A knuckle is cheap, ugly and better than most of what sits above it in the cabinet. Long and slow to render the fat, then hot and hard to blow the skin. Get that second part wrong and you have leather.
Apple sauce is usually the polite bit of the plate. This one has the rub through it, so it cuts the fat instead of apologising to it.
3 hrs 30 mins. Serves 4.
Ingredients
- 1 Pork knuckle, about 1.5kg, skin scored
- 2 dessertspoons Plateit Old Red Rub
- 1 tbsp Flaky salt
- 2 Onions, halved
- 300ml Cider
- 4 Granny Smith apples, peeled and chunked
- 1 tsp Plateit Old Red Rub, for the sauce
- 20g Butter
- 1 tbsp Cider vinegar
Method
- Skin dried with paper, properly. Wet skin will never crackle. Flaky salt into the scores, then leave it uncovered in the fridge overnight if you can.
- Oven to 150C. Salt wiped off. Plateit Old Red Rub over the meat, keeping it off the skin, which only wants salt.
- Onions and cider in the tray, knuckle sitting on the onions above the liquid. Three hours.
- Apples, butter and a splash of water in a pan, lid on, 15 mins until collapsing. Vinegar and the teaspoon of rub through it. Leave it chunky.
- Oven to 240C. Twenty to twenty five minutes, watching it, until the skin blisters and blows into crackling.
- Fifteen minutes rest. Crack the skin off in shards with the back of a knife.
- Pull the meat off in pieces. Apple sauce alongside, pan juices poured over.
Do this: Knuckle above the liquid, never in it. Steam is the enemy of crackling.
