How to hock your ham

While perusing the Dean & Deluca cookbook the other day, Court came across a recipe for the traditional New Years Day dish Hoppin' John. This dish is supposed to give good luck for the New Year. If you've never had (or heard of) this dish, I highly recommend it. It is a dish made up of black eyed peas (or a similar bean) cooked in a mildly spiced boiling liquid consisting of water, sweated onion and celery, crushed red pepper, spices and a smoked ham hock. Once the peas/beans have cooked through you cook rice in the liquid with the beans and shred the meat from the ham hock into the dish. The resultant dish is reminiscent of a red beans and rice, though the spice essences are less on the hot side and are more typically Caribbean with strong notes of clove.

The real impetus behind this post was that our local meat provider (the Whole Foods in Chapel Hill) had apparently had a big run on ham hock that day. Additionally, I'm not sure they carry smoked ham hock at all. Though I could be mistaken on that note. One of the guys in the butchers department, which I should note is a generally very helpful group of guys and gals, suggested that we get a couple country pork ribs and put a dry rub on them. Court and I put our heads together and came up with a solution that I think worked really well:

Faux Ham Hock:
2 pork country ribs
1/4 tsp Cayenne pepper powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
good pinch of salt
several grinds of a pepper mill
tbsp or 2 of Worcestershire sauce (yes, I had to spell check that)

Mix all the dry ingredients together and rub all over the the country ribs until well coated. Place the coated ribs in a plastic bag and pour in the Worcestershire sauce. Move the ribs around until well coated with the liquid. There shouldn't be too much liquid or you'll leave the rub in the bag when you take out the ribs. You want the consistency of a thickish paste. Put the bag in the fridge and leave for 20-30 minutes to marinate. Towards the end of your marinating time turn on the broiler in your oven and set a wrack 4-6" below it. Take the pork out and arrange on tin foil on a baking sheet. Broil the ribs until a good carmelization forms on the first side. Flip the meat over and repeat on the second side. You now have a good smoked ham hock substitute! The carmelization of the Worcestershire sauce in combination with the rub ingredients adds a nice smoky flavor to the meat. Keep in mind though that if you want to immediately eat the ribs on their own, you need to check them for doneness. We tossed our ribs in simmering liquid for 30 minutes so we knew they would be completely cooked. In the final Hoppin' John dish the meat had the great texture of shredded pork and a great smoky flavor that enhanced the dish a lot. Thanks to the gentlemen in the meat department at Whole Foods for pointing us in the right direction and coming up with a good substitute for a difficult ingredient to find on New Years Eve.

As another side note: we had run out of dried red pepper for the dish and substituted an Ethiopian spice mixture Berbere for the crushed red peppers. This addition probably added a bit more smokiness and all the "heat" to the dish.