.