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Beer-braised pork knuckles with caraway, garlic, apples and potatoes

The following recipe is inspired by the Schweinshaxe, or pork knuckle, I ate when I was last in Germany a couple of years ago. What’s important here is that the knuckle is uncured or unpickled pork (not ham), that you ask the butcher to score the rind for you, and that you do bother to braise-baste with beer. From Nigella Kitchen

2 tsp sea salt flakes (or 1 tsp pouring salt)
1 tsp caraway seeds
2 garlic cloves, crushed or grated
2 pork knuckles (also called hocks), rind scored
2 onions, peeled and sliced into rounds
2 eating apples, cored and quartered
4 baking potatoes (or 1kg/1lb 2oz other main-crop potatoes), cut into quarters lengthways
500ml/17fl oz good-quality amber or dark beer (not stout)
500ml/17fl oz boiling water

Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas 7. Put the salt and caraway seeds into a bowl, add the minced or grated garlic, and mix everything together. Rub the pork knuckles with this mixture, getting right into the slits in the scored rind.

Make a bed or platform of the onion slices in the bottom of a deep-sided roasting tin. Sit the pork hocks on this onion layer and cook them in the hot oven for 30 minutes.

Take the tin out of the oven and quickly arrange the apples and potatoes around the pork knuckles. Carefully pour over 250ml/9fl oz of the beer, aiming for the pork knuckles so they’re basted as the liquid is poured into the tin. Return the tin to the oven, turning this down to 170C/325F/Gas 3. Continue to cook at this lower temperature for two hours.

Turn the oven up again to 220C/425F/Gas 7, pour the rest of the beer over the pork knuckles, and continue to cook at the higher temperature for another 30 minutes.

Take the tin out of the oven and transfer the apples and potatoes to a warmed dish. Lift the hocks onto a carving board, leaving the onion and juices in the tin.

Put the tin on the hob over a medium heat and add the boiling water, scraping any burned onions up from the bottom of the tin using a wooden spoon to de-glaze the tin and make a gravy.

Meanwhile, take the crackling off the pork knuckles and break it into pieces. Pull apart or carve the meat and pile it onto plates with the apples and potatoes. Pour over the gravy and serve with some German mustard.