Pig ear

[Kent Wang]

I usually red cook these (hong shao), by braising on high heat with soy sauce. However, the cartilage always ends up pretty tough.

I've had much softer cartilage from several restaurants. What's the secret? I've braised for an hour and a half without making much progress. Should I try longer time, lower heat?

This preparation I had at Metropole in Hong Kong is one of the best that I've had. The cartilage is soft and the ears are pressed together then sliced into sheets. How does one go about pressing them together? Do I need some industrial-level equipment?

[Prawncrackers]

You should definitely cook them long, slow and low. Looks like the Metropole have used a terrine mould. In which case you need nothing more than flat object and a brick to press it down into the mould whilst it's chilling. The high gelatin in the ears should firm up quite nicely. That's a wonderful presentation. Mmm, slippery crunchy jellyfish too.

[Kent Wang]

Thanks, that worked quite nicely. I'm going to try pressing them together next time, though it doesn't look very easy.

What's the nutritional content of ears -- I'm guessing high in protein and fat?

I think ear should be a New Years dish. In the tradition of using homophones to justify auspicious dishes like the black moss seaweed "fa cai", we can think of ear as a English homophone for year, as in a "New Ear" dish.

[Ben Hong]

What's the nutritional content of ears -- I'm guessing high in protein and fat?

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Not very high in protein, but lots of fat and cartilage. Outstanding amount of "mouthfeel"

[Prawncrackers]

You know thinking about it Kent, you don't even need a terrine mould. Just use a flat dish and cut the edges straight when you're ready to serve. Should work okay and be nice and neat if you arrange them in an interlocking fashion.

I think the nutritional content of pigs ear is somewhere between that of chicken feet and duck wings!!

[Kent Wang]

You should definitely cook them long, slow and low.  Looks like the Metropole have used a terrine mould.  In which case you need nothing more than flat object and a brick to press it down into the mould whilst it's chilling.  The high gelatin in the ears should firm up quite nicely.

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Yup, piece of cake.

[Peter Green]

You should definitely cook them long, slow and low.  Looks like the Metropole have used a terrine mould.  In which case you need nothing more than flat object and a brick to press it down into the mould whilst it's chilling.  The high gelatin in the ears should firm up quite nicely.

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Yup, piece of cake.

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'ear! 'ear!

P.S. - I still like my pig ears not so soft, with a little crunch and grind to them.

[Prawncrackers]

Yup, piece of cake.

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Mmmm that looks perfect, bravo! How many ears can you fit in your terrine, how big was the mould and how many portions did you get out of it? Probably depends on the size of the ears of course but a benchmark would be handy. Looks so good might have to try one this meself.

What was that you were saying in the salty egg thread about them young 'uns Dejah?

[Beebs]

Has anyone tried cooking pig ears in a slow-cooker? How long do you think they might need? Is 6 hours on high long enough?

[Kent Wang]

Mmmm that looks perfect, bravo!  How many ears can you fit in your terrine, how big was the mould and how many portions did you get out of it?  Probably depends on the size of the ears of course but a benchmark would be handy.  Looks so good might have to try one this meself. 

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It's your standard size terrine, about 4" wide, 4" deep, 10" long. I layered about 10 ears together, which weighed about 2 lbs. How many servings? Well, it depends on how much you can eat. I can eat a lot of ear at a time.

Has anyone tried cooking pig ears in a slow-cooker?  How long do you think they might need?  Is 6 hours on high long enough?

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I did 4 hours in a pot on simmer. I recommend using a lot of soy sauce in the simmering broth as it's hard to get the ears to absorb much flavor.

[Dejah]

Yup, piece of cake.

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Mmmm that looks perfect, bravo! How many ears can you fit in your terrine, how big was the mould and how many portions did you get out of it? Probably depends on the size of the ears of course but a benchmark would be handy. Looks so good might have to try one this meself.

What was that you were saying in the salty egg thread about them young 'uns Dejah?

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I expect you will wade in to experiment?

[mizducky]

Kent, that looked so fabulous that I was moved to do some experiments of my own with pig ears. Alas, my results arent't as pretty as yours, but the stuff does taste yummy (if rich), and with great mouthfeel. Plus I had a fun time doing it.

