Spicy meat jelly

Ingredients for 15 servings:

• 3 kg pork knuckle(s) (ham knuckle), cured or home-cured
• 800 g onion(s)
• 100 ml vinegar (vinegar essence), more to taste
• 6 juniper berries
• 4 allspice berries
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 cloves
• 1 tsp mustard seeds
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• 3 packs of gelatin (instant gelatin)
• 1 pinch(s) black pepper, ground
• 1 pinch(s) of salt, just a little
• Water for the meat

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour; Cooking/baking time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes; Total time approx. 2 hours 30 minutes

cooked in a pressure cooker

Roughly chop 1 or 2 onions and place them in the pressure cooker. Place the washed pork hocks on top and add all the spices. Now fill with water so that the pork hocks are just covered. Cook until the meat is tender. I prefer a 6-liter pressure cooker, as the meat, bone-in, is cooked in about 1 hour and 10 minutes. With a regular saucepan, this can take up to 3 hours. Now remove the meat and let it cool slightly. In the meantime, strain the meat broth and keep warm. Set aside about 300 ml of broth. Once the meat has cooled slightly, separate it from the bone, rind, and fat and chop it into small pieces until stringy, then chop the rind and fat. I do this with an onion chopper so that the mixture is fine and no pieces of rind or fat are visible at the end. Remove the spice seeds while you do this. The mustard seeds can stay in. Now bring the meat broth to a boil, meanwhile roughly dice the remaining onion and add it to the boiling broth. Boil the onions briefly, then add the meat and rind mixture and bring everything to a boil. Whisk the gelatine into the reserved, lukewarm broth. If it lumps a bit, simply stir with a hand blender. Now add the mixed gelatine mixture to the saucepan. Bring everything to a boil, add the vinegar and season to taste with salt and ground black pepper. Now you can fill the aspic into sterile containers or cleaned and sterilized jars. When filling jars, the aspic should still be boiling hot. Close the jars immediately and turn them upside down. After a short cooling phase, you can put them upside down as usual. Notes: I only use vinegar essence, as regular vinegar, due to the larger amount added, stretches the aspic too much and changes the flavor. Thoroughly clean the jars and then heat them in a preheated oven at 130°C for about 15 minutes. Briefly boil the lids in boiling water.