The main ingredients:

Forgive me, my weird sense of humor took one look at these babies and started thinking "meat bouquet," so of course I had to do it. The butcher at the Vietnamese market only had big huge pig ears, so that's what I got--plus two pig's feet, cut up, to kind of fill things out here and there.

I gave the piggy parts a preliminary simmer in plain water first, then drained the meat, discarding the water, and rinsing any remaining scum off. Then, because I am an impatient person, I put the meat in my pressure cooker, seasoned with dark soy, light soy, Shaoxing wine, garlic, ginger, star anise, yellow rock sugar, a few dried red chiles and a few sichuan peppercorns, and added about four cups water. After forty minutes at 15 lbs. pressure, the meat was looking like this:

I was concerned the ears would tear or get bunched up in that strainer, so I gently fetched them out onto plates. They looked so wacky on those little plates that I had to indulge in further food art of questionable talent:

Enough fun and games, I layered the ears in a non-stick loaf pan as best I could, using the deboned meat and skin from the feet to fill in gaps. After chilling, weighted, for a couple of hours, it looked like this sliced:

As I said, nowhere near as precise as Kent's. But they taste great--if very very rich--and as a long-time secret fan of head cheese, I'm really digging the mouthfeel.

One thing though--I'm going to have to either find other local offal fans to share it with, or else figure out a way to freeze some of it, because there's no way I'll be able to finish this whole terrine on my own. Oops!

[Domestic Goddess]

Ellen - can you send some of the terrine to me? Those look mouthwatering delicious!

[Abra]

I would love to try this out on some French folks, who are all for terrines, and using the odd bits, although I've never seen anything like this terrine here. Could I have a little more step-by step instructions? I've never worked with pig ears before.

[mizducky]

I would love to try this out on some French folks, who are all for terrines, and using the odd bits, although I've never seen anything like this terrine here.  Could I have a little more step-by step instructions?  I've never worked with pig ears before.

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Sure thing. Only bear in mind that I'm still refining the process--there's already a few things I learned from this go-round that I'm going to tweak the next time I do this.

At any rate, for this first attempt I bought about two pounds of fresh raw skin-on pig ears (actually, I can't imagine them coming other than skin-on; if you skinned them there's be nothing left!). I also bought two pig's feet a.k.a. trotters--I had the butcher saw the feet into more manageable chunks (one lengthwise cut and three cross-wise cuts each). As I said in an earlier post, the butcher only had huge pig ears--four of them made two pounds' worth. Next time, I'd like to try to find smaller ears, so that they'd be easier to jockey into attractive layers in my terrine pan; or else cut the big ears in half or something. The ears also each had one thicker meaty corner where they had originally attached to the pig's head--next time I'm trimming off those thick parts, either before or after cooking, again to make it easier to achieve nice even attractive layers in the terrine. (I wouldn't let those trimmings go to waste, though!)

I inspected my pig ears carefully and determined they had no remaining hair needing removal--recipes I've seen recommend taking a simple disposeable razor to them if there's any stray hair/bristles/fuzz on the skin. I then placed the ears, and the feet, into a large pot along with enough plain water to cover. I brought the pot to a boil, simmered hard for about 10 minutes while the meat threw off a whole lot of scum, then drained the meat into a colander, discarding all scummy water and rinsing the meat to remove any remaining scum. (Whereas Western braising technique tends to retain that first bunch of water and work real hard thereafter to clarify it, Chinese technique is usually to just toss the water, scum and impurities and all--certainly saves a lot of work!) Oh yeah--I rinsed all remaining scum out of the pot, too.

I then returned the meat to the pot--actually my pressure cooker, but doing this low-and-slow in a conventional pot would probably be even better--and added the following seasonings:

--3 quarter-sized slices fresh ginger root

--2 pods of star anise

--about 6-8 whole Szechuan peppercorns (they produce a better "buzz" if you roast and grind them, but I kind of like the faint hint of tingle they produce when used this way)

--about three small dried red chilies

--about 1/2 dozen peeled whole garlic cloves

--4-5 little chunks Chinese yellow rock sugar (other sugars can be substituted)

--2 Tbs Shaoxing wine (Chinese fortified rice wine; dry sherry is a good substitute)

--2 Tbs Chinese light soy sauce

--2 Tbs Chinese dark soy sauce

Then, because it was my pressure cooker, I added only about 4 cups of water, which left the top inch worth of meat unsubmerged. If I had been doing this in a conventional pot, I would have put in enough water to cover, but in my pressure cooker I was concerned not to overfill. I lidded and locked my cooker, brought it up to full pressure (15 psi), and then let it cook for about 40 minutes. In a conventional pot, I'd probably bring the water to a boil, cover and back it to a bare simmer, and let it go for a good couple of hours or more, judging the meat done when the feet-meat starts falling of their bones.

Anyway, when I cooled and unlocked my cooker, the ears were nicely done--the interior cartilage still retained a bit of a crunch, but a pleasant al-dente crunch, not an unpleasantly tough crunch. And all skin had become meltingly tender--in fact, I had to be careful not to tear the skin as I handled the meat.

I drained the meat, this time reserving every precious drop of the cooking liquid, which was now full of flavor and gelatin goodness. I wound up not using any of this cooking liquid in this terrine; next time, I may pour in a little at the end to help fill in any gaps. But anyway ... since I wanted the ears to lie flat in my terrine container, I quickly (but gently!) fished them out of the colander and laid them out flat on plates to cool a little (I sprayed the plates lightly with canola oil spray to prevent the ears sticking). I then deboned the pig's feet--these could have done with a little longer cooking than the ears, but I managed okay.

For my terrine mold I used two matching standard bread pans, one to hold the meat and the other to serve as the lid/weighted press on top. Both had non-stick interiors, but I greased the interior of the meat-containing one with my canola oil spray anyway. I then gently laid the ears into the greased pan as best I could to get them all to fit in together with as few gaps as possible, useing the meat from the feet to fill in any gaps (if I had trimmed the ears as I discussed above, I would have used the trimmings for gap-filling purposes here as well). The meat covered the entire bottom of the bread pan nicely, and filled it about halfway vertically (about 1.5 inches deep).

Then I took the other bread pan, sprayed its exterior with canola spray, and placed it inside the first bread pan so its bottom was sitting on top of the meat. I piled four soup cans into this upper bread pan to serve as weights. And then the whole contrapton went into the fridge to chill for a few hours. The inherent gelatin of the ear and feet skin was more than plenty to cause the terrine to set up extremely firmly!

I then unweighted and unmolded my terrine--I had to reach in and pull it out, but at this point it was so firm that this manhandling didn't damage it in the least. In fact, you need to slice this stuff extremely thinly, because in thick slices I think the texture might be a little too tough to be pleasant. Of course, if you heated it up it would go all melty and tender again--in fact, it would fall apart and no longer be a terrine. But that's not necessarily a bad thing--in fact, I think letting a couple of thin slices melt over some piping-hot steamed rice would be incredibly yummy.

Other future variations: I could easily see doing this with other seasoning profiles--say, taking it French with tarragon, white wine, etc.--and/or embedding garnishes in the terrine for color/flavor contrast (finely chopped scallions, red peppers, etc.)

[Abra]

Wow, thanks for all the typing, MizDucky! I'm not quite seeing the purpose of the feet in the dish. Is it mainly to add gelatin?

[mizducky]

Wow, thanks for all the typing, MizDucky!  I'm not quite seeing the purpose of the feet in the dish.  Is it mainly to add gelatin?

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Nope, mainly just as I said, they were my guess-and-gosh attempt to fill in the little gaps here and there where I couldn't quite get the ears to overlap properly, to make as "even" a loaf as possible. Now that I think of it, though, I could have simply cut the ears into nice even rectangular pieces and spared myself a whole lot of fiddling ... oh well, another idea to try the next time I do this! Anyway, you could certainly do without the feet, and just put in more ears. I think the ears alone would have plenty enough gelatin to set up on their own.